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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Johnny Bear, by E. T. Seton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Johnny Bear
+       And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted
+
+Author: E. T. Seton
+
+
+Release Date: November, 2005 [EBook #9333]
+This file was first posted on September 23, 2003
+Last Updated: May 8, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHNNY BEAR ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, David Widger and PG
+Distributed Proofreaders from images generously made
+available by the Canadian Institute for Historical
+Microreproductions
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+JOHNNY BEAR
+
+And other stories from
+
+Lives of the Hunted
+
+by Ernest Thompson Seton
+
+
+{Illustration: His Whole Appearance Suggested Dyspepsia.}
+
+{Illustration}
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+JOHNNY BEAR
+
+His Whole Appearance Suggested Dyspepsia
+But Johnny Wanted to See
+A Syrup-tin Kept Him Happy for a Long Time
+
+
+TITO: THE STORY OF THE COYOTE THAT LEARNED HOW
+
+Coyotito, the Captive
+They Considered Themselves Acquainted
+Their Evening Song
+Tito and her Brood
+Tito's Race for Life
+
+WHY THE CHICKADEE GOES CRAZY ONCE A YEAR
+
+
+
+
+
+JOHNNY BEAR
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Johnny was a queer little bear cub that lived with Grumpy, his mother,
+in the Yellowstone Park. They were among the many Bears that found a
+desirable home in the country about the Fountain Hotel.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+The steward of the Hotel had ordered the kitchen garbage to be dumped in
+an open glade of the surrounding forest, thus providing throughout the
+season, a daily feast for the Bears, and their numbers have increased
+each year since the law of the land has made the Park a haven of
+refuge where no wild thing may be harmed. They have accepted man's
+peace-offering, and many of them have become so well known to the Hotel
+men that they have received names suggested by their looks or ways. Slim
+Jim was a very long-legged thin Blackbear; Snuffy was a Blackbear that
+looked as though he had been singed; Fatty was a very fat, lazy Bear
+that always lay down to eat; the Twins were two half-grown, ragged
+specimens that always came and went together. But Grumpy and Little
+Johnny were the best known of them all.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+Grumpy was the biggest and fiercest of the Blackbears, and Johnny,
+apparently her only son, was a peculiarly tiresome little cub, for he
+seemed never to cease either grumbling or whining. This probably meant
+that he was sick, for a healthy little Bear does not grumble all the
+time, any more than a healthy child. And indeed Johnny looked sick;
+he was the most miserable specimen in the Park. His whole appearance
+suggested dyspepsia; and this I quite understood when I saw the awful
+mixtures he would eat at that garbage-heap. Anything at all that he
+fancied he would try. And his mother allowed him to do as he pleased;
+so, after all, it was chiefly her fault, for she should not have
+permitted such things.
+
+Johnny had only three good legs, his coat was faded and mangy, his limbs
+were thin, and his ears and paunch were disproportionately large. Yet
+his mother thought the world of him. She was evidently convinced that
+he was a little beauty and the Prince of all Bears, so, of course, she
+quite spoiled him. She was always ready to get into trouble on his
+account, and he was always delighted to lead her there. Although such
+a wretched little failure, Johnny was far from being a fool, for he
+usually knew just what he wanted and how to get it, if teasing his
+mother could carry the point.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+It was in the summer of 1897 that I made their acquaintance. I was in
+the park to study the home life of the animals, and had been told that
+in the woods, near the Fountain Hotel, I could see Bears at any time,
+which, of course, I scarcely believed. But on stepping out of the back
+door five minutes after arriving, I came face to face with a large
+Blackbear and her two cubs.
+
+I stopped short, not a little startled. The Bears also stopped and sat
+up to look at me. Then Mother Bear made a curious short _Koff Koff_, and
+looked toward a near pine-tree. The cubs seemed to know what she meant,
+for they ran to this tree and scrambled up like two little monkeys, and
+when safely aloft they sat like small boys, holding on with their hands,
+while their little black legs dangled in the air, and waited to see what
+was to happen down below.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+The Mother Bear, still on her hind legs, came slowly toward me, and I
+began to feel very uncomfortable indeed, for she stood about six feet
+high in her stockings and had apparently never heard of the magical
+power of the human eye.
+
+I had not even a stick to defend myself with, and when she gave a low
+growl, I was about to retreat to the Hotel, although previously assured
+that the Bears have always kept their truce with man. However, just at
+this turning point the old one stopped, now but thirty feet away, and
+continued to survey me calmly. She seemed in doubt for a minute, but
+evidently made up her mind that, "although that human thing might be all
+right, she would take no chances for her little ones."
+
+She looked up to her two hopefuls, and gave a peculiar whining _Er-r-r
+Er-r,_ whereupon they, like obedient children, jumped, as at the word
+of command. There was nothing about them heavy or bear-like as commonly
+understood; lightly they swung from bough to bough till they dropped to
+the ground, and all went off together into the woods. I was much tickled
+by the prompt obedience of the little Bears. As soon as their mother
+told them to do something they did it. They did not even offer a
+suggestion. But I also found out that there was a good reason for it,
+for had they not done as she had told them they would have got such a
+spanking as would have made them howl.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+This was a delightful peep into Bear home life, and would have been well
+worth coming for, if the insight had ended there. But my friends in the
+Hotel said that that was not the best place for Bears. I should go to
+the garbage-heap, a quarter-mile off in the forest. There, they said, I
+surely could see as many Bears as I wished (which was absurd of them).
+
+{Illustration}
+
+Early the next morning I went to this Bears' Banqueting Hall in the
+pines, and hid in the nearest bushes.
+
+Before very long a large Blackbear came quietly out of the woods to
+the pile, and began turning over the garbage and feeding. He was very
+nervous, sitting up and looking about at each slight sound, or running
+away a few yards when startled by some trifle. At length he cocked his
+ears and galloped off into the pines, as another Blackbear appeared. He
+also behaved in the same timid manner, and at last ran away when I shook
+the bushes in trying to get a better view.
+
+At the outset I myself had been very nervous, for of course no man is
+allowed to carry weapons in the Park; but the timidity of these Bears
+reassured me, and thenceforth I forgot everything in the interest of
+seeing the great, shaggy creatures in their home life. {Illustration}
+
+Soon I realized I could not get the close insight I wished from that
+bush, as it was seventy-five yards from the garbage-pile. There was none
+nearer; so I did the only thing left to do: I went to the garbage-pile
+itself, and, digging a hole big enough to hide in, remained there all
+day long, with cabbage-stalks, old potato-peelings, tomato-cans, and
+carrion piled up in odorous heaps around me. Notwithstanding the
+opinions of countless flies, it was not an attractive place. Indeed, it
+was so unfragrant that at night, when I returned to the Hotel, I was not
+allowed to come in until after I had changed my clothes in the woods.
+
+It had been a trying ordeal, but I surely did see Bears that day. If
+I may reckon it a new Bear each time one came, I must have seen over
+forty. But of course it was not, for the Bears were coming and going.
+And yet I am certain of this: there were at least thirteen Bears, for I
+had thirteen about me at one time.
+
+All that day I used my sketch-book and journal. Every Bear that came was
+duly noted; and this process soon began to give the desired insight into
+their ways and personalities.
+
+Many unobservant persons think and say that all Negroes, or all
+Chinamen, as well as all animals of a kind, look alike. But just as
+surely as each human being differs from the next, so surely each animal
+is different from its fellow; otherwise how would the old ones know
+their mates or the little ones their mother, as they certainly do?
+These feasting Bears gave a good illustration of this, for each had its
+individuality; no two were quite alike in appearance or in character.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+This curious fact also appeared: I could hear the Woodpeckers pecking
+over one hundred yards away in the woods, as well as the Chickadees
+chickadeeing, the Blue-jays blue-jaying, and even the Squirrels
+scampering across the leafy forest floor; and yet I _did not hear one of
+these Bears come_. Their huge, padded feet always went down in exactly
+the right {Illustration: But Johnny Wanted to See.} spot to break no
+stick, to rustle no leaf, showing how perfectly they had learned the art
+of going in silence through the woods.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+All morning the Bears came and went or wandered near my hiding-place
+without discovering me; and, except for one or two brief quarrels, there
+was nothing very exciting to note. But about three in the afternoon it
+became more lively.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+There were then four large Bears feeding on the heap. In the middle
+was Fatty, sprawling at full length as he feasted, a picture of placid
+ursine content, puffing just a little at times as he strove to save
+himself the trouble of moving by darting out his tongue like a long red
+serpent, farther and farther, in quest of the titbits just beyond claw
+reach.
+
+Behind him Slim Jim was puzzling over the anatomy and attributes of
+an ancient lobster. It was something outside his experience, but the
+principle, "In case of doubt take the trick," is well known in Bearland,
+and it settled the difficulty.
+
+The other two were clearing out fruit-tins with marvellous dexterity.
+One supple paw would hold the tin while the long tongue would dart again
+and again through the narrow opening, avoiding the sharp edges, yet
+cleaning out the can to the last taste of its sweetness.
+
+This pastoral scene lasted long enough to be sketched, but was ended
+abruptly. My eye caught a movement on the hilltop whence all the Bears
+had come, and out stalked a very large Blackbear with a tiny cub. It was
+Grumpy and Little Johnny.
+
+The old Bear stalked down the slope toward the feast, and Johnny hitched
+alongside, grumbling as he came, his mother watching him as solicitously
+as ever a hen did her single chick. When they were within thirty yards
+of the garbage-heap, Grumpy turned to her son and said something which,
+judging from its effect, must have meant: "Johnny, my child, I think you
+had better stay here while I go and chase those fellows away."
+
+Johnny obediently waited; but he wanted to _see_, so he sat up on his
+hind legs with eyes agog and ears acock.
+
+Grumpy came striding along with dignity, uttering warning growls as she
+approached the four Bears. They were too much engrossed to pay any heed
+to the fact that yet another one of them was coming, till Grumpy, now
+within fifteen feet, let out a succession of loud coughing sounds, and
+charged into them. Strange to say, they did not pretend to face her,
+but, as soon as they saw who it was, scattered and all fled for the
+woods.
+
+Slim Jim could safely trust his heels, and the other two were not far
+behind; but poor Fatty, puffing hard and waddling like any other very
+fat creature, got along but slowly, and, unluckily for him, he fled in
+the direction of Johnny, so that Grumpy overtook him in a few bounds
+and gave him a couple of sound slaps in the rear which, if they did not
+accelerate his pace, at least made him bawl, and saved him by changing
+his direction. Grumpy, now left alone in possession of the feast, turned
+toward her son and uttered the whining _Er-r-r Er-r-r Er-r-r-r,_ Johnny
+responded eagerly. He came "hoppity-hop" on his three good legs as fast
+as he could, and, joining her on the garbage, they began to have such a
+good time that Johnny actually ceased grumbling.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+He had evidently been there before now, for he seemed to know quite well
+the staple kinds of canned goods. One might almost have supposed that he
+had learned the brands, for a lobster-tin had no charm for him as long
+as he could find those that once were filled with jam. Some of the tins
+gave him much trouble, as he was too greedy or too clumsy to escape
+being scratched by the sharp edges. One seductive fruit-tin had a hole
+so large that he found he could force his head into it, and for a few
+minutes his joy was full as he licked into all the farthest corners.
+But when he tried to draw his head out, his sorrows began, for he found
+himself caught. He could not get out, and he scratched and screamed like
+any other spoiled child, giving his mother no end of concern, although
+she seemed not to know how to help him. When at length he got the tin
+off his head, he revenged himself by hammering it with his paws till it
+was perfectly flat.
+
+A large syrup-can made him happy for a long time. It had had a lid, so
+that the hole was round and smooth; but it was not big enough to admit
+his head, and he could not touch its riches with his tongue stretched
+out its longest. He soon hit on a plan, however. Putting in his little
+black arm, he churned it around, then drew out and licked it clean; and
+while he licked one he got the other one ready; and he did this again
+and again, until the {Illustration: A Syrup-tin Kept Him Happy for
+a Long Time} can was as clean inside as when first it had left the
+factory.
+
+A broken mouse-trap seemed to puzzle him. He clutched it between his
+fore paws, their strong inturn being sympathetically reflected in his
+hind feet, and held it firmly for study. The cheesy smell about it was
+decidedly good, but the thing responded in such an uncanny way, when he
+slapped it, that he kept back a cry for help only by the exercise of
+unusual self-control. After gravely inspecting it, with his head first
+on this side and then on that, and his lips puckered into a little
+tube, he submitted it to the same punishment as that meted out to the
+refractory fruit-tin, and was rewarded by discovering a nice little bit
+of cheese in the very heart of the culprit.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+Johnny had evidently never heard of ptomaine-poisoning, for nothing came
+amiss. After the jams and fruits gave out he turned his attention to the
+lobster- and sardine-cans, and was not appalled by even the army beef.
+His paunch grew quite balloon-like, and from much licking, his arms
+looked thin and shiny, as though he was wearing black silk gloves.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+It occurred to me that I might now be in a really dangerous place. For
+it is one thing surprising a Bear that has no family responsibilities,
+and another stirring up a bad-tempered old mother by frightening her
+cub.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+"Supposing," I thought, "that cranky Little Johnny should wander over to
+this end of the garbage and find me in the hole; he will at once set up
+a squall, and his mother, of course, will think I am hurting him, and,
+without giving me a chance to explain, may forget the rules of the Park
+and make things very unpleasant."
