rom one of the men.

"Don't kill him!" Castlemon cried, seizing Collins's arm.

The leopard man was in a bad way himself. One arm dangled helplessly at
his side, while his eyes, filling with blood from a scalp wound, he wiped
on the master-trainer's shoulder so that he might see.

"He's my property," he protested. "And he's worth a hundred sick monkeys
and sour-balled terriers. Anyway, we'll get them out all right. Give me
a chance.--Somebody mop my eyes out, please. I can't see. I've used up
my blank cartridges. Has anybody any blanks?"

One moment Sara would interpose her body between Michael and the leopard,
which was still being delayed by the prodding irons; and the next moment
she would turn to screech at the fanged cat is if by very advertisement
of her malignancy she might intimidate him into keeping back.

Michael, dragging her with him, growling and bristling, staggered forward
a couple of three-legged steps, gave at the ruined shoulder, and
collapsed. And then Sara did the great deed. With one last scream of
utmost fury, she sprang full into the face of the monstrous cat, tearing
and scratching with hands and feet, her mouth buried into the roots of
one of its stubby ears. The astounded leopard upreared, with his
forepaws striking and ripping at the little demon that would not let go.

The fight and the life in the little green monkey lasted a short ten
seconds. But this was sufficient for Collins to get the door ajar and
with a quick clutch on Michael's hind-leg jerk him out and to the ground.

CHAPTER XXX

No rough-and-ready surgery of the Del Mar sort obtained at Cedarwild,
else Michael would not have lived. A real surgeon, skilful and
audacious, came very close to vivisecting him as he radically repaired
the ruin of a shoulder, doing things he would not have dared with a human
but which proved to be correct for Michael.

"He'll always be lame," the surgeon said, wiping his hands and gazing
down at Michael, who lay, for the most part of him, a motionless prisoner
set in plaster of Paris. "All the healing, and there's plenty of it,
will have to be by first intention. If his temperature shoots up we'll
have to put him out of his misery. What's he worth?"

"He has no tricks," Collins answered. "Possibly fifty dollars, and
certainly not that now. Lame dogs are not worth teaching tricks to."

Time was to prove both men wrong. Michael was not destined to permanent
lameness, a