"
However, Mary brought himself back that same night. We were smoking
our second pipes after supper, when Ajax, pointing an expressive
finger at the window, exclaimed sharply: "Great Scot! What's that?"
Pressed against the pane, glaring in at us, was a face--a face so
blanched and twisted by terror and pain that it seemed scarcely human.
We hurried out. Mary staggered towards us. In his face were the cruel,
venomous spines of the prickly pear. The tough boughs of the manzanita
thickets through which he had plunged had scourged him like a cat-o'-
nine tails. What clothes he wore were dripping with mud and slime.
"Coon Dogs come," he gasped. "I tellee you."
Then he bolted into the shadows of the oaks and sage brush. We
pursued, but he ran fast, dodging like a rabbit, till he tumbled over
and over--paralysed by fear and fatigue. We carried him back to the
ranch-house, propped him up in a chair, and despatched Uncle Jake for
a doctor. Before midnight we learned what little there was to know.
Mary had been chased by the Coon Dogs. He, of course, was a-foot; the
cowboys were mounted. A couple of barbed-wire fences had saved him
from capture.
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