d straight for that open
door, a haven of refuge which had served her well in the past when
assailed by the dogs of visiting ranchers. The dogs were jaded and Shady
was fresh, and she reached her goal without their gaining an inch.

Collins sat smoking his pipe when he was startled by the frenzied
entrance of his former pet. Shady failed to pause for greetings but made
one mad leap from the door and slid to the farthest corner under the
wolfer's bunk.

Collins grunted with surprise and for a space of five seconds his brain
refused to function with its usual snap. Then he rose and crossed to the
door to discover the reason for Shady's headlong home-coming,--and
slammed it shut with but a single second to spare.

One dog rose on his hind feet, standing higher than a man, and savagely
raked the door from top to bottom with his claws while another opened
his jaws wide and closed them, his teeth splintering across the smooth
surface as he sought to gnaw his way inside. The remaining three circled
the cabin, sniffing explosively at the cracks between the logs. Shady
was seized with a fit of excessive shivering induced by these dread
sounds, and Collins heard her hind leg-joints beating a spasmodic tattoo
on the cabin floor. Then he turned on his ready grin.

"Just one split second more," he said, "and they'd have surged in here
and wrecked this plant for fair,--and that's a fact!"

That night when Breed sent out his call for Shady there was no answering
cry. He called again and again, an agony of longing and entreaty in his
tones. A sickening dread entered his soul,--the fear that his mate had
been caught in a trap, shot by some rider or killed in some other way by
man. He little suspected that Shady was at that instant resting her head
on a man's knee and enjoying the feel of his fingers scratching behind
her ears.

"Good old Shady," Collins said, roughing her head between his hands.
"You're a renegade now, old girl,--a she-outlaw, that's what you are.
You've gone over to the wild bunch, and men will be out after your
scalp; and they'll get it too. You'll go ambling up to some man and
he'll blow you up. You won't stick with me now unless I keep you
chained. You'll go back to 'em,--and if you're lucky you may go right on
living for mebbe a month. You don't know the ropes out there and they'll
pick you up."

Shady suddenly stiffened at Breed's first cry.

"Don't need to be afraid of that," Collins assured her. "That's