Bingo 



not idle. A man living as far away as Petrel, 

 said he saw a large black wolf kill a coyote on 

 the snow one winter evening, but afterward he 

 changed his opinion and ' reckoned it must 'a' 

 been Wright's dog.' Whenever the body of 

 a winter-killed ox or horse was exposed, Bingo 

 was sure to repair to it nightly, and driving 

 away the prairie wolves, feast to repletion. 



Sometimes the object of a night foray was 

 merely to maul some distant neighbor's dog, 

 and notwithstanding vengeful threats, there 

 seemed no reason to fear that the Bingo breed 

 would die out. One man even avowed that he 

 had seen a prairie wolf accompanied by three 

 young ones which resembled the mother, ex- 

 cepting that they were very large and black 

 and had a ring of white around the muzzle. 



True or not as that may be, I know that late 

 in March, while we were out in the sleigh 

 with Bingo trotting behind, a prairie wolf was 

 started from a hollow. Away it went with 

 Bingo in full chase, but the wolf did not greatly 

 exert itself to escape, and within a short dis- 

 tance Bingo was close up, yet strange to tell, 

 there was no grappling, no fight 1 



165 



