GRAY WOLVES AND COYOTES 233 
old ones. The most effectual method is by 
searching out and destroying the dens and pups, 
of which six to ten are usually born in a litter 
to a pair of gray wolves. These are produced 
early in spring in some rocky niche or cave or 
sheltered hollow in the open country, and in a 
hollow log or stump when the region is forested. 
Both parents continue in company, caring for 
the young, until the latter are well-grown. 
Character of the coyote. The smaller-red- 
dish prairie-wolves or coyotes (coy-y6-teh) are 
far more widespread, numerous and annoying, 
though rarely dangerous; and if farming oper- 
ations, with their attending domestic animals 
and poultry, are to be carried on in the plains 
country or mountain valleys of the West; and if 
sheep-farming is ever to be made productive 
there, these keen and pertinacious little wolves 
must be subdued. At the same time it must 
not be forgotten that they perform a most 
excellent service by killing a vast number of 
noxious mice, gophers, prairie-dogs, rabbits 
and other pests. If it were possible, then, to 
keep the coyote as a harmless ranger of the 
plains,—a sort of Cossack that freed the fron- 