+
+Luckily, all the jam-pots were at Johnny's end; he stayed by them, and
+Grumpy stayed by him. At length he noticed that his mother had a better
+tin than any he could find, and as he ran whining to take it from her he
+chanced to glance away up the slope. There he saw something that made
+him sit up and utter a curious little _Koff Koff Koff Koff._
+
+His mother turned quickly, and sat up to see "what the child was looking
+at." I followed their gaze, and there, oh, horrors! was an enormous
+Grizzly Bear. He was a monster; he looked like a fur-clad omnibus coming
+through the trees.
+
+Johnny set up a whine at once and got behind his mother. She uttered a
+deep growl, and all her back hair stood on end. Mine did too, but I kept
+as still as possible.
+
+With stately tread the Grizzly came on. His vast shoulders sliding
+along his sides, and his silvery robe swaying at each tread, like
+the trappings on an elephant, gave an impression of power that was
+appalling.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+Johnny began to whine more loudly, and I fully sympathized with him now,
+though I did not join in. After a moment's hesitation Grumpy turned to
+her noisy cub and said something that sounded to me like two or three
+short coughs--_Koff Koff Koff_. But I imagine that she really said: "My
+child, I think you had better get up that tree, while I go and drive the
+brute away."
+
+{Illustration}
+
+At any rate, that was what Johnny did, and this what she set out to do.
+But Johnny had no notion of missing any fun. He wanted to _see_ what was
+going to happen. So he did not rest contented where he was hidden in the
+thick branches of the pine, but combined safety with view by climbing to
+the topmost branch that would bear him, and there, sharp against the
+sky, he squirmed about and squealed aloud in his excitement. The branch
+was so small that it bent under his weight, swaying this way and that as
+he shifted about, and every moment I expected to see it snap off. If it
+had been broken when swaying my way, Johnny would certainly have fallen
+on me, and this would probably have resulted in bad feelings between
+myself and his mother; but the limb was tougher than it looked, or
+perhaps Johnny had had plenty of experience, for he neither lost his
+hold nor broke the branch.
+
+Meanwhile, Grumpy stalked out to meet the Grizzly. She stood as high as
+she could and set all her bristles on end; then, growling and chopping
+her teeth, she faced him.
+
+The Grizzly, so far as I could see, took no notice of her. He came
+striding toward the feast although alone. But when Grumpy got within
+twelve feet of him she uttered a succession of short, coughy roars,
+and, charging, gave him a tremendous blow on the ear. The Grizzly was
+surprised; but he replied with a left-hander that knocked her over like
+a sack of hay.
+
+Nothing daunted, but doubly furious, she jumped up and rushed at him.
+
+Then they clinched and rolled over and over, whacking and pounding,
+snorting and growling, and making no end of dust and rumpus. But above
+all then: noise I could clearly hear Little Johnny, yelling at the top
+of his voice, and evidently encouraging his mother to go right in and
+finish the Grizzly at once.
+
+Why the Grizzly did not break her in two I could not understand. After a
+few minutes' struggle, during which I could see nothing but dust and
+dim flying legs, the two separated as by mutual consent--perhaps the
+regulation time was up--and for a while they stood glaring at each
+other, Grumpy at least much winded.
+
+The Grizzly would have dropped the matter right there. He did not wish
+to fight. He had no idea of troubling himself about Johnny. All he
+wanted was a quiet meal. But no! The moment he took one step toward the
+garbage-pile, that is, as Grumpy thought, toward Johnny, she went at him
+again. But this time the Grizzly was ready for her. With one blow he
+knocked her off her feet and sent her crashing on to a huge upturned
+pine-root. She was fairly staggered this time. The force of the blow,
+and the rude reception of the rooty antlers, seemed to take all the
+fight out of her. She scrambled over and tried to escape. But the
+Grizzly was mad now. He meant to punish her, and dashed around the root.
+For a minute they kept up a dodging chase about it; but Grumpy was
+quicker of foot, and somehow always managed to keep the root between
+herself and her foe, while Johnny, safe in the tree, continued to take
+an intense and uproarious interest.
+
+{Illustration} At length, seeing he could not catch her that way, the
+Grizzly sat up on his haunches; and while he doubtless was planning a
+new move, old Grumpy saw her chance, and making a dash, got away from
+the root and up to the top of the tree where Johnny was perched.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+Johnny came down a little way to meet her, or perhaps so that the tree
+might not break off with the additional weight. Having photographed this
+interesting group from my hiding-place, I thought I must get a closer
+picture at any price, and for the first time in the day's proceedings I
+jumped out of the hole and ran under the tree. This move proved a great
+mistake, for here the thick lower boughs came between, and I could see
+nothing at all of the Bears at the top.
+
+I was close to the trunk, and was peering about and seeking for a chance
+to use the camera, when old Grumpy began to come down, chopping her
+teeth and uttering her threatening cough at me. While I stood in doubt I
+heard a voice far behind me calling: "Say, Mister! You better look out;
+that ole B'ar is liable to hurt you."
+
+I turned to see the cow-boy of the Hotel on his Horse. He had been
+riding after the cattle, and chanced to pass near just as events were
+moving quickly.
+
+"Do you know these Bears?" said I, as he rode up.
+
+"Wall, I reckon I do," said he. "That there little one up top is Johnny;
+he's a little crank. An' the big un is Grumpy; she's a big crank. She's
+mighty onreliable gen'relly, but she's always strictly ugly when Johnny
+hollers like that."
+
+"I should much like to get her picture when she comes down," said I.
+
+"Tell ye what I'll do: I'll stay by on the pony, an' if she goes to
+bother you I reckon I can keep her off," said the man.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+He accordingly stood by as Grumpy slowly came down from branch to
+branch, growling and threatening. But when she neared the ground she
+kept on the far side of the trunk, and finally slipped down and ran into
+the woods, without the slightest pretence of carrying out any of her
+dreadful threats. Thus Johnny was again left alone. He climbed up to his
+old perch and resumed his monotonous whining: _Wah! Wah! Wal!_! ("Oh,
+dear! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!")
+
+I got the camera ready, and was arranging deliberately to take his
+picture in his favourite and peculiar attitude for threnodic song, when
+all at once he began craning his neck and yelling, as he had done during
+the fight.
+
+I looked where his nose pointed, and here was the Grizzly coming on
+straight toward me--not charging, but striding along, as though he meant
+to come the whole distance.
+
+I said to my cow-boy friend: "Do you know this Bear?"
+
+He replied: "Wall! I reckon I do. That's the ole Grizzly. He's the
+biggest B'ar in the Park. He gen'relly minds his own business, but he
+ain't scared o' nothin'; an' to-day, ye see, he's been scrappin', so
+he's liable to be ugly."
+
+{Illustration}
+
+"I would like to take his picture," said I; "and if you will help me, I
+am willing to take some chances on it."
+
+"All right," said he, with a grin. "I'll stand by on the Horse, an' if
+he charges you I'll charge him; an' I kin knock him down once, but I
+can't do it twice. You better have your tree picked out."
+
+As there was only one tree to pick out, and that was the one that Johnny
+was in, the prospect was not alluring. I imagined myself scrambling up
+there next to Johnny, and then Johnny's mother coming up after me, with
+the Grizzly below to catch me when Grumpy should throw me down.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+The Grizzly came on, and I snapped him at forty yards, then again at
+twenty yards; and still he came quietly toward me. I sat down on
+the garbage and made ready. Eighteen yards--sixteen yards--twelve
+yards--eight yards, and still he came, while the pitch of Johnny's
+protests kept rising proportionately. Finally at five yards he stopped,
+and swung his huge bearded head to one side, to see what was making that
+aggravating row in the tree-top, giving me a profile view, and I snapped
+the camera. At the click he turned on me with a thunderous
+
+  G--R--O--W--L!
+
+and I sat still and trembling, wondering if my last moment had come. For
+a second he glared at me and I could note the little green electric
+lamp in each of his eyes. Then he slowly turned and picked up--a large
+tomato-can.
+
+"Goodness!" I thought, "is he going to throw that at me?" But he
+deliberately licked it out, dropped it, and took another, paying
+thenceforth no heed whatever either to me or to Johnny, evidently
+considering us equally beneath his notice.
+
+I backed slowly and respectfully out of his royal presence, leaving him
+in possession of the garbage, while Johnny kept on caterwauling from his
+safety-perch.
+
+What became of Grumpy the rest of that day I do not know. Johnny, after
+bewailing for a time, realized that there was no sympathetic hearer of
+his cries, and therefore very sagaciously stopped them. Having no mother
+now to plan for him, he began to plan for himself, and at once proved
+that he was better stuff than he seemed. After watching with a look of
+profound cunning on his little black face, and waiting till the Grizzly
+was some distance away, he silently slipped down behind the trunk, and,
+despite his three-leggedness, ran like a hare to the next tree, never
+stopping to breathe till he was on its topmost bough. For he was
+thoroughly convinced that the only object that the Grizzly had in life
+was to kill him, and he seemed quite aware that his enemy could not
+climb a tree.
+
+Another long and safe survey of the Grizzly, who really paid no heed to
+him whatever, was followed by another dash for the next tree, varied
+occasionally by a cunning feint to mislead the foe. So he went dashing
+from tree to tree and climbing each to its very top,--although it might
+be but ten feet from the last, till he disappeared in the woods. After,
+perhaps, ten minutes, his voice again came floating on the breeze, the
+habitual querulous whining which told me he had found his mother and had
+resumed his customary appeal to her sympathy.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+It is quite a common thing for Bears to spank their cubs when they need
+it, and if Grumpy had disciplined Johnny this way, it would have saved
+them both a deal of worry. Perhaps not a day passed, that summer,
+without Grumpy getting into trouble on Johnny's account. But of all
+these numerous occasions the most ignominious was shortly after the
+affair with the Grizzly.
+
+I first heard the story from three bronzed mountaineers. As they were
+very sensitive about having their word doubted, and very good shots
+with the revolver, I believed every word they told me, especially when
+afterward fully endorsed by the Park authorities.
+
+It seemed that of all the tinned goods on the pile the nearest to
+Johnny's taste were marked with a large purple plum. This conclusion he
+had arrived at only after most exhaustive study. The very odour of those
+plums in Johnny's nostrils was the equivalent of ecstasy. So when it
+came about one day that the cook of the Hotel baked a huge batch of
+plum-tarts, the tell-tale wind took the story afar into the woods, where
+it was wafted by way of Johnny's nostrils to his very soul.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+Of course Johnny was whimpering at the time. His mother was busy
+"washing his face and combing his hair," so he had double cause for
+whimpering. But the smell of the tarts thrilled him; he jumped up, and
+when his mother tried to hold him he squalled, and I am afraid--he
+bit her. She should have cuffed him, but she did not. She only gave a
+disapproving growl, and followed to see that he came to no harm.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+With his little black nose in the wind, Johnny led straight for the
+kitchen. He took the precaution, however, of climbing from time to time
+to the very top of a pine-tree look-out to take an observation, while
+Grumpy stayed below.
+
+Thus they came close to the kitchen, and there, in the last tree,
+Johnny's courage as a leader gave out, so he remained aloft and
+expressed his hankering for tarts in a woebegone wail.
+
+It is not likely that Grumpy knew exactly what her son was crying for.
+But it is sure that as soon as she showed an inclination to go back into
+the pines, Johnny protested in such an outrageous and heart-rending
+screeching that his mother simply could not leave him, and he showed no
+sign of coming down to be led away.
+
+Grumpy herself was fond of plum-jam. The odour was now, of course, very
+strong and proportionately alluring; so Grumpy followed it somewhat
+cautiously up to the kitchen door.
+
+There was nothing surprising about this. The rule of "live and let live"
+is so strictly enforced in the Park that the Bears often come to the
+kitchen door for pickings, and on getting something, they go quietly
+back to the woods. Doubtless Johnny and Grumpy would each have gotten
+their tart but that a new factor appeared in the case.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+That week the Hotel people had brought a new cat from the East. She was
+not much more than a kitten, but still had a litter of her own, and at
+the moment that Grumpy reached the door, the Cat and her family were
+sunning themselves on the top step. Pussy opened her eyes to see this
+huge, shaggy monster towering above her.
+
+The Cat had never before seen a Bear--she had not been there long
+enough; she did not know even what a Bear was. She knew what a Dog was,
+and here was a bigger, more awful bob-tailed black dog than ever she had
+dreamed of coming right at her. Her first thought was to fly for her
+life. But her next was for the kittens. She must take care of them. She
+must at least cover their retreat. So like a brave little mother, she
+braced herself on that door-step, and spreading her back, her claws, her
+tail, and everything she had to spread, she screamed out at that Bear an
+unmistakable order to
+
+STOP!
+
+{Illustration}
+
+The language must have been "Cat," but the meaning was clear to the
+Bear; for those who saw it maintain stoutly that Grumpy not only
+stopped, but she also conformed to the custom of the country and in
+token of surrender held up her hands.
+
+However, the position she thus took made her so high that the Cat seemed
+tiny in the distance below. Old Grumpy had faced a Grizzly once, and was
+she now to be held up by a miserable little spike-tailed skunk no bigger
+than a mouthful? She was ashamed of herself, especially when a wail from
+Johnny smote on her ear and reminded her of her plain duty, as well as
+supplied his usual moral support.
