106 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. 



down the deer, pronghorn, and others, tiring them 

 out by trickery and overcoming them by numbers. 

 The buffalo formerly afforded him an unfailing 

 supply in the way of carrion and fragments left 

 by his Brahmins, the timber-wolves, who stead- 

 ily followed the herds and seized upon decrepit 

 or aged stragglers, and upon any calves that they 

 were able to "cut out" and pull down. In such 

 piracy the coyotes themselves engaged whenever 

 they saw an opportunity, although it tried their 

 highest powers ; and success, when attained, fol- 

 lowed a system of tireless and sanguinary worry- 

 ing. The poor bison or elk upon which they 

 concentrated might trample and gore half the 

 pack, but the rest would stay by him and finally 

 nag him to exhaustion and death. 



I remember once reading an account of the strat- 

 egy by which a large stag was forced to succumb 

 to a pack that had driven it upon the ice of a 

 frozen lake, as they had deliberately planned to 

 do. Part of the wolves then formed a circle about 

 the pond, within which the slipping and exhausted 

 deer was chased round and round by patrols, fre- 

 quently relieved, until, fainting with fatigue and 

 loss of blood, the noble animal fell, to be torn to 

 pieces in an instant. 



Far less worthy game attracts him, however. 

 In California and New Mexico he has become so 

 destructive to the sheep that incessant war is 

 waged upon him by the ranchmen. In Kansas 



