how their mother would have punished them had she
caught them.

But it was Lop-Ear and I who caught them. He looked at
me, and then we made a dash for it. The puppies knew
no place to run except into the lair, and we headed
them off. One rushed between my legs. I squatted and
grabbed him. He sank his sharp little teeth into my
arm, and I dropped him in the suddenness of the hurt
and surprise. The next moment he had scurried inside.

Lop-Ear, struggling with the second puppy, scowled at
me and intimated by a variety of sounds the different
kinds of a fool and a bungler that I was. This made me
ashamed and spurred me to valor. I grabbed the
remaining puppy by the tail. He got his teeth into me
once, and then I got him by the nape of the neck.
Lop-Ear and I sat down, and held the puppies up, and
looked at them, and laughed.

They were snarling and yelping and crying. Lop-Ear
started suddenly. He thought he had heard something.
We looked at each other in fear, realizing the danger
of our position. The one thing that made animals
raging demons was tampering with their young. And
these puppies that made such a racket belonged to the
wild dogs. Well we knew them, running in packs, the
terror of the grass-eating animals. We had watched
them following the herds of cattle and bison and
dragging down the calves, the aged, and the sick. We