+
+So she dropped down on her front feet to proceed.
+
+Again the Cat shrieked, "STOP!" But Grumpy ignored the command. A scared
+mew from a kitten nerved the Cat, and she launched her ultimatum, which
+ultimatum was herself. Eighteen sharp claws, a mouthful of keen teeth,
+had Pussy, and she worked them all with a desperate will when she landed
+on Grumpy's bare, bald, sensitive nose, just the spot of all where the
+Bear cold not stand it, and then worked backward to a point outside the
+sweep of Grumpy's claws. After one or two vain attempts to shake the
+spotted fury off, old Grumpy did just as most creatures would have done
+under the circumstances: she turned tail and bolted out of the enemy's
+country into her own woods.
+
+But Puss's fighting blood was up. She was not content with repelling the
+enemy; she wanted to inflict a crushing defeat, to achieve an absolute
+and final rout. And however fast old Grumpy might go, it did not count,
+for the Cat was still on top, working her teeth and claws like a little
+demon. Grumpy, always erratic, now became panic-stricken. The trail of
+the pair was flecked with tufts of long black hair, and there was even
+bloodshed (in the fiftieth degree). Honour surely was satisfied, but
+Pussy was not. Round and round they had gone in the mad race. Grumpy was
+frantic, absolutely humiliated, and ready to make any terms; but Pussy
+seemed deaf to her cough-like yelps, and no one knows how far the Cat
+might have ridden that day had not Johnny unwittingly put a new idea
+into his mother's head by bawling in his best style from the top of his
+last tree, which tree Grumpy made for and scrambled up.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+This was so clearly the enemy's country and in view of his
+reinforcements that the Cat wisely decided to follow no farther.
+She jumped from the climbing Bear to the ground, and then mounted
+sentry-guard below, marching around with tail in the air, daring that
+Bear to come down. Then the kittens came out and sat around, and enjoyed
+it all hugely. And the mountaineers assured me that the Bears would have
+been kept up the tree till they were starved, had not the cook of the
+Hotel come out and called off his Cat--although this statement was not
+among those vouched for by the officers of the Park.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+The last time I saw Johnny he was in the top of a tree, bewailing his
+unhappy lot as usual, while his mother was dashing about among the
+pines, "with a chip on her shoulder," seeking for someone--anyone--that
+she could punish for Johnny's sake, provided, of course, that it was not
+a big Grizzly or a Mother Cat.
+
+This was early in August, but there were not lacking symptoms of change
+in old Grumpy. She was always reckoned "onsartin," and her devotion to
+Johnny seemed subject to her characteristic. This perhaps accounted for
+the fact that when the end of the month was near, Johnny would sometimes
+spend half a day in the top of some tree, alone, miserable, and utterly
+unheeded.
+
+The last chapter of his history came to pass after I had left the
+region. One day at grey dawn he was tagging along behind his mother
+as she prowled in the rear of the Hotel. A newly hired Irish girl was
+already astir in the kitchen. On looking out, she saw, as she thought, a
+Calf where it should not be, and ran to shoo it away. That open kitchen
+door still held unmeasured terrors for Grumpy, and she ran in such alarm
+that Johnny caught the infection, and not being able to keep up with
+her, he made for the nearest tree, which unfortunately turned out to be
+a post, and soon--too soon--he arrived at its top, some seven feet from
+the ground, and there poured forth his woes on the chilly morning air,
+while Grumpy apparently felt justified in continuing her flight alone.
+When the girl came near and saw that she had treed some wild animal, she
+was as much frightened as her victim. But others of the kitchen staff
+appeared, and recognizing the vociferous Johnny, they decided to make
+him a prisoner.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+A collar and chain were brought, and after a struggle, during which
+several of the men got well scratched, the collar was buckled on
+Johnny's neck and the chain made fast to the post.
+
+When he found that he was held, Johnny was simply too mad to scream. He
+bit and scratched and tore till he was tired out. Then he lifted up his
+voice again to call his mother. She did appear once or twice in
+the distance, but could not make up her mind to face that Cat, so
+disappeared, and Johnny was left to his fate.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+He put in the most of that day in alternate struggling and crying.
+Toward evening he was worn out, and glad to accept the meal that was
+brought by Norah, who felt herself called on to play mother, since she
+had chased his own mother away.
+
+When night came it was very cold; but Johnny nearly froze at the top of
+the post before he would come down and accept the warm bed provided at
+the bottom.
+
+During the days that followed, Grumpy came often to the garbage-heap,
+but soon apparently succeeded in forgetting all about her son. He was
+daily tended by Norah, and received all his meals from her. He also
+received something else; for one day he scratched her when she brought
+his food, and she very properly spanked him till he squealed. For a few
+hours he sulked; he was not used to such treatment. But hunger subdued
+him, and thenceforth he held his new guardian in wholesome respect. She,
+too, began to take an interest in the poor motherless little wretch, and
+within a fortnight Johnny showed signs of developing a new character. He
+was much less noisy. He still expressed his hunger in a whining _Er-r-r
+Er-r-r Er-r-r,_ but he rarely squealed now, and his unruly outbursts
+entirely ceased.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+By the third week of September the change was still more marked. Utterly
+abandoned by his own mother, all his interest had centred in Norah, and
+she had fed and spanked him into an exceedingly well-behaved little
+Bear. Sometimes she would allow him a taste of freedom, and he then
+showed his bias by making, not for the woods, but for the kitchen where
+she was, and following her around on his hind legs. Here also he made
+the acquaintance of that dreadful Cat; but Johnny had a powerful
+friend now, and Pussy finally became reconciled to the black, woolly
+interloper.
+
+As the Hotel was to be closed in October, there was talk of turning
+Johnny loose or of sending him to the Washington Zoo; but Norah had
+claims that she would not forgo.
+
+When the frosty nights of late September came, Johnny had greatly
+improved in his manners, but he had also developed a bad cough. An
+examination of his lame leg had shown that the weakness was not in the
+foot, but much more deeply seated, perhaps in the hip, and that meant a
+feeble and tottering constitution.
+
+He did not get fat, as do most Bears in fall; indeed, he continued to
+fail. His little round belly shrank in, his cough became worse, and one
+morning he was found very sick and shivering in his bed by the post.
+Norah brought him indoors, where the warmth helped him so much that
+henceforth he lived in the kitchen.
+
+For a few days he seemed better, and his old-time pleasure in _seeing
+things_ revived. The great blazing fire in the range particularly
+appealed to him, and made him sit up in his old attitude when the
+opening of the door brought the wonder to view. After a week he lost
+interest even in that, and drooped more and more each day. Finally not
+the most exciting noises or scenes around him could stir up his old
+fondness for seeing what was going on.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+He coughed a good deal, too, and seemed wretched, except when in Norah's
+lap. Here he would cuddle up contentedly, and whine most miserably when
+she had to set him down again in his basket.
+
+A few days before the closing of the Hotel, he refused his usual
+breakfast, and whined softly till Norah took him in her lap; then he
+feebly snuggled up to her, and his soft _Er-r-r Er-r-r_ grew fainter,
+till it ceased. Half an hour later, when she laid him down to go about
+her work, Little Johnny had lost the last trace of his anxiety to see
+and know what was going on.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TITO THE STORY OF THE COYOTE THAT LEARNED HOW
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Raindrop may deflect a thunderbolt, or a hair may ruin an empire, as
+surely as a spider-web once turned the history of Scotland; and if it
+had not been for one little pebble, this history of Tito might never
+have happened.
+
+That pebble was lying on a trail in the Dakota Badlands, and one hot,
+dark night it lodged in the foot of a Horse that was ridden by a tipsy
+cow-boy. The man got off, as a matter of habit, to know what was laming
+his Horse. But he left the reins on its neck instead of on the ground,
+and the Horse, taking advantage of this technicality, ran off in the
+darkness. Then the cow-boy, realizing that he was afoot, lay down in
+a hollow under some buffalo-bushes and slept the loggish sleep of the
+befuddled.
+
+The golden beams of the early summer sun were leaping from top to top of
+the wonderful Badland Buttes, when an old Coyote might have been seen
+trotting homeward along the Garner's Creek Trail with a Rabbit in her
+jaws to supply her family's breakfast.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+Fierce war had for a long time been waged against the Coyote kind by
+the cattlemen of Billings County. Traps, guns, poison, and Hounds had
+reduced their number nearly to zero, and the few survivors had learned
+the bitter need of caution at every step. But the destructive ingenuity
+of man knew no bounds, and their numbers continued to dwindle.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+The old Coyote quit the trail very soon, for nothing that man has made
+is friendly. She skirted along a low ridge, then across a little hollow
+where grew a few buffalo-bushes, and, after a careful sniff at a very
+stale human trail-scent, she crossed another near ridge on whose sunny
+side was the home of her brood. Again she cautiously circled, peered
+about, and sniffed, but, finding no sign of danger, went down to
+the doorway and uttered a low _woof-woof._ Out of the den, beside a
+sage-bush, there poured a procession of little Coyotes, merrily tumbling
+over one another. Then, barking little barks and growling little puppy
+growls, they fell upon the feast that their mother had brought, and
+gobbled and tussled while she looked on and enjoyed their joy.
+
+Wolver Jake, the cow-boy, had awakened from his chilly sleep about
+sunrise, in time to catch a glimpse of the Coyote passing over the
+ridge. As soon as she was out of sight he got on his feet and went
+to the edge, there to witness the interesting scene of the family
+breakfasting and frisking about within a few yards of him, utterly
+unconscious of any danger.
+
+But the only appeal the scene had to him lay in the fact that the county
+had set a price on every one of these Coyotes' lives. So he got out
+his big .45 navy revolver, and notwithstanding his shaky condition, he
+managed somehow to get a sight on the mother as she was caressing one of
+the little ones that had finished its breakfast, and shot her dead on
+the spot.
+
+The terrified cubs fled into the den, and Jake, failing to kill another
+with his revolver, came forward, blocked up the hole with stones,
+and leaving the seven little prisoners quaking at the far end, set off
+on foot for the nearest ranch, cursing his faithless Horse as he went.
+
+In the afternoon he returned with his pard and tools for digging. The
+little ones had cowered all day in the darkened hole, wondering why
+their mother did not come to feed them, wondering at the darkness and
+the change. But late that day they heard sounds at the door. Then light
+was again let in. Some of the less cautious young ones ran forward to
+meet their mother, but their mother was not there--only two great rough
+brutes that began tearing open their home.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+After an hour or more the diggers came to the end of the den, and here
+were the woolly, bright-eyed, little ones, all huddled in a pile at the
+farthest corner. Their innocent puppy faces and ways were not noticed
+by the huge enemy. One by one they were seized. A sharp blow, and each
+quivering, limp form was thrown into a sack to be carried to the nearest
+magistrate who was empowered to pay the bounties.
+
+Even at this stage there was a certain individuality of character among
+the puppies. Some of them squealed and some of them growled when dragged
+out to die. One or two tried to bite. The one that had been slowest to
+comprehend the danger, had been the last to retreat, and so was on top
+of the pile, and therefore the first killed. The one that had first
+realized the peril had retreated first, and now crouched at the bottom
+of the pile. Coolly and remorselessly the others were killed one by
+one, and then this prudent little puppy was seen to be the last of the
+family. It lay perfectly still, even when touched, its eyes being half
+closed, as, guided by instinct, it tried to "play possum." One of the
+men picked it up. It neither squealed nor resisted. Then Jake, realizing
+ever the importance of "standing in with the boss," said: "Say, let's
+keep that 'un for the children." So the last of the family was thrown
+alive into the same bag with its dead brothers, and, bruised and
+frightened, lay there very still, understanding nothing, knowing only
+that after a long time of great noise and cruel jolting it was again
+half strangled by a grip on its neck and dragged out, where were a lot
+of creatures like the diggers.
+
+These were really the inhabitants of the Chimneypot Ranch, whose brand
+is the Broad-arrow; and among them were the children for whom the cub
+had been brought. The boss had no difficulty in getting Jake to accept
+the dollar that the cub Coyote would have brought in bounty-money,
+and his present was turned over to the children. In answer to their
+question, "What is it?" a Mexican cow-hand, present said it was a
+Coyotito--that is, a "little Coyote,"--and this, afterward shortened to
+"Tito," became the captive's name.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Tito was a pretty little creature, with woolly body, a puppy-like
+expression, and a head that was singularly broad between the ears.
+
+But, as a children's pet, she--for it proved to be a female--was not a
+success. She was distant and distrustful. She ate her food and seemed
+healthy, but never responded to friendly advances; never {Illustration:
+Coyotito, the Captive} even learned to come out of the box when called.
+This probably was due to the fact that the kindness of the small
+children was offset by the roughness of the men and boys, who did not
+hesitate to drag her out by the chain when they wished to see her. On
+these occasions she would suffer in silence, playing possum, shamming
+dead, for she seemed to know that that was the best thing to do. But as
+soon as released she would once more retire into the darkest corner of
+her box, and watch her tormentors with eyes that, at the proper angle,
+showed a telling glint of green.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+Among the children of the ranchmen was a thirteen-year-old boy.
