RASTUS EARNS HIS SLEEP. 279 
neck and his feet were sunk deep in mud and 
threatening to sink farther when he at last 
reached his dog’s tail and pulled. The dog came 
toward him, and getting an arm around under his 
neck, he lifted Wolf’s head out of the water and 
struck sharply under the jaw. The dog’s mouth 
opened, the ’coon, which was in it, but at the same 
time also curled completely around the muzzle, 
with teeth and claws working, dropped and shot 
away through the water. It was a bleeding and 
half drowned dog that was got to land. Twenty 
pounds of ’coon around your muzzle, every pound 
fighting, when you yourself cannot touch bottom 
with a single one of your four feet, to get a brace 
and lift your head up, can drag your head under 
water and hold it under! Even that wouldn’t be 
so bad, if the ’coon couldn’t stay under any longer 
than you can. But he can stay under indefi- 
nitely—or so Wolf must have thought. It was 
a wet and dejected pair, master and dog, who 
paddled back across the pond. Rastus, however, 
battered enough to be half dead if he hadn’t been 
a ’coon, had been saved from a broken spine or 
crushed ribs by Wolf’s inability to make a clean 
