WOLVES AND WOLF-HOUNDS. 193 



had entered the yard of a Montana ranch 

 house slew in quick succession both of the 

 large mastiffs by which it was assailed. The 

 immense agility and ferocity of the wild beast, 

 the terrible snap of his long-toothed jaws, and 

 the admirable training in which he always is, 

 give him a great advantage over fat, small- 

 toothed, smooth-skinned dogs, even though 

 they are nominally supposed to belong to the 

 fighting classes. In the way that bench com- 

 petitions are arranged nowadays this is but 

 natural, as there is no temptation to produce a 

 worthy class of fighting dog when the rewards 

 are given upon technical points wholly uncon- 

 nected with the dog's usefulness. A prize- 

 winning mastiff or bulldog may be almost use- 

 less for the only purposes for which his kind 

 is ever useful at all. A mastiff, if properly 

 trained and of sufficient size, might possibly 

 be able to meet a young or undersized Texan 

 wolf ; but I have never seen a dog of this 

 variety which I would esteem a match single- 

 handed for one of the huge .timber wolves of 

 western Montana. Even if the dog was the 

 heavier of the two, his teeth and claws would 

 be very much smaller and weaker and his hide 

 less tough. Indeed I have known of bnt one 

 dog which single-handed encountered and slew 

 a wolf ; this was the large vicious mongrel 

 whose feats are recorded in my Hunting Trips 

 of a Ranchman. 



General Marcy of the United States Army 

 informed me that he once chased a huge wolf 

 which had gotten away with a small trap on 

 '3 



