the morning he was
called from the bin by the little girl, who opened the cellar doors and
watched him come awkwardly up the steps, ambitiously advancing two at a
time and generally falling back one. After his breakfast of meat and
bread and milk he enjoyed a frolic, which consisted of a long run in a
circle about the little girl, while he grunted for joy and lack of
breath. When he was completely worn out with play, he rolled over on his
back and had a sleep in the sun.

Badgy learned to love the little girl; and it was found, after he had
lived in the potato-bin for a while, that she was the only person he
would follow or meet amicably; all others were saluted with a snarl and
a lifting of the grizzled hair. So the household came to look upon him
in the light of a worthy supplanter of the Indian dogs as a protector
for her. He accompanied her everywhere over the prairie, keeping close
to her bare feet and grunting good-naturedly at every swaying step. If
they met a stranger, he sprang before her, his hair on end, his teeth
showing, his claws working back and forth angrily. When a Sioux came
near, he went into a perfect fit of rage; and not an Indian ever dared
lay hands upon him.

It was this hatred for redskins that one night saved the herd from a
stampede. Badgy had been playing about the sitting-room with the little
girl, and trying his sharp claws on the new rag carpet, when he suddenly
began to rush madly here and there, snapping his teeth furiously. A big
brother grasped the musket that stood behind the door, thinking that he
had gone mad. But the little girl knew the signs, and, shielding him,
begged them to go out and look for the Indians she felt certain were
near. Sure enough, beyond the tall cottonwoods that formed the
wind-break to the north of the house were the figures of a dozen mounted
men, silhouetted against the sky. They were moving cautiously in the
direction of the wire cattle-pen; but as a big brother challenged them
with a halloo and followed it with a musket shot, they wheeled and
dashed away. The last glimpse of their ponies showed them apparently
riderless; which proved to the little girl's big brothers that the
marauders were from the reservation to the west.

The summer was at its full and the wheat-fields of the Vermillion River
Valley were all but ready for the harvester before Badgy began to feel a
yearning for his own kind and the freedom of the open prairie. Then he
often deserted