II

Tito was a pretty little creature, with woolly body, a puppy-like

expression, and a head that was singularly broad between the ears.

But, as a children's pet, she--for it proved to be a female--was not a

success. She was distant and distrustful. She ate her food and seemed

healthy, but never responded to friendly advances; never {Illustration:

Coyotito, the Captive} even learned to come out of the box when called.

This probably was due to the fact that the kindness of the small

children was offset by the roughness of the men and boys, who did not

hesitate to drag her out by the chain when they wished to see her. On

these occasions she would suffer in silence, playing possum, shamming

dead, for she seemed to know that that was the best thing to do. But as

soon as released she would once more retire into the darkest corner of

her box, and watch her tormentors with eyes that, at the proper angle,

showed a telling glint of green.

{Illustration}

Among the children of the ranchmen was a thirteen-year-old boy.

The fact that he grew up to be like his father, a kind, strong, and

thoughtful man, did not prevent him being, at this age, a shameless

little brute.

Like all boys in that country, he practised lasso-throwing, with a view

to being a cow-boy. Posts and stumps are uninteresting things to catch.

His little brothers and sisters were under special protection of the

Home Government. The Dogs ran far away whenever they saw him coming with

the rope in his hands. So he must needs practise on the unfortunate

Coyotito. She soon learned that her only hope for peace was to hide in

the kennel, or, if thrown at when outside, to dodge the rope by lying as

flat as possible on the ground. Thus Lincoln unwittingly taught the

Coyote the dangers and limitations of a rope, and so he proved a

blessing in disguise--a very perfect disguise. When the Coyote had

thoroughly learned how to baffle the lasso, the boy terror devised a new

amusement. He got a large trap of the kind known as "Fox-size." This he

set in the dust as he had seen Jake set a Wolf-trap, close to the

kennel, and over it he scattered scraps of meat, in the most approved

style for Wolf-trapping. After a while Tito, drawn by the smell of the

meat, came hungrily sneaking out toward it, and almost immediately was

caught in the trap by one foot. The boy terror was watching from a near

hiding-place. He gave a wild Indian whoop of delight, then rushed

forward to drag the Coyote out of the box into which she had retreated.

After some more delightful thrills of excitement and struggle he got his

lasso on Tito's body, and, helped by a younger brother, a most promising

pupil, he succeeded in setting the Coyote free from the trap before the

grown-ups had discovered his amusement. One or two experiences like this

taught her a mortal terror of traps. She soon learned the smell of the

steel, and could detect and avoid it, no matter how cleverly Master

Lincoln might bury it in the dust while the younger brother screened the

operation from the intended victim by holding his coat over the door of

Tito's kennel.

{Illustration}

One day the fastening of her chain gave way, and Tito went off in an

uncertain fashion, trailing her chain behind her. But she was seen by

one of the men, who fired a charge of bird-shot at her. The burning,

stinging, and surprise of it all caused her to retreat to the one place

she knew, her own kennel. The chain was fastened again, and Tito added

to her ideas this, a horror of guns and the smell of gunpowder; and this

also, that the one safety from them is to "lay low."

{Illustration}

There were yet other rude experiences in store for the captive.

Poisoning Wolves was a topic of daily talk at the Ranch, so it was not

surprising that Lincoln should privately experiment on Coyotito. The

deadly strychnine was too well guarded to be available. So Lincoln hid

some Rough on Rats in a piece of meat, threw it to the captive, and

sat by to watch, as blithe and conscience-clear as any professor of

chemistry trying a new combination.

Tito smelled the meat--everything had to be passed on by her nose.

Her nose was in doubt. There was a good smell of meat, a familiar but

unpleasant smell of human hands, and a strange new odour, but not the

odour of the trap; so she bolted the morsel. Within a few minutes began

to have fearful pains in stomach, followed by cramps. Now in all the

Wolf tribe there is the instinctive habit to throw up anything that

disagrees with them, and after a minute or two of suffering the Coyote

sought relief in this way; and to make it doubly sure she hastily

gobbled some blades of grass, and in less than an hour was quite well

again.

{Illustration}

Lincoln had put in poison enough for a dozen Coyotes. Had he put in less

she could not have felt the pang till too late, but she recovered and

never forgot that peculiar smell that means such awful after-pains. More

than that, she was ready thenceforth to fly at once to the herbal cure

that Nature had everywhere provided. An instinct of this kind grows

quickly, once followed. It had taken minutes of suffering in the first

place to drive her to the easement. Thenceforth, having learned, it

was her first thought on feeling pain. The little miscreant did indeed

succeed in having her swallow another bait with a small dose of poison,

but she knew what to do now and had almost no suffering.

Later on, a relative sent Lincoln a Bull-terrier, and the new

combination was a fresh source of spectacular interest for the boy, and

of tribulation for the Coyote. It all emphasized for her that old idea

to "lay low"--that is, to be quiet, unobtrusive, and hide when danger

is in sight. The grown-ups of the household at length forbade these

persecutions, and the Terrier was kept away from the little yard where

the Coyote was chained up.