+The fact that he grew up to be like his father, a kind, strong, and
+thoughtful man, did not prevent him being, at this age, a shameless
+little brute.
+
+Like all boys in that country, he practised lasso-throwing, with a view
+to being a cow-boy. Posts and stumps are uninteresting things to catch.
+His little brothers and sisters were under special protection of the
+Home Government. The Dogs ran far away whenever they saw him coming with
+the rope in his hands. So he must needs practise on the unfortunate
+Coyotito. She soon learned that her only hope for peace was to hide in
+the kennel, or, if thrown at when outside, to dodge the rope by lying as
+flat as possible on the ground. Thus Lincoln unwittingly taught the
+Coyote the dangers and limitations of a rope, and so he proved a
+blessing in disguise--a very perfect disguise. When the Coyote had
+thoroughly learned how to baffle the lasso, the boy terror devised a new
+amusement. He got a large trap of the kind known as "Fox-size." This he
+set in the dust as he had seen Jake set a Wolf-trap, close to the
+kennel, and over it he scattered scraps of meat, in the most approved
+style for Wolf-trapping. After a while Tito, drawn by the smell of the
+meat, came hungrily sneaking out toward it, and almost immediately was
+caught in the trap by one foot. The boy terror was watching from a near
+hiding-place. He gave a wild Indian whoop of delight, then rushed
+forward to drag the Coyote out of the box into which she had retreated.
+After some more delightful thrills of excitement and struggle he got his
+lasso on Tito's body, and, helped by a younger brother, a most promising
+pupil, he succeeded in setting the Coyote free from the trap before the
+grown-ups had discovered his amusement. One or two experiences like this
+taught her a mortal terror of traps. She soon learned the smell of the
+steel, and could detect and avoid it, no matter how cleverly Master
+Lincoln might bury it in the dust while the younger brother screened the
+operation from the intended victim by holding his coat over the door of
+Tito's kennel.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+One day the fastening of her chain gave way, and Tito went off in an
+uncertain fashion, trailing her chain behind her. But she was seen by
+one of the men, who fired a charge of bird-shot at her. The burning,
+stinging, and surprise of it all caused her to retreat to the one place
+she knew, her own kennel. The chain was fastened again, and Tito added
+to her ideas this, a horror of guns and the smell of gunpowder; and this
+also, that the one safety from them is to "lay low."
+
+{Illustration}
+
+There were yet other rude experiences in store for the captive.
+
+Poisoning Wolves was a topic of daily talk at the Ranch, so it was not
+surprising that Lincoln should privately experiment on Coyotito. The
+deadly strychnine was too well guarded to be available. So Lincoln hid
+some Rough on Rats in a piece of meat, threw it to the captive, and
+sat by to watch, as blithe and conscience-clear as any professor of
+chemistry trying a new combination.
+
+Tito smelled the meat--everything had to be passed on by her nose.
+Her nose was in doubt. There was a good smell of meat, a familiar but
+unpleasant smell of human hands, and a strange new odour, but not the
+odour of the trap; so she bolted the morsel. Within a few minutes began
+to have fearful pains in stomach, followed by cramps. Now in all the
+Wolf tribe there is the instinctive habit to throw up anything that
+disagrees with them, and after a minute or two of suffering the Coyote
+sought relief in this way; and to make it doubly sure she hastily
+gobbled some blades of grass, and in less than an hour was quite well
+again.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+Lincoln had put in poison enough for a dozen Coyotes. Had he put in less
+she could not have felt the pang till too late, but she recovered and
+never forgot that peculiar smell that means such awful after-pains. More
+than that, she was ready thenceforth to fly at once to the herbal cure
+that Nature had everywhere provided. An instinct of this kind grows
+quickly, once followed. It had taken minutes of suffering in the first
+place to drive her to the easement. Thenceforth, having learned, it
+was her first thought on feeling pain. The little miscreant did indeed
+succeed in having her swallow another bait with a small dose of poison,
+but she knew what to do now and had almost no suffering.
+
+Later on, a relative sent Lincoln a Bull-terrier, and the new
+combination was a fresh source of spectacular interest for the boy, and
+of tribulation for the Coyote. It all emphasized for her that old idea
+to "lay low"--that is, to be quiet, unobtrusive, and hide when danger
+is in sight. The grown-ups of the household at length forbade these
+persecutions, and the Terrier was kept away from the little yard where
+the Coyote was chained up.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+It must not be supposed that, in all this, Tito was a sweet, innocent
+victim. She had learned to bite. She had caught and killed several
+chickens by shamming sleep while they ventured to forage within the
+radius of her chain. And she had an inborn hankering to sing a morning
+and evening hymn, which procured for her many beatings. But she learned
+to shut up, the moment her opening notes were followed by a rattle of
+doors or windows, for these sounds of human nearness had frequently been
+followed by a "_bang_" and a charge of bird-shot, which somehow did no
+serious harm, though it severely stung her hide. And these experiences
+all helped to deepen her terror of guns and of those who used them. The
+object of these musical outpourings was not clear. They happened usually
+at dawn or dusk, but sometimes a loud noise at high noon would set her
+going. The song consisted of a volley of short barks, mixed with doleful
+squalls that never failed to set the Dogs astir in a responsive uproar,
+and once or twice had begotten a far-away answer from some wild Coyote
+in the hills.
+
+There was one little trick that she had developed which was purely
+instinctive--that is, an inherited habit. In the back end of her kennel
+she had a little _cache_ of bones, and knew exactly where one or two
+lumps of unsavoury meat were buried within the radius of her chain, for
+a time of famine which never came. If anyone approached these
+hidden treasures she watched with anxious eyes, but made no other
+demonstration. If she saw that the meddler knew the exact place, she
+took an early opportunity to secrete them elsewhere.
+
+After a year of this life Tito had grown to full size, and had learned
+many things that her wild kinsmen could not have learned without losing
+their lives in doing it. She knew and feared traps. She had learned to
+avoid poison baits, and knew what to do at once if, by some mistake,
+she should take one. She knew what guns are. She had learned to cut her
+morning and evening song very short. She had some acquaintance with
+Dogs, enough to make her hate and distrust them all. But, above all, she
+had this idea: whenever danger is near, the very best move possible is
+to lay low, be very quiet, do nothing to attract notice. Perhaps the
+little brain that looked out of those changing yellow eyes was the
+storehouse of much other knowledge about men, but what it was did not
+appear.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+The Coyote was fully grown when the boss of the outfit bought a couple
+of thoroughbred Greyhounds, wonderful runners, to see whether he could
+not entirely extirpate the remnant of the Coyotes that still destroyed
+occasional Sheep and Calves on the range, and at the same time find
+amusement in the sport. He was tired of seeing that Coyote in the yard;
+so, deciding to use her for training the Dogs, he had her roughly thrown
+into a bag, then carried a quarter of a mile away and dumped out. At the
+same time the Greyhounds were slipped and chivvied on. Away they went
+bounding at their matchless pace, that nothing else on four legs could
+equal, and away went the Coyote, frightened by the noise of the men,
+frightened even to find herself free. Her quarter-mile start quickly
+shrank to one hundred yards, the one hundred to fifty, and on sped the
+flying Dogs. Clearly there was no chance for her. On and nearer they
+came. In another minute she would have been stretched out--not a doubt
+of it. But on a sudden she stopped, turned, and walked toward the Dogs
+with her tail serenely waving in the air and a friendly cock to her
+ears. Greyhounds are peculiar Dogs. Anything that runs away, they are
+going to catch and kill if they can. Anything that is calmly facing them
+becomes at once a non-combatant. They bounded over and past the Coyote
+before they could curb their own impetuosity, and returned completely
+nonplussed. Possibly they recognized the Coyote of the house-yard as
+she stood there wagging her tail. The ranchmen were nonplussed too.
+Every one was utterly taken aback, had a sense of failure, and the real
+victor in the situation was felt to be the audacious little Coyote.
+
+The Greyhounds refused to attack an animal that wagged its tail and
+would not run; and the men, on seeing that the Coyote could _walk_ far
+enough away to avoid being caught by hand, took their ropes (lassoes),
+and soon made her a prisoner once more. The next day they decided to try
+again, but this time they added the white Bull-terrier to the chasers.
+The Coyote did as before. The Greyhounds declined to be party to any
+attack on such a mild and friendly acquaintance. But the Bull-terrier,
+who came puffing and panting on the scene three minutes later, had no
+such scruples. He was not so tall, but he was heavier than the Coyote,
+and, seizing her by her wool-protected neck, he shook her till, in a
+surprisingly short time, she lay limp and lifeless, at which all the
+men seemed pleased, and congratulated the Terrier, while the Greyhounds
+pottered around in restless perplexity.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+A stranger in the party, a newly arrived Englishman, asked if he might
+have the brush--the tail, he explained--and on being told to help
+himself, he picked up the victim by the tail, and with one awkward chop
+of his knife he cut it off at the middle, and the Coyote dropped, but
+gave a shrill yelp of pain. She was not dead, only playing possum, and
+now she leaped up and vanished into a near-by thicket of cactus and
+sage.
+
+With Greyhounds a running animal is the signal for a run, so the two
+long-legged Dogs and the white broad-chested Dog dashed after the
+Coyote. But right across their path, by happy chance, there flashed a
+brown streak ridden by a snowy powder-puff, the visible but evanescent
+sign for Cottontail Rabbit. The Coyote was not in sight now. The Rabbit
+was, so the Greyhounds dashed after the Cottontail, who took advantage
+of a Prairie-dog's hole to seek safety in the bosom of Mother Earth, and
+the Coyote made good her escape.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+She had been a good deal jarred by the rude treatment of the Terrier,
+and her mutilated tail gave her some pain. But otherwise she was all
+right, and she loped lightly away, keeping out of sight in the hollows,
+and so escaped among the fantastic buttes of the Badlands, to be
+eventually the founder of a new life among the Coyotes of the Little
+Missouri.
+
+Moses was preserved by the Egyptians till he had outlived the dangerous
+period, and learned from them wisdom enough to be the saviour of his
+people against those same Egyptians. So the bobtailed Coyote was not
+only saved by man and carried over the dangerous period of puppyhood:
+she was also unwittingly taught by him how to baffle the traps, poisons,
+lassoes, guns, and Dogs that had so long waged a war of extermination
+against her race.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Thus Tito escaped from man, and for the first time found herself face to
+face with the whole problem of life; for now she had her own living to
+get.
+
+A wild animal has three sources of wisdom:
+
+First, _the experience of its ancestors_, in the form of instinct, which
+is inborn learning, hammered into the race by ages of selection and
+tribulation. This is the most important to begin with, because it guards
+him from the moment he is born.
+
+Second, _the experience of his parents and comrades_, learned chiefly by
+example. This becomes most important as soon as the young can run.
+
+Third, _the personal experience_ of the animal itself. This grows in
+importance as the animal ages.
+
+The weakness of the first is its fixity; it cannot change to meet
+quickly changing conditions. The weakness of the second is the animal's
+inability freely to exchange ideas by language. The weakness of the
+third is the danger in acquiring it. But the three together are a strong
+arch.
+
+Now, Tito was in a new case. Perhaps never before had a Coyote faced
+life with unusual advantages in the third kind of knowledge, none
+at all in the second, and with the first dormant. She travelled rapidly
+away from the ranchmen, keeping out of sight, and sitting down once in a
+while to lick her wounded tail-stump. She came at last to a Prairie-dog
+town. Many of the inhabitants were out, and they barked at the intruder,
+but all dodged down as soon as she came near. Her instinct taught her
+to try and catch one, but she ran about in vain for some time, and then
+gave it up. She would have gone hungry that night but that she found a
+couple of Mice in the long grass by the river. Her mother had not taught
+her to hunt, but her instinct did, and the accident that she had an
+unusual brain made her profit very quickly by her experience.
+
+In the days that followed she quickly learned how to make a living;
+for Mice, Ground Squirrels, Prairie-dogs, Rabbits, and Lizards were
+abundant, and many of these could be captured in open chase. But open
+chase, and sneaking as near as possible before beginning the open chase,
+lead naturally to stalking for a final spring. And before the moon had
+changed the Coyote had learned how to make a comfortable living.
+
+Once or twice she saw the men with the Greyhounds coming her way. Most
+Coyotes would, perhaps, have barked in bravado, or would have gone up to
+some high place whence they could watch the enemy; but Tito did no such
+foolish thing. Had she run, her moving form would have caught the eyes
+of the Dogs, and then nothing could have saved her. She dropped where
+she was, and lay flat until the danger had passed. Thus her ranch
+training to lay low began to stand her in good stead, and so it came
+about that her weakness was her strength. The Coyote kind had so long
+been famous for their speed, had so long learned to trust in their legs,
+that they never dreamed of a creature that could run them down. They
+were accustomed to play with their pursuers, and so rarely bestirred
+themselves to run from Greyhounds, till it was too late. But Tito,
+brought up at the end of a chain, was a poor runner. She had no reason
+to trust her legs. She rather trusted her wits, and so lived.
