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Show weight and agile too. Shep was honor bound to engage Scott but Scott refused to back down. The fight looked like an encounter between two buzz saws that had slipped their shafts. A blur of speed, the warriors leaped and whirled, snarled and slashed in murderous rage. "Scott'11 kill 'm-Scott'11 kill 'm!" the dog's owner cried. He jumped behind a" counter for safety. Father had no fear. Wading into the swirling melee, he seized each dog by the scruff of the neck. The front door was open. He marched out holding a dog in each muscular hand, holding them apart and powerless although they still writhed and snapped at each other. He slammed them to the ground. Scott retired to lie panting under his master's wagon. Shep could then return to his post as guard of groceries and family honor inside the store. Shep contested the title of the coyotes to rule the night desert. Singly or in bands these prairie wolves yelped from the ridges around the house. Their sharp barks followed by high eerie howls Shep took as challenges. Night after night he would hurl himself into the darkness to drive them away. Numbers did not intimidate him. Several times he returned nipped, once he came back with an ear torn and a sizable flap of skin hanging like a bloody dewlap from his white chest. But he had routed the raiders of chicken houses and lambing sheep-herds, and he grinned expansively with pride. He gloried in those perils although he must have felt a degree of frustration, for the elusive wolves of the barrens refused single combat to the death. They seemed content to sidestep, then slash at him with those long yellow canines of theirs. When he persisted, they fled. Shep evaluated our qualities as they bore upon dog-human relationships. His intuitions had evidently gained something like human understanding through years of joyful and painful associations with varied human beings. Because he loved us, I like to believe he rated us fairly high, on the whole, or found the pluses totalling more than the minuses. My close companionship with him qualifies me to translate estimates he |