Page:Redcoat (1927).djvu/176

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

could not use his right fore-leg. He was badly wounded and would have to run as hard and as far as he could on three legs. This was the beginning of the end. It was only a matter of perhaps half an hour, for the pack had been gradually gaining on him as it was and with one good fore-leg gone the race was hopeless. As this fact was born in on Redcoat he gazed longingly at his mountain, dreaming in the distance. Again Redcoat turned southward, running on three legs. This retarded his speed by twenty-five per cent. Not only that, but it also made the remaining good fore-leg sink deep in the snow as he bore his full weight upon it. Fifty rods of this three legged running tired him more than a mile on all fours. Soon his tongue was out full length and he was panting and wheezing and all the time the pack was drawing closer and closer. The sound of its perpetual baying was to his overwrought nerves like the crack of doom and filled him with such fear as he had never known before. This would never do. He must turn back and try the road