FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Dec. 25 , 1909 . 
into four parts, hunting, fighting, eating and 
sleeping; with some minor diversions thrown 
in occasionally for good measure. Thus it hap¬ 
pened that the dog slept on until his master 
had gone a hundred yards or more toward his 
quarters. 
When Coyote awoke he glanced quickly 
around; then stepped to the door where he 
caught sight of the officer crossing the parade. 
He started to join him at a rather deliberate 
pace, but had not gone far when a curious, 
sharp cry caused both dog and master to look 
back, and the latter to stop short with an 
interested grin. 
The soldiers of Company G, quartered next 
to Company F, were the proud possessors of a 
tame raccoon, which years and good feeding 
had caused to grow to a portentous size. The 
men had encouraged their pet in evil ways; and 
he had, at one time and another, attacked and 
put to rout most of the dogs which the un¬ 
varying kindness of the soldiers and the plenti¬ 
ful food had gathered around the barracks. 
A few of these latter, however, were them¬ 
selves somewhat versed in the art of single 
combat, and the belligerent ’coon had been 
rescued from two or three encounters which 
had promised ill for his continued existence. 
His antagonists, naturally, avoided him there¬ 
after; like the warrior Diomed, they saw little 
prospect of gain in coping with a dangerous 
adversary who would be rescued by the gods 
directly the combat went against him. The 
big ’coon did not view their avoidance of him 
in this light. He was, to his way of thinking, 
monarch of all he surveyed. 
Ordinarily he was kept on a long chain; and, 
in consequence, Coyote had not yet made his 
acquaintance. The dog’s knowledge of the race 
was limited. A badly wounded one, which he 
had easily dispatched, and a tame ’coon of 
docile habits, which had insisted on making 
friends with him—much to his disgust—had 
furnished the total of his experience. It was 
G Company’s pet, escaped from his chain in 
some manner, that had uttered the strange cry 
and that could now be seen running toward the 
collie at his best speed. He hunched himself 
into a perfect ball and threw his hindpaws above 
his ears at every stride, so that his appearance, 
at least from a front view, was highly ludicrous; 
indeed, he was scarcely recognized by the 
officer and not at all by the dog. The latter 
gazed at the strange object for an instant, and 
then loped toward his master, glancing over his 
shoulder the while. Arrived near the latter, he 
whirled about and bared his teeth, as much as 
to say, “I don’t know what you are, but come 
on, anyhow!” 
Just at this instant First Sergeant Holmes, 
of G, caught sight of the ’coon and whistled a 
peculiar note. The beast turned as obediently 
as any dog and trotted back toward him. A 
look of comprehension replaced the snarl on 
Coyote’s visage, and he glanced at his master 
for permission to pursue. He did not get it. 
The lieutenant would have been “tickled to 
death” had they actually come to grips on the 
’coon’s own motion, but it would have been 
,anything but right for him to have set his dog 
J on the soldiers’ pet. Before he reached his 
quarters, however, he recalled an unsigned 
'paper and retraced his steps. The big ’coon 
was nowhere to be seen and the officer naturally 
concluded that he had been chained up again. 
He entered the orderly room with the dog and 
left the door open. The paper examined and 
signed, he rose and was casting a final glance 
over it, when he became aware of the collie 
looking up at him from his right side and of the 
’coon in the act of seizing one of the dog’s 
hind legs. 
Before he could move, a sharp yelp announced 
Coyote’s displeased surprise. The ’coon’s 
teeth had met in the leg selected for his crafty 
assault. 
The dog whirled to face his foe, but the 
latter with clumsily swift and bear-like move¬ 
ments maneuvered to retain his position. Twice 
around they spun, each oblivious of the open 
door behind. Then the collie sprang; and the 
combat instantly resolved itself into a whirling 
ball of yellow and gray fur from which sounds 
proceeded, but not vocal ones; Coyote and the 
big ’coon had each fought too many fights to 
waste their breath. 
A few seconds elapsed thus. The officer 
sprang to a seat on the big table, so as to give 
the combatants free floor space, and watched 
keenly, but he was unable to perceive more 
than that the ball was extremely busy within 
itself. Presently it brought up with a smack 
against the office chair and details became 
visible once more. 
