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Updated: May 10, 2025
But when the three hounds arrived there was excitement enough to compensate for it. One of the dogs was a big black fellow and his companions were brown full-bloods. The hounds, one and all, set on Scuffy the moment they reached camp, and it was only by the most dexterous manoeuvres that the strange dog escaped being eaten alive.
He looked in with the furtive eye of the tramp, and as if expecting that a boot or a club would most probably be his welcome. But Bucks at the moment was lonely as lonely as the dog himself and as the two fixed their eyes intently on each other, Bucks remembered that this was the tie foreman's dog, Scuffy. Scuffy had appeared at the psychological moment.
"I can't do a thing with him over at the ranch," complained Scott, eying the dog with a secret admiration. "He is eating the hounds up; doesn't give them a chance to pick a bone even after he's done with it." "I'm afraid there is nothing to do with Scuffy, but to make a despatcher of him," returned Bucks, picking him up by the forepaws.
Down, Scuffy!" he cried, looking for a stick to throw at his pet. Bucks surveyed the company of men. They were a sorry-looking lot. The foreman explained that he had dragged them out of the dens at Sellersville to go back to work. When remonstrated with for the poor showing the contractors were making, the foreman pointed to the plague-spot on the bottoms.
Bucks reached into a paper bag that Bill Dancing had left on the table and gave the dog a cracker. Scuffy snapped up the offering like one starving. A second cracker and a third disappeared at single gulps. For the length of the dog, the size of his mouth appeared enormous. In a moment the cracker-bag was emptied and Scuffy again licked the friendly hand.
Then a small and vague object outlined itself in the gloom, but halted questioningly on the threshold. Wagging his abbreviated tail very gently and carrying his drooping ears very low, Scuffy at length walked slowly into the room. Bucks hailed him with delight, and Scuffy bounding forward crouched at his feet.
There was now manifestly nothing to do but to go in, and later in the day a freight train was flagged and the whole party, with Scuffy and the hounds, returned to Casement's camp. Scott sent his dogs thence to the ranch in Medicine Bend, and at Bucks's urgent request Scuffy was sent with them to await his own return to head-quarters.
Bucks realized that only his four-legged friend stood between him and destruction and that so unequal a contest could not endure long. Skilful as the little fellow was, he was pitted against an antagonist quite as quick and wary. The clumsiness of the bear was no more than seeming, and any one of the terrific blows he dealt at Scuffy with his huge paw would have stretched a man lifeless.
Scuffy, who had come out of the fight without a scratch, took on new airs in camp, and returned evil for evil by bullying the two wounded hounds who were too surprised by his aggressiveness to make an effective defence. Bucks, when he was alone with the dog and time dragged heavily, turned for diversion to the only book in the camp, a well-thumbed copy of "The Last of the Mohicans."
Scott, whose smile was kindly even when sceptical, only corrected Bill to the extent of saying that Friday or Scuffy, whoever or whatever he might be, was no pup; that he was a full-grown dog and in Bob's judgment he would need no guardian.
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