« I 



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. 



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. 



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 



26b 



