h delayed his spring to allow time for
a flying glance over his right shoulder; and that glance changed
his whole tactics in the matter of the attack upon Tasman. For,
even as Finn glanced, an outstretched furry mass flew across his
range of vision, and landed like a projectile upon the gaunt old
wolf's neck. Warrigal also had returned; she also had dropped her
kill in the trail below the den, and now Tasman had to deal with
the dauntless fury of a bereaved mother. Warrigal was a whirlwind
of rage; a revelation to Finn of the fighting force which had given
her her unquestioned standing in the pack before ever she set eyes
on the Wolfhound.

Tasman had his back against the side of the den's mouth now, and he
flung Warrigal from him, with a slash of his jaws and a twist of
his still powerful neck. But, in the next moment, the under-side of
that scrawny neck was between the mightiest jaws in the Tinnaburra,
and, even as the life blood of old Tasman flowed out between Finn's
white fangs, the body of him was being literally torn in sunder by
the furiously busy teeth and claws of Warrigal. It was little she
cared for the thrusts of his hind-claws in the last muscular
contortions which sent his legs tearing at her neck. She was
possessed of the mother-madness, and so she fought like a wild cat
at bay. Old Tasman was not just killed; he was dispersed,
scattered, dissolved almost into the elements from which he sprang;
he was translated within a few minutes into shapeless carrion.

And then, gasping, bleeding, panting, her jaws streaming, Warrigal
wheeled about with a savage, moaning cry, and shot forward into the
den. One son she had seen dead upon the ledge without. Two
daughters she found dead within, and, while she licked at his
lacerated little body, the lingering life ebbed out finally from
the other male pup, her sole remaining son. But Warrigal licked the
still little form for almost an hour, though it lived for no more
than three or four minutes after she entered the den.

Then Warrigal went outside to where Finn sat, alternately licking
the one deep wound the old wolf had scored in his chest, and
looking out dismally across the Tinnaburra. Warrigal sat down on
her haunches about two yards from Finn, and, having pointed her
muzzle at the moon, where it sailed serenely above them in a
flawless dark blue sky, she began to pour out upon the night the
sound of the long, hoarse dingo howl of mourning. Finn listened for