Adventure Magazine Cover — page 99: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Desert Breed half-grown now, went along; but the third, the sickly one, remained, driven back will- ingly enough to the water-hole, silent, snarling at the man to the last. Two days and nights the young bull- terrier spent in the confines of the arroyo, quietly lying in the shadows of its sides, only moving as the sun altered the shade. Water and heat, the pure hot winds of the desert and an absence of man’s greasy food gradually purged his system of the ener- vating evil. Despite the hunger that came the pup felt a new strength. Instead of being weak- ened by the fast his body began to pulse with a new life, a clean, wholesome thing given by the desert. No more was his system poisoned by the heavy, stale food that Silva threw him grudgingly. He lapped freely of thetepid water that came slowly up through the sands, and longed for food. The third night after Silva departed with the others the bull-terrier pup ranged forth northward mile after mile, until he came to the edge of the prairie dog village. His hunger was intense. Something moved at the entrance to one of the mounds; he flatterened and waited, with pointed ears back tight against his heavy skull. Then he attacked, swiftly, fairly slavering in his eagerness; but the wily rodent melted into the earth a yard ahead of the eager jaws. ‘Twice more he launched a wild rush at the entrance of other holes, and failed. Then something new met him. As he crept up toward one of the mounds a peculiar odor, somewhat akin to that which rises from a patch of green cucumbers came to his nostrils; a great, triangular head weaved up several inches and a whir- ring sound emanated from the hole. The terrier hesitated, and something held him back. The short hair at the base of his neck was erect, but there was that in the slow motion of the great rattler’s neck which prevented the dog’s assault. Then he arose from his haunches to all fours and trotted off, stiff legged and with many backward glances. That same odor of the snake came from several other holes, and once he encountered a pair of tiny owls at one of the mounds. Then he saw a prairie dog race across from one series of mounds to another, directly in front. Immediately he settled low and waited, almost entirely hidden by a tiny ridge of broken sand and earth. Another 93 rodent descended one of the little hillocks, hesitated, and scurried a few yards away. A white streak launched forward and the prairie dog squeaked once in dying. This was food of a different kind. The meal finished, he lifted his pointed muzzle, all bloody, toward the sky and a transition swept over him, a reversion that brought a new feeling of absolute power and inde- pendence of man or anything else. He had met nature and conquered. Then and there he became a veritable part of this place of sand and rock, of heat and bitterness, as fierce and hard as the desert itself. He ranged back to the arroyo and drank deeply at the water hole. Then he slept. . eo at eight months he had attained ow ve almost full stature. The thickness of mature growth was not yet his, but already the hard, muscular outlines of his breed were evident, graceful and lithe withal. About his haunches, shoulders and neck were the finely drawn, graceful con- tours so eagerly sought by those whose busi- ness is the development of the fighting dogs. Every part of his body from the tight, thin- lipped mouth to the dainty ankles and toes, carried its message of swift danger, welded more rapidly in its growth by the rugged- ness of the desert than ever could have occured under the guidance of man. But the prairie dogs at the small village had at last become wary as their ranks were thinned by this new hunter who preyed on them constantly; and now as the terrier emerged from the protection of the arroyo there was a gnawing hunger within him that would not down. A sound in the distance brought him toa halt, stiff, head thrust forward, pointed ears erect. The hair stirred at the base of his neck as the sound was repeated. It came throbbing and terrible, a cry of death on the desert, deep and uncanny, the awful chal- lenge of the great lobo wolf. Motionless as some exquisite bit of statuary carved from a rock the terrier stood, listening. Silence followed, and his head lowered forward while he tested the air; then he trotted off down the other side of the arroyo in the direction of the sound. A man, too, heard the howl of the lobo and shuddered involuntarily, while the goose-flesh came up along his back and his spine tingled at the sound. It was near by, THUS two months passed until now COnnicloooks C@