"What'd you suppose I'd be diggin' there for if there wasn't none? There's a whole litter o' pups."
"Come on, then!" exclaimed Dave, convinced of his good fortune, for the bounty on coyotes was four dollars for each and every one.
Hope looked dubiously at the soft-voiced twin, she thought of the supper at Sydney's camp, then fired with the fun of the thing rode gayly away with the boys.
The hounds leaped after them, clearing the ground with long, easy bounds. The girl watched them glide along, yelping, barking, filling the air with their voices. Her horse loped neck to neck with the soft-voiced twin's. She pointed at the dogs, drawing the boy's attention to them.
"Why did you bring them?" she asked. "They'll warn your old ones and they'll be far away by the time we get there. You're usually so quick-witted, Dan, I wonder you did not think of it!"
The boy made no reply, but gave her a look filled with cunning, cool intent.
So this was his revenge—his twin was to dig into a rocky ledge for an empty coyote's den! She marveled at the boy's deliberate scheming, and rode gayly along to see the outcome. To this sort of revenge she had no actual objection.
They rode up over the top of a high divide, then followed down a narrow draw until it widened into a tiny basin, and there, in the center of vivid green, like a smooth, well-kept lawn, nestled old Peter's cabin. Surrounding this pretty basin were steep, high ridges and hills, smooth-carpeted, too, except the ever narrow terraced "buffalo trails," and here and there a broken line where sharp crags of sandstone jutted out. To the base of one of these ridges of rock, back of the old hermit's one-roomed log shack, the soft-voiced twin led the way, followed closely by his eager brother.
The twins left their horses at the foot of the hill and climbed up about thirty feet to a narrow ledge, where a shovel and pickax marked the small entrance of a coyote's den.
Dave set immediately at work plying the pickax with vigor, and shoveling out the stones and the hardened sand about the opening, while his twin superintended the job and occasionally offered words of encouragement.