+
+During that summer she stayed about the Little Missouri, learning the
+tricks of small-game hunting that she should have learned before she
+shed her milk-teeth, and gaining in strength and speed. She kept far
+away from all the ranches, and always hid on seeing a man or a strange
+beast, and so passed the summer alone. During the daytime she was not
+lonely, but when the sun went down she would feel the impulse to sing
+that wild song of the West which means so much to the Coyotes. It is not
+the invention of an individual nor of the present, but was slowly built
+out of the feelings of all Coyotes in all ages. It expresses their
+nature and the Plains that made their nature. When one begins it, it
+takes hold of the rest, as the fife and drum do with soldiers, or the
+ki-yi war-song with Indian braves. They respond to it as a bell-glass
+does to a certain note the moment that note is struck, ignoring other
+sounds. So the Coyote, no matter how brought up, must vibrate at the
+night song of the Plains, for it touches something in himself.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+They sing it after sundown, when it becomes the rallying cry of their
+race and the friendly call to a neighbour; and, they sing it as one boy
+in the woods holloas to another to say, "All's well! Here am I. Where
+are you?" A form of it they sing to the rising moon, for this is the
+time for good hunting to begin. They sing when they see the new
+camp-fire, for the same reason that a Dog barks at a stranger. Yet another
+weird chant they have for the dawning before they steal quietly away
+from the offing of the camp--a wild, weird, squalling refrain:
+Wow-wow-wow-wow-wow-w-o-o-o-o-o-o-w, again and again; and doubtless with
+many another change that man cannot distinguish any more than the Coyote
+can distinguish the words in the cowboy's anathemas.
+
+Tito instinctively uttered her music at the proper times. But sad
+experiences had taught her to cut it short and keep it low. Once or
+twice she had got a far-away reply from one of her own race, whereupon
+she had quickly ceased and timidly quit the neighbourhood.
+
+One day, when on the Upper Garner's Creek, she found the trail where
+a piece of meat had been dragged along. It was a singularly inviting
+odour, and she followed it, partly out of curiosity. Presently she came
+on a piece of the meat itself. She was hungry; she was always hungry
+now. It was tempting, and although it had a peculiar odour, she
+swallowed it. Within a few minutes she felt a terrific pain. The memory
+of the poisoned meat the boy had given her, was fresh. With trembling,
+foaming jaws she seized some blades of grass, and her stomach threw off
+the meat; but she fell in convulsions on the ground.
+
+The trail of meat dragged along and the poison baits had been laid the
+day before by Wolfer Jake. This morning he was riding the drag, and on
+coming up from the draw he saw, far ahead, the Coyote struggling. He
+knew, of course, that it was poisoned, and rode quickly up; but the
+convulsions passed as he neared. By a mighty effort, at the sound of the
+Horse's hoofs the Coyote arose to her front feet. Jake drew his revolver
+and fired, but the only effect was fully to alarm her. She tried to run,
+but her hind legs were paralysed. She put forth all her strength,
+dragging her hind legs. Now, when the poison was no longer in the
+stomach, will-power could do a great deal. Had she been allowed to lie
+down then she would have been dead in five minutes; but the revolver
+shots and the man coming stirred her to strenuous action. Madly she
+struggled again and again to get her hind legs to work. All the force of
+desperate intent she brought to bear. It was like putting forth tenfold
+power to force the nervous fluids through their blocked-up channels as
+she dragged herself with marvellous speed downhill. What is nerve but
+will? The dead wires of her legs were hot with this fresh power,
+multiplied, injected, blasted into them. They had to give in. She felt
+them thrill with life again. Each wild shot from the gun lent vital
+help. Another fierce attempt, and one hind leg obeyed the call to duty.
+A few more bounds, and the other, too, fell in. Then lightly she loped
+away among the broken buttes, defying the agonizing gripe that still
+kept on inside.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+Had Jake held off then she would yet have laid down and died; but he
+followed and fired and fired, till in another mile she bounded free from
+pain, saved from her enemy by himself. He had compelled her to take the
+only cure, so she escaped.
+
+And these were the ideas that she harvested that day: That curious smell
+on the meat stands for mortal agony. Let it alone! And she never forgot
+it; thenceforth she knew strychnine.
+
+Fortunately, Dogs, traps, and strychnine do not wage war at once, for
+the Dogs are as apt to be caught or poisoned as the Coyotes. Had there
+been a single Dog in the hunt that day Tito's history would have ended.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+When the weather grew cooler toward the end of Autumn Tito had gone far
+toward repairing the defects in her early training. She was more like an
+ordinary Coyote in her habits now, and she was more disposed to sing the
+sundown song. One night, when she got a response, she yielded to the
+impulse again to call, and soon afterward a large, dark Coyote appeared.
+The fact that he was there at all was a guarantee of unusual gifts, for
+the war against his race was waged relentlessly by the cattlemen. He
+approached with caution. Tito's mane bristled with mixed feelings at
+the sight of one of her own kind. She crouched flat on the ground and
+waited. The newcomer came stiffly forward, nosing the wind; then up the
+wind nearly to her. Then he walked around so that she should wind him,
+and raising his tail, gently waved it. The first acts meant armed
+neutrality, but the last was a distinctly friendly signal. Then he
+approached and she rose up suddenly and stood as high as she could to
+be smelled. Then she wagged the stump of her tail, and they considered
+themselves acquainted.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+The newcomer was a very large Coyote, half as tall again as Tito, and
+the dark patch on his shoulders was so large and black that the cow-boys
+when they came to know him, called him Saddleback. From that time
+these two continued more or less together. They were not always
+close together, often were miles apart during the day, but toward
+{Illustration: They Considered Themselves Acquainted} night one or the
+other would get on some high open place and sing the loud
+
+  Yap-yap-yap-yow-wow-wow-wow-wow,
+
+and they would forgather for some foray on hand.
+
+The physical advantages were with Saddleback, but the greater cunning
+was Tito's, so that she in time became the leader. Before a month a
+third Coyote had appeared on the scene and become also a member of this
+loose-bound fraternity, and later two more appeared. Nothing succeeds
+like success. The little bobtailed Coyote had had rare advantages of
+training just where the others were lacking: she knew the devices of
+man. She could not tell about these in words, but she could by the aid
+of a few signs and a great deal of example. It soon became evident that
+her methods of hunting were successful, whereas, when they went without
+her, they often had hard luck. A man at Boxelder Ranch had twenty Sheep.
+The rules of the county did not allow anyone to own more, as this was a
+Cattle-range. The Sheep were guarded by a large and fierce Collie. One
+day in winter two of the Coyotes tried to raid this flock by a bold
+dash, and all they got was a mauling from the Collie. A few days later
+the band returned at dusk. Just how Tito arranged it, man cannot tell.
+We can only guess how she taught them their parts, but we know that she
+surely did. The Coyotes hid in the willows. Then Saddleback, the bold
+and swift, walked openly toward the Sheep and barked a loud defiance.
+The Collie jumped up with bristling mane and furious growl, then, seeing
+the foe, dashed straight at him. Now was the time for the steady nerve
+and the unfailing limbs. Saddleback let the Dog come near enough
+_almost_ to catch him, and so beguiled him far and away into the woods,
+while the other Coyotes, led by Tito, stampeded the Sheep in twenty
+directions; then following the farthest, they killed several and left
+them in the snow. In the gloom of descending night the Dog and his
+master laboured till they had gathered the bleating survivors; but next
+morning they found that four had been driven far away and killed, and
+the Coyotes had had a banquet royal.
+
+{Illustration} The shepherd poisoned the carcasses and left them. Next
+night the Coyotes returned. Tito sniffed the now frozen meat, detected
+the poison, gave a warning growl, and scattered filth over the meat, so
+that none of the band should touch it. One, however, who was fast and
+foolish, persisted in feeding in spite of Tito's warning, and when they
+came away he was lying poisoned and dead in the snow.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+Jake now heard on all sides that the Coyotes were getting worse. So he
+set to work with many traps and much poison to destroy those on the
+Garner's Creek, and every little while he would go with the Hounds and
+scour the Little Missouri south and east of the Chimney-pot Ranch; for
+it was understood that he must never run the Dogs in country where traps
+and poison were laid. He worked in his erratic way all winter, and
+certainly did have some success. He killed a couple of Grey Wolves, said
+to be the last of their race, and several Coyotes, some of which, no
+doubt, were of the Bobtailed pack, which thereby lost those members
+which were lacking in wisdom.
+
+Yet that winter was marked by a series of Coyote raids and exploits; and
+usually the track in the snow or the testimony of eye-witnesses told
+that the master spirit of it all was a little Bobtailed Coyote.
+
+One of these adventures was the cause of much talk. The Coyote challenge
+sounded close to the Chimney-pot Ranch after sundown. A dozen Dogs
+responded with the usual clamour. But only the Bull-terrier dashed away
+toward the place whence the Coyotes had called, for the reason that he
+only was loose. His chase was fruitless, and he came back growling.
+Twenty minutes later there was another Coyote yell close at hand. Off
+dashed the Terrier as before. In a minute his excited yapping; told that
+he had sighted his game and was in full chase. Away he went, furiously
+barking, until his voice was lost afar, and nevermore was heard. In the
+morning the men read in the snow the tale of the night. The first cry
+of the Coyotes was to find out if all the Dogs were loose; then, having
+found that only one was free, they laid a plan. Five Coyotes hid along
+the side of the trail; one went forward and called till it had decoyed
+the rash Terrier, and then led him right into the ambush. What chance
+had he with six? They tore him limb from limb, and devoured him, too, at
+the very spot where once he had worried Coyotito. And next morning,
+when the men came, they saw by the signs that the whole thing had been
+planned, and that the leader whose cunning had made it a success was a
+little Bob-tailed Coyote.
+
+The men were angry, and Lincoln was furious; but Jake remarked: "Well, I
+guess that Bobtail came back and got even with that Terrier."
+
+{Illustration}
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+When spring was near, the annual love-season of the Coyotes came on.
+Saddleback and Tito bad been together merely as companions all winter,
+but now a new feeling was born. There was not much courting. Saddleback
+simply showed his teeth to possible rivals. There was no ceremony. They
+had been friends for months, and now, in the light of the new feeling,
+they naturally took to each other and were mated. Coyotes do not give
+each other names as do mankind, but have one sound like a growl and
+short howl, which stands for "mate" or "husband" or "wife." This they
+use in calling to each other, and it is by recognizing the tone of the
+voice that they know who is calling.
+
+The loose rambling brotherhood of the Coyotes was broken up now, for
+the others also paired off, and since the returning warm weather was
+bringing out the Prairie-dogs and small game, there was less need to
+combine for hunting. Ordinarily Coyotes do not sleep in dens or in any
+fixed place. They move about all night while it is cool, then during the
+daytime they get a few hours' sleep in the sun, on some quiet hillside
+that also gives a chance to watch out. But the mating season changes
+this habit somewhat.
+
+As the weather grew warm Tito and Saddleback set about preparing a den
+for the expected family. In a warm little hollow, an old Badger abode
+was cleaned out, enlarged, and deepened. A quantity of leaves and grass
+was carried into it and arranged in a comfortable nest. The place
+selected for it was a dry sunny nook among the hills, half a mile west
+of the Little Missouri. Thirty yards from it was a ridge which commanded
+a wide view of the grassy slopes and cottonwood groves by the river. Men
+would have called the spot very beautiful, but it is tolerably certain
+that that side of it never touched the Coyotes at all.
+
+Tito began to be much preoccupied with her impending duties. She stayed
+quietly in the neighbourhood of the den, and lived on such food as
+Saddleback brought her, or she herself could easily catch, and also on
+the little stores that she had buried at other times. She knew every
+Prairie-dog town in the region, as well as all the best places for Mice
+and Rabbits.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+Not far from the den was the very Dog-town that first she had
+crossed, the day she had gained her liberty and lost her tail. If she
+were capable of such retrospect, she must have laughed to herself to
+think what a fool she was then. The change in her methods was now shown.
+Somewhat removed from the others, a Prairie-dog had made his den in the
+most approved style, and now when Tito peered over he was feeding on the
+grass ten yards from his own door. A Prairie-dog away from the others
+is, of course, easier to catch than one in the middle of the town, for
+he has but one pair of eyes to guard him; so Tito set about stalking
+this one. How was she to do it when there was no cover, nothing but
+short grass and a few low weeds? The White-bear knows how to approach
+the Seal on the flat ice, and the Indian how to get within striking
+distance of the grazing Deer. Tito knew how to do the same trick, and
+although one of the town Owls flew over with a warning chuckle, Tito set
+about her plan. A Prairie-dog cannot see well unless he is sitting up
+on his hind legs; his eyes are of little use when he is nosing in
+the grass; and Tito knew this. Further, a yellowish-grey animal on a
+yellowish-grey landscape is invisible till it moves. Tito seemed to
+know that. So, without any attempt to crawl or hide, she walked gently
+up-wind toward the Prarie-dog. Upwind, not in order to prevent the
+Prairie-dog smelling her, but so that she could smell him, which came to
+the same thing. As soon as the Prairie-dog sat up with some food in his
+hand she froze into a statue. As soon, as he dropped again to nose in
+the grass, she walked steadily nearer, watching his every move so that
+she might be motionless each time he sat up to see what his distant
+brothers were barking at. Once or twice he seemed alarmed by the calls
+of his friends, but he saw nothing and resumed his feeding. She soon
+cut the fifty yards down to ten, and the ten to five, and still was
+undiscovered. Then, when again the Prairie-dog dropped down to seek more
+fodder, she made a quick dash, and bore him off kicking and squealing.
