Page:Weird Tales volume 38 number 03 CAN.djvu/82

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THE FANGS OP TSAN-LO

Sally would have brought me back from the dead.

"I—. What happened?"

"Clint!" she kissed me then. "You're alive!"

"What'd you call me?"

"Darling," her eyes were shining.

"What about Harris H. Harris?"

"He told me last night that he's going to marry Lucy Stanner, of the banking Stanners. But I like dogs—and dog trainers.

"Tsan-Lo?"

"He fell in the mudhole, Clint. I ran down this morning when I heard Buck raising the fuss. I saw that Tsan-Lo had broken out of his pen, and that you'd broken your bedroom window when, in the grip of a nightmare, you left your bed. I sent Buck to bring you out of the lake. Tsan-Lo attacked me. But I was on the other side of the mudhole, and he tried to cross it. But he went down."

"He—. He was big as a horse," I murmured.

"Clint, darling, you're still dreaming. I always knew you needed a woman to take care of you."

"I—. I need some clothes," I said.

Sally smiled. "The care's already started, Clint. I got some trousers from the house and put them on you."

That's about all, except that when I wrote to tell Dr. Ibellius Grut of Tsan-Lo's death I received word that Grut had been found dead in his office. That was three years ago, and Sally's Mrs. Roberts now. We live here, and train retrievers, and we're doing all right too. Little Sally—she's the image of her mother and I hardly know which one to love the most.

Of course there is one other item worth mentioning, and you have to remember that there was never yet a situation with which Sally was unable to cope. For instance, if she could possibly arrange it, her husband would look back on some things as just a terrible fantasy, and never as reality. After all, I have to work with dogs. But I finally had the mudhole drained. They took a skeleton out of there, a skeleton of a huge dog that scientists said was at least a quarter of a million years old. It made quite a stir in the papers. Then, too, I'd always been of the opinion that any ordinary dog could easily have crossed that mudhole. But if something weighing three thousand pounds ever fell into it—. I didn't say anything.

There are times when it's just as well not to.

Typographic ornament showing a face and several animals amid whirlwind-like swirls.
Typographic ornament showing a face and several animals amid whirlwind-like swirls.