80 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



smelled the alkaloid vapors rising from the lep- 

 rous lake, and felt the scurvy salt-grass and the 

 scabby crust crack under my feet, I could only 

 marvel at life — that the sagebrush and the jack 

 and the coyote could find a living in the wilds of 

 this desert death. So far as I could discover, there 

 was no live thing, not even algse, in the water of 

 the lake; but here and there the rib of some 

 starved steer, or a horn, protruding from the sur- 

 face, as other bones, in whitened heaps, lay scat- 

 tered about the shore. The white egrets and the 

 pelicans crossed the desert to Harney and Mal- 

 heur Lakes for their fishing. To find one's self 

 with four good feet in a land like this were des- 

 perate enough ; the odds are too many against the 

 coyote with only three. 



One would know by the head and face of the 

 coyote that he is among the wisest and most capa- 

 ble of animals, schooled to privation and hardship, 

 and able to hold his own, not only with the 

 desert, but with the homesteader as well. He is 

 doomed to disappear, utterly perhaps, for he is 

 just enough larger than the fox and just enough 

 more of a nuisance in a settled community to 

 make himself the enemy of the farmer and the 