{Illustration}

It must not be supposed that, in all this, Tito was a sweet, innocent

victim. She had learned to bite. She had caught and killed several

chickens by shamming sleep while they ventured to forage within the

radius of her chain. And she had an inborn hankering to sing a morning

and evening hymn, which procured for her many beatings. But she learned

to shut up, the moment her opening notes were followed by a rattle of

doors or windows, for these sounds of human nearness had frequently been

followed by a "_bang_" and a charge of bird-shot, which somehow did no

serious harm, though it severely stung her hide. And these experiences

all helped to deepen her terror of guns and of those who used them. The

object of these musical outpourings was not clear. They happened usually

at dawn or dusk, but sometimes a loud noise at high noon would set her

going. The song consisted of a volley of short barks, mixed with doleful

squalls that never failed to set the Dogs astir in a responsive uproar,

and once or twice had begotten a far-away answer from some wild Coyote

in the hills.

There was one little trick that she had developed which was purely

instinctive--that is, an inherited habit. In the back end of her kennel

she had a little _cache_ of bones, and knew exactly where one or two

lumps of unsavoury meat were buried within the radius of her chain, for

a time of famine which never came. If anyone approached these

hidden treasures she watched with anxious eyes, but made no other

demonstration. If she saw that the meddler knew the exact place, she

took an early opportunity to secrete them elsewhere.

After a year of this life Tito had grown to full size, and had learned

many things that her wild kinsmen could not have learned without losing

their lives in doing it. She knew and feared traps. She had learned to

avoid poison baits, and knew what to do at once if, by some mistake,

she should take one. She knew what guns are. She had learned to cut her

morning and evening song very short. She had some acquaintance with

Dogs, enough to make her hate and distrust them all. But, above all, she

had this idea: whenever danger is near, the very best move possible is

to lay low, be very quiet, do nothing to attract notice. Perhaps the

little brain that looked out of those changing yellow eyes was the

storehouse of much other knowledge about men, but what it was did not

appear.

{Illustration}

The Coyote was fully grown when the boss of the outfit bought a couple

of thoroughbred Greyhounds, wonderful runners, to see whether he could

not entirely extirpate the remnant of the Coyotes that still destroyed

occasional Sheep and Calves on the range, and at the same time find

amusement in the sport. He was tired of seeing that Coyote in the yard;

so, deciding to use her for training the Dogs, he had her roughly thrown

into a bag, then carried a quarter of a mile away and dumped out. At the

same time the Greyhounds were slipped and chivvied on. Away they went

bounding at their matchless pace, that nothing else on four legs could

equal, and away went the Coyote, frightened by the noise of the men,

frightened even to find herself free. Her quarter-mile start quickly

shrank to one hundred yards, the one hundred to fifty, and on sped the

flying Dogs. Clearly there was no chance for her. On and nearer they

came. In another minute she would have been stretched out--not a doubt

of it. But on a sudden she stopped, turned, and walked toward the Dogs

with her tail serenely waving in the air and a friendly cock to her

ears. Greyhounds are peculiar Dogs. Anything that runs away, they are

going to catch and kill if they can. Anything that is calmly facing them

becomes at once a non-combatant. They bounded over and past the Coyote

before they could curb their own impetuosity, and returned completely

nonplussed. Possibly they recognized the Coyote of the house-yard as

she stood there wagging her tail. The ranchmen were nonplussed too.

Every one was utterly taken aback, had a sense of failure, and the real

victor in the situation was felt to be the audacious little Coyote.

The Greyhounds refused to attack an animal that wagged its tail and

would not run; and the men, on seeing that the Coyote could _walk_ far

enough away to avoid being caught by hand, took their ropes (lassoes),

and soon made her a prisoner once more. The next day they decided to try

again, but this time they added the white Bull-terrier to the chasers.

The Coyote did as before. The Greyhounds declined to be party to any

attack on such a mild and friendly acquaintance. But the Bull-terrier,

who came puffing and panting on the scene three minutes later, had no

such scruples. He was not so tall, but he was heavier than the Coyote,

and, seizing her by her wool-protected neck, he shook her till, in a

surprisingly short time, she lay limp and lifeless, at which all the

men seemed pleased, and congratulated the Terrier, while the Greyhounds

pottered around in restless perplexity.

{Illustration}

A stranger in the party, a newly arrived Englishman, asked if he might

have the brush--the tail, he explained--and on being told to help

himself, he picked up the victim by the tail, and with one awkward chop

of his knife he cut it off at the middle, and the Coyote dropped, but

gave a shrill yelp of pain. She was not dead, only playing possum, and

now she leaped up and vanished into a near-by thicket of cactus and

sage.

With Greyhounds a running animal is the signal for a run, so the two

long-legged Dogs and the white broad-chested Dog dashed after the

Coyote. But right across their path, by happy chance, there flashed a

brown streak ridden by a snowy powder-puff, the visible but evanescent

sign for Cottontail Rabbit. The Coyote was not in sight now. The Rabbit

was, so the Greyhounds dashed after the Cottontail, who took advantage

of a Prairie-dog's hole to seek safety in the bosom of Mother Earth, and

the Coyote made good her escape.

{Illustration}

She had been a good deal jarred by the rude treatment of the Terrier,

and her mutilated tail gave her some pain. But otherwise she was all

right, and she loped lightly away, keeping out of sight in the hollows,

and so escaped among the fantastic buttes of the Badlands, to be

eventually the founder of a new life among the Coyotes of the Little

Missouri.

Moses was preserved by the Egyptians till he had outlived the dangerous

period, and learned from them wisdom enough to be the saviour of his

people against those same Egyptians. So the bobtailed Coyote was not

only saved by man and carried over the dangerous period of puppyhood:

she was also unwittingly taught by him how to baffle the traps, poisons,

lassoes, guns, and Dogs that had so long waged a war of extermination

against her race.