In Winter Quarters 



the dog is only bluffing and doesn't care 

 who knows it. Lots of folks are good at 

 that same sort of game, when it is 

 equally safe to play it. 



The members of the coyote pack 

 have not forgotten how to howl. Three 

 or four times a day, and always once 

 in the early morning hours, they join 

 in the shrill staccato chorus that may 

 be heard for blocks, bringing the weird 

 music of the foothills and the plains to 

 our very doors. I never tire of that. 

 It calls to something somewhere deep 

 down in my nature. Why is it? Why 

 do those short, sharp notes, rising and 

 falling in savage cadence, bring a never 

 failing response? I should have been 

 born and should have lived I suppose 

 where that challenge would have had 

 a deeper meaning. Thus are the pri- 

 mordial instincts of the cave preserved 

 and handed down by the subtle force 

 of heredity through all the generations. 

 And I have a stone hammer I once 

 found in the Black Hills country that 

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