+Thus does the angel of the pruning-knife lop off those that are heedless
+and foolishly indifferent to the advantages of society.
+
+{Illustration: Their Evening Song.}
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+Tito had many adventures in which she did not come out so well. Once she
+nearly caught an Antelope fawn, but the hunt was spoiled by the sudden
+appearance of the mother, who gave Tito a stinging blow on the side of
+the head and ended her hunt for that day. She never again made that
+mistake--she had sense. Once or twice she had to jump to escape the
+strike of a Rattlesnake. Several times she had been fired at by hunters
+with long-range rifles. And more and more she had to look out for the
+terrible Grey Wolves. The Grey Wolf, of course, is much larger and
+stronger than the Coyote, but the Coyote has the advantage of speed, and
+can always escape in the open. All it must beware of is being caught in
+a corner. Usually when a Grey Wolf howls the Coyotes go quietly about
+their business elsewhere.
+
+Tito had a curious fad, occasionally seen among the Wolves and Coyotes,
+of carrying in her mouth, for miles, such things as seemed to be
+interesting and yet were not tempting as eatables. Many a time had she
+trotted a mile or two with an old Buffalo-horn or a cast-off shoe, only
+to drop it when something else attracted her attention. The cow-boys who
+remark these things have various odd explanations to offer: one,
+that it is done to stretch the jaws, or keep them in practice, just as a
+man in training carries weights. Coyotes have, in common with Dogs and
+Wolves, the habit of calling at certain stations along their line of
+travel, to leave a record of their visit. These stations may be a stone,
+a tree, a post, or an old Buffalo-skull, and the Coyote calling there
+can learn, by the odour and track of the last comer, just who the caller
+was, whence he came, and whither he went. The whole country is marked
+out by these intelligence depots. Now it often happens that a Coyote,
+that has not much else to do will carry a dry bone or some other useless
+object in its mouth, but sighting the signal-post, will go toward it to
+get the news, lay down the bone, and afterwards forget to take it along,
+so that the signal-posts in time become further marked with a curious
+collection of odds and ends.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+This singular habit was the cause of a disaster to the Chimney-pot
+Wolf-hounds, and a corresponding advantage to the Coyotes in the war.
+Jake had laid a line of poison baits on the western bluffs. Tito knew
+what they were, and spurned them as usual; but finding more later, she
+gathered up three or four and crossed the Little Missouri toward the
+ranch-house. This she circled at a safe distance; but when something
+made the pack of Dogs break out into clamour, Tito dropped the baits,
+and next day, when the Dogs were taken out for exercise they found and
+devoured these scraps of meat, so that in ten minutes, there were four
+hundred dollars' worth of Greyhounds lying dead. This led to an edict
+against poisoning in that district, and thus was a great boon to the
+Coyotes.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+Tito quickly learned that not only each kind of game must be hunted in a
+special way, but different ones of each kind may require quite different
+treatment. The Prairie-dog with the outlying den was really an easy
+prey, but the town was quite compact now that he was gone. Near the
+centre of it was a fine, big, fat Prairie-dog, a perfect alderman, that
+she had made several vain attempts to capture. On one occasion she had
+crawled almost within leaping distance, when the angry _bizz_ of a
+Rattlesnake just ahead warned her that she was in danger. Not that the
+Ratler cared anything about the Prairie-dog, but he did not wish to
+be disturbed; and Tito, who had an instinctive fear of the Snake, was
+forced to abandon the hunt. The open stalk proved an utter, failure with
+the Alderman, for the situation of his den made every Dog in the town
+his sentinel; but he was too good to lose, and Tito waited until
+circumstances made a new plan.
+
+All Coyotes have a trick of watching from a high look-out whatever
+passes along the roads. After it has passed they go down and examine its
+track. Tito had this habit, except that she was always careful to keep
+out of sight herself.
+
+One day a wagon passed from the town to the southward. Tito lay low and
+watched it. Something dropped on the road. When the wagon was out of
+sight Tito sneaked down, first to smell the trail as a matter of habit,
+second to see what it was that had dropped. The object was really an
+apple, but Tito saw only an unattractive round green thing like a
+cactus-leaf without spines, and of a peculiar smell. She snuffed it,
+spurned it, and was about to pass on; but the sun shone on it so
+brightly, and it rolled so curiously when she pawed, that she picked it
+up in a mechanical way and trotted back over the rise, where are found
+herself at the Dog-town. Just then two great Prairie-hawks came skimming
+like pirates over the plain. As soon as they were in sight the
+Prairie-dogs all barked, jerking their tails at each bark, and hid below.
+When all were gone Tito walked on toward the hole of the big fat fellow whose
+body she coveted, and dropping the apple on the ground a couple of feet
+from the rim of the crater that formed his home, she put her nose down
+to enjoy the delicious smell of Dog-fat. Even his den smelled more
+fragrant than those of the rest. Then she went quietly behind a
+greasewood bush, in a lower place some twenty yards away, and lay flat.
+After a few seconds some venturesome Prairie-dog looked out, and seeing
+nothing, gave the "all's well" bark. One by one they came out, and in
+twenty minutes the town was alive as before. One of the last to come out
+was the fat old Alderman. He always took good care of his own precious
+self. He peered out cautiously a few times, then climbed to the top of
+his look-out. A Prairie-dog hole is shaped like a funnel, going straight
+down. Around the top of this is built a high ridge which serves as a
+look-out, and also makes sure that, no matter how they may slip in their
+hurry, they are certain to drop into the funnel and be swallowed up by
+the all-protecting earth. On the outside the ground slopes away gently
+from the funnel. Now, when the Alderman saw that strange round thing at
+his threshold he was afraid. Second inspection led him to believe that
+it was not dangerous, but was probably interesting. He went cautiously
+toward it, smelled it, and tried to nibble it; but the apple rolled
+away, for it was round, and the ground was smooth as well as sloping.
+The Prairie-dog followed and gave it a nip which satisfied him that the
+strange object would make good eating. But each time he nibbled, it
+rolled farther away. The coast seemed clear, all the other Prairie-dogs
+were out, so the fat Alderman did not hesitate to follow up the dodging,
+shifting apple.
+
+This way and that it wriggled, and he followed. Of course it worked
+toward the low place where grew the greasewood bush. The little tastes
+of apple that he got only whetted his appetite. The Alderman was more
+and more interested. Foot by foot he was led from his hole toward that
+old, familiar bush and had no thought of anything but the joy of eating.
+And Tito curled herself and braced her sinewy legs, and measured the
+distance between, until it dwindled to not more than three good jumps;
+then up and like an arrow she went, and grabbed and bore him off at
+last.
+
+It will never be known whether it was accident or design that led to the
+placing of that apple, but it proved important, and if such a thing were
+to happen once or twice to a smart Coyote,--and it is usually clever
+ones that get such chances,--it might easily grow into a new trick of
+hunting.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+After a hearty meal Tito buried the rest in a cold place, not to get rid
+of it, but to hide it for future use; and a little later, when she was
+too weak to hunt much, her various hoards of this sort came in very
+useful. True, the meat had turned very strong; but Tito was not
+critical, and she had no fears or theories of microbes, so suffered no
+ill effects.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+
+The lovely Hiawathan spring was touching all things in the fairy
+Badlands. Oh, why are they called Badlands? If Nature sat down
+deliberately on the eighth day of creation and said, "Now work is done,
+let's play; let's make a place that shall combine everything that is
+finished and wonderful and beautiful--a paradise for man and bird and
+beast," it was surely then that she made these wild, fantastic hills,
+teeming with life, radiant with gayest flowers, varied with sylvan
+groves, bright with prairie sweeps and brimming lakes and streams. In
+foreground, offing, and distant hills that change at every step, we find
+some proof that Nature squandered here the riches that in other lands
+she used as sparingly as gold, with colourful sky above and colourful
+land below, and the distance blocked by sculptured buttes that are built
+of precious stones and ores, and tinged as by a lasting and unspeakable
+sunset. And yet, for all this ten tunes gorgeous wonderland enchanted,
+blind man has found no better name than one which says, _the road to it
+is hard_.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+The little hollow west of Chimney Butte was freshly grassed. The
+dangerous-looking Spanish bayonets, that through the bygone winter
+had waged war with all things, now sent out their contribution to the
+peaceful triumph of the spring, in flowers that have stirred even the
+chilly scientists to name them _Gloriosa_; and the cactus, poisonous,
+most reptilian of herbs, surprised the world with a splendid bloom as
+little like itself as the pearl is like its mother shell-fish. The sage
+and the greasewood lent their gold, and the sand-anemone tinged the
+Badland hills like bluish snow; and in the air and earth and hills on
+every hand was felt the fecund promise of the spring. This was the end
+of the winter famine, the beginning of the summer feast, and this I
+was the time by the All-mother, ordained when first the little Coyotes
+should see the light of day.
+
+A mother does not have to learn to love her helpless, squirming brood.
+They bring the love with them--not much or little, not measurable, but
+perfect love. And in that dimly lighted warm abode she fondled them and
+licked them and cuddled them with heartful warmth of tenderness, that
+was as much a new epoch in her life as in theirs.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+But the pleasure of loving them was measured in the same measure as
+anxiety for their safety. In bygone days her care had been mainly for
+herself. All she had learned in her strange puppyhood, all she had
+picked up since, was bent to the main idea of self-preservation. Now she
+was ousted from her own affections by her brood. Her chief care was to
+keep their home concealed, and this was not very hard at first, for she
+left them only when she must, to supply her own wants.
+
+She came and went with great care, and only after spying well the land
+so that none should see and find the place of her treasure. If it were
+possible for the little ones' idea of their mother and the cow-boys'
+idea to be set side by side they would be found to have nothing in
+common, though both were right in their point of view. The ranchmen
+{Illustration: Tito and her Brood.} knew the Coyote only as a pair
+of despicable, cruel jaws, borne around on tireless legs, steered by
+incredible cunning, and leaving behind a track of destruction. The
+little ones knew her as a loving, gentle, all-powerful guardian. For
+them her breast was soft and warm and infinitely tender. She fed and
+warmed them, she was their wise and watchful keeper. She was always at
+hand with food when they hungered, with wisdom to foil the cunning of
+their foes, and with a heart of courage tried to crown her well-laid
+plans for them with uniform success.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+A baby Coyote is a shapeless, senseless, wriggling, and--to every one
+but its mother--a most uninteresting little lump. But after its eyes are
+open, after it has developed its legs, after it has learned to play in
+the sun with its brothers, or run at the gentle call of its mother when
+she brings home game for it to feed on, the baby Coyote becomes one of
+the cutest, dearest little rascals on earth. And when the nine that
+made up Coyotito's brood had reached this stage, it did not require the
+glamour of motherhood to make them objects of the greatest interest.
+
+The summer was now on. The little ones were beginning to eat flesh-meat,
+and Tito, with some assistance from Saddleback, was kept busy to supply
+both themselves and the brood. Sometimes she brought them a Prairie-dog,
+at other times she would come home with a whole bunch of Gophers
+and Mice in her jaws; and once or twice, by the clever trick of
+relay-chasing, she succeeded in getting one of the big Northern
+Jack-rabbits for the little folks at home.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+After they had feasted they would lie around in the sun for a time. Tito
+would mount guard on a bank and scan the earth and air with her keen,
+brassy eye, lest any dangerous foe should find their happy valley; and
+the merry pups played little games of tag, or chased the Butterflies, or
+had apparently desperate encounters with each other, or tore and worried
+the bones and feathers that now lay about the threshold of the home.
+One, the least, for there is usually a runt, stayed near the mother and
+climbed on her back or pulled at her tail. They made a lovely picture as
+they played, and the wrestling group in the middle seemed the focus
+of it all at first; but a keener, later look would have rested on the
+mother, quiet, watchful, not without anxiety, but, above all, with a
+face full of motherly tenderness. Oh, she was so proud and happy, and
+she would sit there and watch them and silently love them till it was
+time to go home, or until some sign of distant danger showed. Then, with
+a low growl, she gave the signal, and all disappeared from sight in a
+twinkling, after which she would set off to meet and turn the danger, or
+go on a fresh hunt for food.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+
+Oliver Jake had several plans for making a fortune, but each in turn was
+abandoned as soon as he found that it meant work. At one time or other
+most men of this kind see the chance of their lives in a poultry-farm.
+They cherish the idea that somehow the poultry do all the work. And
+without troubling himself about the details, Jake devoted an unexpected
+windfall to the purchase of a dozen Turkeys for his latest scheme. The
+Turkeys were duly housed in one end of Jake's shanty, so as to be well
+guarded, and for a couple of days were the object of absorbing interest,
+and had the best of care--too much, really. But Jake's ardour waned
+about the third day; then the recurrent necessity for long celebrations
+at Medora, and the ancient allurements of idle hours spent lying on the
+tops of sunny buttes and of days spent sponging on the hospitality
+of distant ranches, swept away the last pretence of attention to his
+poultry-farm. The Turkeys were utterly neglected--left to forage for
+themselves; and each time that Jake returned to his uninviting shanty,
+after a few days' absence, he found fewer birds, till at last none but
+the old Gobbler was left.
+
+Jake cared little about the loss, but was filled with indignation
+against the thief.
