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Page 30
At that point the sheep-dealer spoke, just a little too late.
"Get out o' that!" he said, with a thrust of his staff at Jan.
And--"Come in here, Grip," he added to his own dog. But his orders came
too late.
For his part, Jan had lost blood and realized that he was attacked in
fierce earnest. As for Grip, he had tasted blood, and found it as balm
to his aching ribs. This big blundering black-and-gray thing was no
sheep, at all events. Then let it keep away from him, or take the
consequences. Life was no game for Grip; but rather a serious routine of
work, of fighting to kill, of getting food, of resting when he might,
and of avoiding his master's ashen staff. Nothing could be more
different from Jan's gaily irresponsible and joyously immature
conception of life.
However, Jan was in earnest now; more so than he had ever been since,
more than five months earlier, he had flung his gristly bulk upon the
vixen fox who slew his sister in the cave. Some breath he wasted in a
second cry--all challenge and fury, and no questioning wonder this
time--and then, like a Clydesdale colt attacking a leopard, he flung
himself upon the sheep-dog, roaring and grappling for a hold. It seemed
that Grip was made of steel springs and india-rubber. The shock of Jan's
assault was doubtless something of a blow; for Jan weighed more than the
sheep-dog; but he tossed it from him with a twist of his densely clad
shoulders, and again as the youngster blundered past him he took toll
(this time of the loose skin on the right side of the hound's neck) in
his precisely worked jaws.
All unlearned though he was in these wolf-like (or any other) fighting
tactics, Jan presented an imposing picture of rampant fury as he wheeled
again to face his calmly resourceful enemy. David Crumplin had now
recognized the young hound as an animal of value and consequence in the
world, and in all sincerity was doing his best to separate the pair. But
the fight had gone too far now for verbal remonstrances to have any
effect, even with disciplined Grip; and as for Jan, he was merely
unconscious, alike in the matter of David's adjurations and the thrusts
and thwacks of his stave.
In the pages of a correctly conceived romance, one man (providing, of
course, that he is a hero) is always able without much difficulty to
separate two fighting dogs, even though he be innocent of doggy lore and
attired blamelessly, as judged by the illustrator's standards for
walking out with the heroine. But in real life the thing is somehow
different. Not only are two pairs of strong hands needed, but it is
necessary that the possessors of those hands should approach the fray
from opposite sides, and be nimble and strong enough to get clear away,
one from the other, when each pair has grabbed its dog. No single pair
of hands can manage it in the case of big dogs, and a man's feet are not
far enough removed from his hands to make them an adequate substitute
for a second pair of hands.
David Crumplin, having speedily given up persuasion, yelled for help,
and cursed and swore vehemently at the dogs, banging and thrusting at
each in turn, without prejudice and without effect. Much they cared for
his curses, or his ashen staff. Jan was bleeding now from half a dozen
gaping wounds; and Grip, the famous killer, was in an icy fury of wrath,
for the reason that this blundering young elephant of a puppy was
actually pressing and hurting him--the best feared dog in that
countryside. For, be it said, Jan learned with surprising quickness. He
could not acquire in a minute or in a month the sort of fighting craft
that made Grip terrible; but he did learn in one minute that he could
not afford to repeat the blundering rushes which had lost him his first
blood.
At first he strove hard to bowl the sheep-dog over by sheer weight and
strength. Then he struggled bravely to get his teeth through Grip's coat
of mail at the neck. And if all the time he was getting punishment, he
also was getting learning; as was proved by the fact that immediately
after his own third wound he tore one of Grip's ears in sunder, and, a
minute later, got home on the sheep-dog's right fore leg (where the coat
of mail was thin) with a bite which would surely mean a week of limping
for Grip. It was this last thrust that placed Grip definitely outside
his master's reach, by fanning into white flame the smoldering fire of
his nature. Indeed, for a minute or two it even made the sheep-dog
forgetful of his cunning, so angry was he; with the result that he lost
a section from his sound ear and came near to being overturned by the
impetuosity of Jan's onslaught.
And then suddenly the sheep-dog completely changed, as though by magic.
His flame died down to still, white fire; his jaws ceased to clash; his
ferocious snarl died away into deadly silence; he crouched like a lynx
at bay. At that moment Jan's number was very nearly up, for Grip had
coldly determined to kill. He had practically ceased fighting. He was
merely sparring defensively now, with bloody murder in his blue eyes,
watching grimly for his opening--the opening through which he was wont
to end his serious fights, the opening which would yield him the
death-hold.
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