Coyote was on his back with the ’coon 
transversely across him, head to his right, and 
not far from his throat, which the gray warrior 
instantly endeavored to seize. The dog struck 
the ’coon’s head with his right forepaw, throw¬ 
ing him almost directly across his chest, fol¬ 
lowing up the blow with the quickness of light, 
he grasped the ’coon from beneath and back 
of the shoulders, and closed his jaws with 1 
force which caused the ’coon to throw out head 
and paws as though his skin had been full of 
wind instead of meat. 
Coyote relaxed his grip a trifle and the ’coon 
endeavored to seize his ear. A rib cracked 
audibly in the still room as the collie again 
crushed his long jaws together. Evidently the 
combative ’coon was in the way of learning 
something, even if he should not live to use the 
information. He gasped as he straightened out 
again under the killing pressure. 
Just at this point the officer became aware of 
a crowd of men in the doorway. From it a 
soldier darted; and, as the yellow fighter re¬ 
laxed an instant for the final crunch, snatched 
his pet and sprang back with quickness suf¬ 
ficient to avoid the flash-like leap of the dog 
that followed. 
The lieutenant grasped the collie’s tail and 
pulled him back into the room, where he held 
him until the men had carried their pet away, 
which they did with many expressions of con¬ 
cern. Fortunately for Coyote’s popularity, at 
least with G Company, the ’coon, after moping 
for some weeks, finally recovered, although his 
chest looked as if he had fallen into a threshing 
machine. 
A month afterward he could have been seen 
tugging at his chain and scraping the outer 
edges of his feet along the ground with war¬ 
like intent, while Coyote regarded him, a few 
paces distant, with a semi-quizzical expression 
which his master, fancifully perhaps, translated 
as a compound of utter disgust and unwilling 
admiration. 
THE TOP RAIL. 
A great many years ago an enthusiastic pistol 
shot who was an indifferent fishermen came for¬ 
ward with a theory that attracted some attention 
and much discussion pro and con. He extolled 
the merit of the .22 caliber pistol as an accessory 
to the angler’s kit, maintaining that when “hung 
up” all one needed to do was to produce the 
handy pistol, shoot off the limb, release his fly 
and proceed with his fishing. Being an expert 
shot, he knew the thing was possible—for h m— 
but ignored the fact that not one out of every 
hundred anglers could regain their flies in this 
way in as many trials. Neither does the angler 
care to admit that his fly gets hung up in trees 
occasionally, though there is nothing in this to 
be ashamed of, for the skilled caster cannot al¬ 
ways accurately estimate just where his back line 
will be at given times where overhanging limbs 
are numerous; indeed, he is often astonished to 
find that his fly goes forward cleanly when the 
other thing is expected, and in a gusty wind 
casting on narrow streams is uncertain at best. 
But it is not often that one grows so careless 
as to land a fly in solid wood high overhead 
when low casts are safer, and in case of fouling 
one will find his fly in a bush or flexible low 
limb, easily reached, pulled down by means of 
one of the handy releasers often carried. 
Another pistol shooter repeats the old story 
in a recent issue of a magazine, but I doubt if 
he has ever tried a pistol in this way. A better 
use to which it may be put by the angler is in 
shooting water snakes. In wading a mountain 
stream one sees numbers of these trout-eaters. 
I have shot one now and then, and can say from 
Experience that the .22 pistol is a satisfactory 
part of the outfit of that angler who will use it in 
this way. It is good fun, too, though I can make 
a better score in a day on snakes than on limbs. 
I have heard old-time salmon fishers tell of 
hooking their canoemen at various times, a thing 
that may easily happen, since a long line is more 
or less unwieldy at best and particularly so when 
one is seated in a canoe and a fluky wind is 
blowing. The switch cast which one is tempted 
to employ at times is often productive of acci¬ 
dents to spectators and so are other casts if one 
is “fishing fine and far off”; but while long casts 
are pretty to watch, they are not very satisfac¬ 
tory, the fine casting at short range being more 
productive of results when the day’s score is 
reckoned. 
* * * 
It is difficult for Americans to understand 
why British opinion permits punt gunning for 
wildfowl. In one of the London papers a gun¬ 
ner boasts that with five eight-bore cartridges 
he killed 117 knots and two dunlin; with four 
more shots he bagged 17; total for nine shots, 
136 birds. As a knot or sandpiper weighs about 
five ounces, he was compelled to make two trips 
with one day’s bag. Then he had them all photo¬ 
graphed in a heap and proudly exhibited the 
picture. Grizzly King. 
m 