+
+He was now installed as wolver to the Broadarrow outfit. That is, he was
+supplied with poison, traps, and Horses, and was also entitled to all he
+could make out of Wolf bounties. A reliable man would have gotten pay in
+addition, for the ranchmen are generous, but Jake was not reliable.
+
+Every wolver knows, of course, that his business naturally drops into
+several well-marked periods.
+
+In the late whiter and early spring--the love-season--the Hounds will
+not hunt a She-wolf. They will quit the trail of a He-wolf at this
+time--to take up that of a She-wolf, but when they do overtake her, they,
+for some sentimental reason, invariably let her go in peace. In August
+and September the young Coyotes and Wolves are just beginning to run
+alone, and they are then easily trapped and poisoned. A month or so
+later the survivors have learned how to take care of themselves, but in
+the early summer the wolver knows that there are dens full of little
+ones all through the hills. Each den has from five to fifteen pups, and
+the only difficulty is to know the whereabouts of these family homes.
+
+One way of finding the dens is to watch from some tall butte for a
+Coyote carrying food to its brood. As this kind of wolving involved much
+lying still, it suited Jake very well. So, equipped with a Broadarrow
+arrow Horse and the boss's field-glasses, he put in week after week at
+den-hunting--that is, lying asleep in some possible look-out, with an
+occasional glance over the country when it seemed easier to do that than
+to lie still.
+
+The Coyotes had learned to avoid the open. They generally went homeward
+along the sheltered hollows; but this was not always possible, and one
+day, while exercising his arduous profession in the country west of
+Chimney Butte, Jake's glasses and glance fell by chance on a dark spot
+which moved along an open hillside. It was grey, and it looked like
+this: and even Jake knew that that meant Coyote. If it had been a grey
+Wolf it would have been so: with tail up. A Fox would have looked so:
+the large ears and tail and the yellow colour would have marked it. And
+a Deer would have looked so: That dark shade from the front end meant
+something in his mouth--probably something being carried home--and that
+would mean a den of little ones.
+
+{Illustration}
+
+He made careful note of the place, and returned there next day to watch,
+selecting a high butte near where he had seen the Coyote carrying the
+food. But all day passed, and he saw nothing. Next day, however, he
+descried a dark Coyote, old Saddleback, carrying a large Bird, and by
+the help of the glasses he made out that it was a Turkey, and then he
+knew that the yard at home was quite empty, and he also knew where the
+rest of them had gone, and vowed terrible vengeance when he should find
+the den. He followed Saddleback with his eyes as far as possible, and
+that was no great way, then went to the place to see if he could track
+him any farther; but he found no guiding signs, and he did not chance on
+the little hollow the was the playground of Tito's brood.
+
+Meanwhile Saddleback came to the little hollow and gave the low call
+that always conjured from the earth the unruly procession of the nine
+riotous little pups, and they dashed at the Turkey and pulled and
+worried till it was torn up, and each that got a piece ran to one side
+alone and silently proceeded to eat, seizing his portion in his jaws
+when another came near, and growling his tiny growl as he showed the
+brownish whites of his eyes in his effort to watch the intruder. Those
+that got the softer parts to feed on were well fed. But the three that
+did not turned all then energies on the frame of the Gobbler, and over
+that there waged a battle royal. This way and that they tugged and
+tussled, getting off occasional scraps, but really hindering each other
+feeding, till Tito glided in and deftly cut the Turkey into three or
+four, when each dashed off with a prize, over which he sat and chewed
+and smacked his lips and jammed his head down sideways to bring the
+backmost teeth to bear, while the baby runt scrambled into the home den,
+carrying in triumph his share--the Gobbler's grotesque head and neck.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+
+Jake felt that he had been grievously wronged, indeed ruined, by that
+Coyote that stole his Turkeys. He vowed he would skin them alive when he
+found the pups, and took pleasure in thinking about how he would do it.
+His attempt to follow Saddleback by trailing was a failure, and all his
+searching for the den was useless, but he had come prepared for any
+emergency. In case he found the den, he had brought a pick and shovel; in
+case he did not, he had brought a living white Hen.
+
+The Hen he now took to a broad open place near where he had seen
+Saddle-back, and there he tethered her to a stick of wood that she could
+barely drag. Then he made himself comfortable on a look-out that was
+near, and lay still to watch. The Hen, of course, ran to the end of the
+string, and then lay on the ground flopping stupidly. Presently the log
+gave enough to ease the strain, she turned by mere chance in another
+direction, and so, for a time, stood up to look around.
+
+The day went slowly by, and Jake lazily stretched himself on the blanket
+in his spying-place. Toward evening Tito came by on a hunt. This was not
+surprising, for the den was only half a mile away. Tito had learned,
+among other rules, this, "Never show yourself on the sky-line." In
+former days the Coyotes used to trot along the tops of the ridges for
+the sake of the chance to watch both sides. But men and guns had taught
+Tito that in this way you are sure to be seen. She therefore made a
+practice of running along near the top, and once in a while peeping
+over.
+
+This was what she did that evening as she went out to hunt for the
+children's supper, and her keen eyes fell on the white Hen, stupidly
+stalking about and turning up its eyes in a wise way each time a
+harmless Turkey-buzzard came in sight against a huge white cloud.
+
+Tito was puzzled. This was something new. It _looked_ like game, but
+she feared to take any chances. She circled all around without showing
+herself, then decided that, whatever it might be, it was better let
+alone. As she passed on, a fault whiff of smoke caught her attention.
+She followed cautiously, and under a butte far from the Hen she found
+Jake's camp. His bed was there, his Horse was picketed, and on the
+remains of the fire was a pot which gave out a smell which she well knew
+about men's camps--the smell of coffee. Tito felt uneasy at this proof
+that a man was staying so near her home, but she went off quietly on her
+hunt, keeping out of sight, and Jake knew nothing of her visit.
+
+About sundown he took in his decoy Hen, as Owls were abundant, and went
+back to his camp.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+
+Next day the Hen was again put out, and late that afternoon Saddleback
+came trotting by. As soon as his eye fell on the white Hen he stopped
+short, his head on one side, and gazed. Then he circled to get the wind,
+and went cautiously sneaking nearer, very cautiously, somewhat puzzled,
+till he got a whiff that reminded him of the place where he had found
+those Turkeys. The Hen took alarm, and tried to run away; but Saddleback
+made a rush, seized the Hen so fiercely that the string was broken, and
+away he dashed toward the home valley.
+
+Jake had fallen asleep, but the squawk of the Hen happened to awaken
+him, and he sat up in time to see her borne away in old Saddleback's
+jaws.
+
+As soon as they were out of sight Jake took up the white-feather trail.
+At first it was easily followed, for the Hen had shed plenty of plumes
+in her struggles; but once she was dead in Saddleback's jaws, very few
+feathers were dropped except where she was carried through the brush.
+But Jake was following quietly and certainly, for Saddleback had gone
+nearly in a straight line home to the little ones with the dangerous
+tell-tale prize. Once or twice there was a puzzling delay when the
+Coyote had changed his course or gone over an open place; but one white
+feather was good for fifty yards, and when the daylight was gone, Jake
+was not two hundred yards from the hollow, in which at that very moment
+were the nine little pups, having a perfectly delightful time with the
+Hen, pulling it to pieces, feasting and growling, sneezing the white
+feathers from their noses or coughing them from their throats.
+
+If a puff of wind had now blown from them toward Jake, it might have
+carried a flurry of snowy plumes or even the merry cries of the little
+revellers, and the den would have been discovered at once. But, as luck
+would have it, the evening lull was on, and all distant sounds were
+hidden by the crashing that Jake made in trying to trace his feather
+guides through the last thicket.
+
+About this time Tito was returning home with a Magpie that she had
+captured by watching till it went to feed within the ribs of a dead
+Horse, when she ran across Jake's trail. Now, a man on foot is always
+a suspicious character in this country. She followed the trail for a
+little to see where he was going, and that she knew at once from the
+scent. How it tells her no one can say, yet all hunters know that it
+does. And Tito marked that it was going straight toward her home.
+Thrilled with new fear, she hid the bird she was carrying, then followed
+the trail of the man. Within a few minutes she could hear him in the
+thicket, and Tito realized the terrible danger that was threatening. She
+went swiftly, quietly around to the den hollow, came on the heedless
+little roisterers, after giving the signal-call, which prevented them
+taking alarm at her approach; but she must have had a shock when she
+saw how marked the hollow and the den were now, all drifted over with
+feathers white as snow. Then she gave the danger-call that sent them all
+to earth, and the little glade was still.
+
+Her own nose was so thoroughly and always her guide that it was not
+likely she thought of the white-feathers being the telltale. But now she
+realized that a man, one she knew of old as a treacherous character, one
+whose scent had always meant mischief to her, that had been associated
+with all her own troubles and the cause of nearly all her desperate
+danger, was close to her darlings; was tracking them down, in a few
+minutes would surely have them in his merciless power.
+
+Oh, the wrench to the mother's heart at the thought of what she could
+foresee! But the warmth of the mother-love lent life to the mother-wit.
+Having sent her little ones out of sight, and by a sign conveyed to
+Saddleback her alarm, she swiftly came back to the man, then she crossed
+before him, thinking, in her half-reasoning way, that the man _must_
+be following a foot-scent just as she herself would do, but would, of
+course, take the stronger line of tracks she was now laying. She did not
+realize that the failing daylight made any difference. Then she trotted
+to one side, and to make doubly sure of being followed, she uttered the
+fiercest challenge she could, just as many a time she had done to make
+the Dogs pursue her:
+
+Grrr-wow-wow-wa-a-a-a-h,
+
+and stood still; then ran a little nearer and did it again, and then
+again much nearer, and repeated her bark, she was so determined that the
+wolver should follow her.
+
+Of course the wolver could see nothing of the Coyote, for the shades
+were falling. He had to give up the hunt anyway. His understanding of
+the details was as different as possible from that the Mother Coyote
+had, and yet it came to the same thing. He recognized that the Coyote's
+bark was the voice of the distressed mother trying to call him away. So
+he knew the brood must be close at hand, and all he now had to do was
+return in the morning and complete his search. So he made his way back
+to his camp.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+
+Saddleback thought they had won the victory. He felt secure, because the
+foot-scent that he might have supposed the man to be following would be
+stale by morning. Tito did not feel so safe. That two-legged beast was
+close to her home and her little ones; had barely been turned aside;
+might come back yet.
+
+The wolver watered and repicketed his Horse, kindled the fire anew, made
+his coffee and ate his evening meal, then smoked awhile before lying
+down to sleep, thinking occasionally of the little woolly scalps he
+expected to gather in the morning.
+
+He was about to roll up in his blanket when, out of the dark distance,
+there sounded the evening cry of the Coyote, the rolling challenge of
+more than one voice. Jake grinned in fiendish glee, and said: "There you
+are all right. Howl some more. I'll see you in the morning."
+
+It was the ordinary, or rather _one_ of the ordinary, camp-calls of the
+Coyote. It was sounded once, and then all was still. Jake soon forgot it
+in his loggish slumber.
+
+The callers were Tito and Saddleback. The challenge was not an empty
+bluff. It had a distinct purpose behind it--to know for sure whether the
+enemy had any dogs with him; and because there was no responsive bark
+Tito knew that he had none.
+
+Then Tito waited for an hour or so till the flickering fire had gone
+dead, and the only sound of life about the camp was the cropping of the
+grass by the picketed Horse. Tito crept near softly, so softly that the
+Horse did not see her till she was within twenty feet; then he gave a
+start that swung the tightened picket-rope up into the air, and snorted
+gently. Tito went quietly forward, and opening her wide gape, took the
+rope in, almost under her ears, between the great scissor-like back
+teeth, then chewed it for a few seconds. The fibres quickly frayed, and,
+aided by the strain the nervous Horse still kept up, the last of the
+strands gave way, and the Horse was free. He was not much alarmed; he
+knew the smell of Coyote; and after jumping three steps and walking six,
+he stopped.
+
+The sounding thumps of his hoofs on the ground awoke the sleeper. He
+looked up, but, seeing the Horse standing there, he went calmly off to
+sleep again, supposing that all went well.
+
+Tito had sneaked away, but she now returned like a shadow, avoided the
+sleeper, but came around, sniffed doubtfully at the coffee, and then
+puzzled over a tin can, while Saddleback examined the frying-pan full of
+"camp-sinkers" and then defiled both cakes and pan with dirt. The bridle
+hung on a low bush; the Coyotes did not know what it was, but just for
+luck they cut it into several pieces, then, taking the sacks that held
+Jake's bacon and flour, they carried them far away and buried them in
+the sand.
+
+Having done all the mischief she could, Tito, followed by her mate, now
+set off for a wooded gully some miles away, where was a hole that had
+been made first by a Chipmunk, but enlarged by several other animals,
+including a Fox that had tried to dig out its occupants. Tito stopped
+and looked at many possible places before she settled on this. Then she
+set to work to dig. Saddleback had followed in a half-comprehending way,
+till he saw what she was doing. Then when she, tired with digging, came
+out, he went into the hole, and after snuffing about went on with the
+work, throwing out the earth between his hind legs; and when it was
+piled up behind he would come out and push it yet farther away.
