stopped and turned back with a drooping tail, but Jack plunged in. He knew but
one voice behind him and Chad's was not in the chorus.

"Call yo' dawg back, boy," said Joel, sternly, and Chad opened his lips with
anything but a call for Jack to come back--it was instead a fine high yell of
encouragement and old Joel was speechless.

"That dawg'll kill them sheep," said Daws Dillon aloud.

Joel's face was red and his eyes rolled.

"Call that damned feist back, I tell ye," he shouted at last. "Hyeh, Rube, git
my gun, git my gun!"

Rube started for the house, but Chad laughed. Jack had reached the other bank
now, and was flashing like a ball of gray light through the weeds and up into
the woods; and Chad slipped down the bank and into the river, hieing him on
excitedly.

Joel was beside himself and he, too, lumbered down to the river, followed by
Dolph, while the Dillons roared from the road.

"Boy!" he roared. "Eh, boy, eh! what's his name, Dolph? Call him back, Dolph,
call the little devil back. If I don't wear him out with a hickory; holler fer
'em, damn 'em! Heh-o-oo-ee!" The old hunter's bellow rang through the woods
like a dinner-horn. Dolph was shouting, too, but Jack and Chad seemed to have
gone stone-deaf; and Rube, who had run down with the gun, started with an oath
into the river himself, but Joel halted him.

"Hol'on, hol'on!" he said, listening. "By the eternal, he's a-roundin' 'em