You’ve done run my horse off so let’s go find him.By the time he’d dragged her out to the road he was all but exhausted. There was a flap of loose skin pushed down around her ankle like a sock and the wound was dirty and stuck with twigs and leaves He knelt and touched her Come on, he said. You aint hurt.He walked down and stood over her where she lay panting He looked at the injuredleg. He hauled on the rope and dragged her towards him through the dirt.Get up, he said. When she hit the end of the rope this time she flew into the air and landed on her back and lay there.

She would not quit struggling and he got hold of the rope end again and sat with it doubled in his fist and dug both heels in and let her go. He stood spraddlelegged with the rope in both hands across his thighs and turned and scanned the country for some sight of his horse. He took out his knife and reached and got hold of the stick in her mouth and he spoke to her and stroked her head but she only winced and shivered.It aint no use to fight it, he told her.He cut t he trailing length of the paloverde off short at the side of her mouth and put the knife away and walked the end of the rope around the cholla till it was free and then led her twisting and shaking her head out on to the open ground He could not believe how strong she was. She ran at the end of the rope in a circle until she passed the cholla that had first caught the trapchain drag and here the rope brought her around until she stood snubbed and gasping, among the thorns.He rose and walked up to her She squatted and flattened her ears Slobber swung in white strings from her jaw. She had swung toward the horse now and the horse snorted and set off toward the road at a trot with the reins trailing.

He turned and dug both heels in and took a turn of the rope around his wrist. He scrambled up but she was already off in another direction and when she hit the end of the rope again she almost snatched him off the ground. She did a cartwheel and landed on her back and jerked him forward on to his elbows. He hardly had time to get one heel in front of himin the dirt before she hit the end of the rope. She tested the injured foot on the ground and drew it up again.Go on, he said If you think you can.She turned and wheeled away So quick. Then he let go slack the short end of the rope by which he held her. He slid the coil of rope off his shoulder to the ground and picked up the end of it and wrapped it around his fist in a double grip.

She stood squared off at him, her eyes level with his where he knelt, still not meeting his gaze. When the eye of the spring dropped past the hinges in the plate the jaws fell open and her wrecked forefoot spilled out limp and bloody with the white bone shining He reached to touch it but she snatched it away and stood He was amazed at her quickness. He got hold of the trap and put the clamp over the spring and screwed it down and then did the second spring. He approached slowly and reached and held her by the stick in her jaws and spoke to her but his voice seemed only to make her shudder He looked at the leg in the trap It looked bad. The horse lifted its head and blew and looked toward the wolf and he patted it on the neck and spoke to it and got the clamps out of the mochila and pulled the coil of rope up over his shoulder and turned back to the wolf.Before he could reach her she leapt up and lunged against the trapchain twisting and slinging her head and pawing at her mouth with her free foot He pulled her down with the rope and held her A white foam seethed between her teeth.