And then an entirely new kind of fear came upon the man.  Was this the end for him, after all he had gone through?  Was this deadly silent, rough-coated terrier the thing destined to destroy him where men had failed?  He did not even know that the dog was real.  Might it not be some terrible avenger, out of the mystery beyond life, placed to beset him and finish him finally on this road that he was convinced was surely the death-road?  The dog was not real.  It could not be real.  The dog did not live that could take a full-arm whip-slash without wince or flinch.

Twice again, as the dog sprang, he deflected it with accurately delivered blows.  And the dog came on with the same surety and silence.  The man surrendered to his terror, clapping heels to his horse’s old ribs, beating it over the head and under the belly with the whip until it galloped as it had not galloped in years.  Even on that apathetic steed the terror descended.  It was not terror of the dog, which it knew to be only a dog, but terror of the rider.  In the past its knees had been broken and its joints stiffened for ever, by drunken-mad riders who had hired him from the stables.  And here was another such drunken-mad rider—­for the horse sensed the man’s terror—­who ached his ribs with the weight of his heels and beat him cruelly over face and nose and ears.

The best speed of the horse was not very great, not great enough to out-distance Michael, although it was fast enough to give the latter only infrequent opportunities to spring for the man’s leg.  But each spring was met by the unvarying whip-blow that by its very weight deflected him in the air.  Though his teeth each time clipped together perilously close to the man’s leg, each time he fell back to earth he had to gather himself together and run at his own top speed in order to overtake the terror-stricken man on the crazy-galloping horse.

Enrico Piccolomini saw the chase and was himself in at the finish; and the affair, his one great adventure in the world, gave him wealth as well as material for conversation to the end of his days.  Enrico Piccolomini was a wood-chopper on the Kennan Ranch.  On a rounded knoll, overlooking the road, he had first heard the galloping hoofs of the horse and the crack of the whip-blows on its body.  Next, he had seen the running battle of the man, the horse, and the dog.  When directly beneath him, not twenty feet distant, he saw the dog leap, in its queer silent way, straight up and in to the down-smash of the whip, and sink its teeth in the rider’s leg.  He saw the dog, with its weight, as it fell back to earth, drag the man half out of the saddle.  He saw the man, in an effort to recover his balance, put his own weight on the bridle-reins.  And he saw the horse, half-rearing, half-tottering and stumbling, overthrow the last shred of the man’s balance so that he followed the dog to the ground.