+
+And so they worked for hours, not a word said and yet with a sufficient
+comprehension of the object in view to work in relief of each other. And
+by the time the morning came they had a den big enough to do for their
+home, in case they must move, though it would not compare with the one
+in the grassy hollow.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+It was nearly sunrise before the wolver awoke. With the true instinct
+of a plainsman he turned to look for his Horse. _It was gone_. What his
+ship is to the sailor, what wings are to the Bird, what money is to the
+merchant, the Horse is to the plainsman. Without it he is helpless, lost
+at sea, wing broken, crippled in business. Afoot on the plains is the
+sum of earthly terrors. Even Jake realized this, and ere his foggy wits
+had fully felt the shock he sighted the steed afar on a flat, grazing
+and stepping ever farther from the camp. At a second glance Jake noticed
+that the Horse was trailing the rope. If the rope had been left behind
+Jake would have known that it was hopeless to try to catch him; he would
+have finished his den-hunt and found the little Coyotes. But, with the
+trailing rope, there was a good chance of catching the Horse; so Jake
+set out to try.
+
+Of all the maddening things there is nothing worse than to be almost,
+but not quite, able to catch your Horse. Do what he might, Jake could
+not get quite near enough to seize that short rope, and the Horse led
+him on and on, until at last they were well on the homeward trail.
+
+Now Jake was afoot anyhow, so seeing no better plan, he set out to
+follow that Horse right back to the Ranch.
+
+But when about seven miles were covered Jake succeeded in catching him.
+He rigged up a rough _jaquima_ with the rope and rode barebacked in
+fifteen minutes over the three miles that lay between him and the
+Sheep-ranch, giving vent all the way to his pent-up feelings in cruel
+abuse of that Horse. Of course it did not do any good, and he knew that,
+but he considered it was heaps of satisfaction. Here Jake got a meal
+and borrowed a saddle and a mongrel Hound that could run a trail, and
+returned late in the afternoon to finish his den-hunt. Had he known it,
+he now could have found it without the aid of the cur, for it was really
+close at hand when he took up the feather-trail where he last had left
+it. Within one hundred yards he rose to the top of the little ridge;
+then just over it, almost face to face, he came on a Coyote, carrying in
+its mouth a large Rabbit. The Coyote leaped just at the same moment that
+Jake fired his revolver, and the Dog broke into a fierce yelling and
+dashed off in pursuit, while Jake blazed and blazed away, without
+effect, and wondered why the Coyote should still hang on to that Rabbit
+as she ran for her life with the Dog yelling at her heels. Jake followed
+as far as he could and fired at each chance, but scored no hit. So when
+they had vanished among the buttes he left the Dog to follow or come
+back as he pleased, while he returned to the den, which, of course, was
+plain enough now. Jake knew that the pups were there yet. Had he not
+seen the mother bringing a Rabbit for them?
+
+So he set to work with pick and shovel all the rest of that day. There
+were plenty of signs that the den had inhabitants, and, duly encouraged,
+he dug on, and after several hours of the hardest work he had ever done,
+he came to the end of the den--_only to find it empty_. After cursing
+his luck at the first shock of disgust, he put on his strong leather
+glove and groped about in the nest. He felt something firm and drew it
+out. It was the head and neck of his own Turkey Gobbler, and that was
+all he got for his pains.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+Tito had not been idle during the time that the enemy was Horse-hunting.
+Whatever Saddleback might have done, Tito would live in no fool's
+paradise. Having finished the new den, she trotted back to the little
+valley of feathers, and the first young one that came to meet her at the
+door of this home was a broad-headed one much like herself. She seized
+him by the neck and set off, carrying him across country toward the
+new den, a couple of miles away. Every little while she had to put her
+offspring down to rest and give it a chance to breathe. This made the
+moving slow, and the labour of transporting the pups occupied all that
+day, for Saddleback was not allowed to carry any of them, probably
+because he was too rough. Beginning with the biggest and brightest, they
+were carried away one at a time, and late in the afternoon only the runt
+was left. Tito had not only worked at digging all night, she had also
+trotted over thirty miles, half of it with a heavy baby to carry. But
+she did not rest. She was just coming out of the den, carrying her
+youngest in her mouth, when over the very edge of this hollow appeared
+the mongrel Hound, and a little way behind him Wolver Jake.
+
+Away went Tito, holding the baby tight, and away went the Dog behind
+her.
+
+_Bang! bang! bang!_ said the revolver.
+
+But not a shot touched her. Then over the ridge they dashed, where the
+revolver could not reach her, and sped across a flat, the tired Coyote
+and her baby, and the big fierce Hound behind her, bounding his hardest.
+Had she been fresh and unweighted she could soon have left the clumsy
+cur that now was barking furiously on her track and rather gaining than
+losing in the race. But she put forth all her strength, careered along a
+slope, where she gained a little, then down across a brushy flat where
+the cruel bushes robbed her of all she had gained. But again into the
+open they came, and the wolver, labouring far behind, got sight of them
+and fired again and again with his revolver, and only stirred the dust,
+but still it made her dodge and lose time, and it also spurred the Dog.
+The hunter saw the Coyote, his old acquaintance of the bobtail, carrying
+still, as he thought, the Jack-rabbit she had been bringing to her
+brood, and wondered at her strange persistence.
+
+"Why doesn't she drop that weight when flying for her life?" But on she
+went and gamely bore her load over the hills, the man cursing his luck
+that he had not brought his Horse, and the mongrel bounding in deadly
+earnest but thirty feet behind her. Then suddenly in front of Tito
+yawned a little cut-bank gully. Tired and weighted, she dared not try
+the leap; she skirted around. But the Dog was fresh; he cleared it
+easily, and the mother's start was cut down by half. But on she went,
+straining to hold the little one high above the scratching brush and the
+dangerous bayonet-spikes; but straining too much, for the helpless cub
+was choking in his mother's grip. She must lay him down or strangle him;
+with such a weight she could not much longer keep out of reach. She
+tried to give the howl for help, but her voice was muffled by the cub,
+now struggling for breath, and as she tried to ease her grip on him a
+sudden wrench jerked him from her mouth into the grass--into the power
+of the merciless Hound. Tito was far smaller than the Dog; ordinarily
+she would have held him in fear; but her {Illustration: Tito's Race For
+Life} little one, her baby, was the only thought now, and as the brute
+sprang forward to tear it in his wicked jaws, she leaped between and
+stood facing him with all her mane erect, her teeth exposed, and plainly
+showed her resolve to save her young one at any price. The Dog was not
+brave, only confident that he was bigger and had the man behind him.
+But the man was far away, and balked in his first rush at the trembling
+little Coyote, that tried to hide in the grass, the cur hesitated a
+moment, and Tito howled the long howl for help--the muster-call:
+
+Yap-yap-yap-yah-yah-yah-h-h-h-h Yap-yap-yap-yah-yah-yah-h-h-h-h,
+
+and made the buttes around re-echo so that Jake could not tell where it
+came from; but someone else there was that heard and did know whence it
+came. The Dog's courage revived on hearing something like a far-away
+shout. Again he sprang at the little one, but again the mother balked
+him with her own body, and then they closed in deadly struggle. "Oh, if
+Saddleback would only come!" But no one came, and now she had no further
+chance to call. Weight is everything in a closing fight, and Tito soon
+went down, bravely fighting to the last, but clearly worsted; and the
+Hound's courage grew with the sight of victory, and all he thought of
+now was to finish her and then kill her helpless baby in its turn. He
+had no ears or eyes for any other thing, till out of the nearest sage
+there flashed a streak of grey, and in a trice the big-voiced coward
+was hurled back by a foe almost as heavy as himself--hurled back with a
+crippled shoulder. Dash, chop, and staunch old Saddleback sprang on him
+again. Tito struggled to her feet, and they closed on him together. His
+courage fled at once when he saw the odds, and all he wanted now was
+safe escape--escape from Saddleback, whose speed was like the wind,
+escape from Tito, whose baby's life was at stake. Not twenty jumps away
+did he get; not breath enough had he to howl for help to his master in
+the distant hills; not fifteen yards away from her little one that he
+meant to tear, they tore him all to bits.
+
+And Tito lifted the rescued young one, and travelling as slowly as she
+wished, they reached the new-made den. There the family safely reunited,
+far away from danger of further attack by Wolver Jake or his kind.
+
+And there they lived in peace till their mother had finished their
+training, and every one of them grew up wise in the ancient learning of
+the plains, wise in the later wisdom that the ranchers' war has forced
+upon them, and not only they, but their children's children, too. The
+Buffalo herds have gone; they have succumbed to the rifles of the
+hunters. The Antelope droves are nearly gone; Hound and lead were too
+much for them. The Blacktail bands have dwindled before axe and fence.
+The ancient dwellers of the Badlands have faded like snow under the new
+conditions, but the Coyotes are no more in fear of extinction. Their
+morning and evening song still sounds from the level buttes, as it did
+long years ago when every plain was a teeming land of game. They have
+learned the deadly secrets of traps and poisons, they know how to baffle
+the gunner and Hound, they have matched their wits with the hunter's
+wits. They have learned how to prosper in a land of man-made plenty, in
+spite of the worst that man can do, and it was Tito that taught them
+how.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WHY THE CHICKADEE GOES CRAZY ONCE A YEAR
+
+
+Published September, 1893, in "Our Animal Friends," the organ of the
+American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
+
+A long time ago, when there was no winter in the north, the Chickadees
+lived merrily in the woods with their relatives, and cared for nothing
+but to get all the pleasure possible out of their daily life in the
+thickets. But at length Mother Carey sent them all a warning that they
+must move to the south, for hard frost and snow were coming on their
+domains, with starvation close behind. The Nuthatches and other cousins
+of the Chickadees took this warning seriously, and set about learning
+how and when to go; but Tomtit, who led his brothers, only laughed and
+turned a dozen wheels around a twig that served him for a trapeze.
+
+"Go to the south?" said he. "Not I; I am too well contented here; and as
+for frost and snow, I never saw any and have no faith in them."
+
+But the Nuthatches and Kinglets were in such a state of bustle that at
+length the Chickadees did catch a little of the excitement, and left off
+play for a while to question their friends; and they were not pleased
+with what they learned, for it seemed that all of them were to make a
+journey that would last many days, and the little Kinglets were actually
+going as far as the Gulf of Mexico. Besides, they were to fly by night
+in order to avoid their enemies the Hawks, and the weather at this
+season was sure to be stormy. So the Chickadees said it was all
+nonsense, and went off in a band, singing and chasing one another
+through the woods.
+
+But their cousins were in earnest. They bustled about making their
+preparations, and learned beforehand what it was necessary for them to
+know about the way. The great wide river running southward, the moon at
+height, and the trumpeting of the Geese were to be their guides, and
+they were to sing as they flew in the darkness, to keep from being
+scattered. The noisy, rollicking Chickadees were noisier than ever as
+the preparations went on, and made sport of their relatives, who were
+now gathered in great numbers, in the woods along the river; and at
+length, when the proper time of the moon came, the cousins arose in a
+body and flew away in the gloom. The Chickadees said that the cousins
+all were crazy, made some good jokes about the Gulf of Mexico, and then
+dashed away in a game of tag through the woods, which, by the by, seemed
+rather deserted now, while the weather, too, was certainly turning
+remarkably cool.
+
+At length the frost and snow really did come, and the Chickadees were
+in a woeful case. Indeed, they were frightened out of their wits, and
+dashed hither and thither, seeking in vain for someone to set them
+aright on the way to the south. They flew wildly about the woods, till
+they were truly crazy. I suppose there was not a Squirrel-hole or a
+hollow log in the neighbourhood that some Chickadee did not enter to
+inquire if this was the Gulf of Mexico. But no one could tell anything
+about it, no one was going that way, and the great river was hidden
+under ice and snow.
+
+About this time a messenger from Mother Carey was passing with a message
+to the Caribou in the far north; but all he could tell the Chickadees
+was that _he_ could not be their guide, as he had no instructions, and,
+at any rate, he was going the other way. Besides, he told them they had
+had the same notice as their cousins whom they had called "crazy"; and
+from what he knew of Mother Carey, they would probably have to brave
+it out here all through the snow, not only now, but in all following
+winters; so they might as well make the best of it.
+
+This was sad news for the Tomtits; but they were brave little fellows,
+and seeing they could not help themselves, they set about making the
+best of it. Before a week had gone by they were in their usual good
+spirits again, scrambling about the twigs or chasing one another as
+before. They had still the assurance that winter would end. So filled
+were they with this idea that even at its commencement, when a fresh
+blizzard came on, they would gleefully remark to one another that it was
+a "sign of spring," and one or another of the band would lift his voice
+in the sweet little chant that we all know so well:
+
+{Illustration: Spring Soon}
+
+Another would take it up and re-echo:
+
+{Illustration: Spring coming}
+
+and they would answer and repeat the song until the dreary woods rang
+again with the good news, and people learned to love the brave little
+Bird that sets his face so cheerfully to meet so hard a case. But to
+this day, when the chill wind blows through the deserted woods, the
+Chickadees seem to lose their wits for a few days, and dart into all
+sorts of odd and dangerous places. They may then be found in great
+cities, or open prairies, cellars, chimneys, and hollow logs; and the
+next time you find one of the wanderers in any such place, be sure to
+remember that Tomtit goes crazy once a year, and probably went into his
+strange retreat in search of the Gulf of Mexico.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Johnny Bear, by E. T. Seton
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