These things he might have expected, for she had to cross the creek.

But it was the look in her eyes that startled him, as she stood there with Peter, the mongrel pup, clasped tightly in her arms.
"Nada, what's happened ?" he asked, laying his gun on the table.

"You fell in the creek--" "It--it's Peter," she cried, with a sobbing break in her voice.

"We come on Jed Hawkins when he was diggin' up some of his whiskey, and he was mad, and pulled my hair, and Peter bit him--and then he picked up Peter and threw him against a rock--and he's terribly hurt! Oh, Mister Jolly Roger--" She held out the pup to him, and Peter whimpered as Jolly Roger took his wiry little face between his hands, and then lifted him gently.

The girl was sobbing, with passionate little catches in her breath, but there were no tears in her eyes as they turned for an instant from Peter to the gun on the table.
"If I'd had that," she cried, "I'd hev killed him!" Jolly Roger's face was coldly gray as he knelt down on the floor and bent over Peter.
"He--pulled your hair, you say ?" "I--forgot," she whispered, close at his shoulder.