“Hi, there! Git your nose out’n that pan, you rascal! I swan, he’s hunting for bread.”
II
THE MARAUDER
Six frowsy buzzards sat on a tree and made mock of his hunger. With his bushy tail drooping dismally between his legs, he zigzagged his way up the wide, dry bed of Red River, flitting from cover to cover like an uneasy ghost. Up one steep bank he sidled, to squat on his haunches, whence he surveyed the camp hungrily.
“There’s a big ol’ ki-yote,” said the hoodlum driver. “Git your gun, Dave.”
The cook abandoned the washpan with alacrity and ransacked the chuck-wagon for his weapon. When he rejoined Mac the coyote was still in view, but he seemed farther away.
“He done moved. I cain’t hit him from here,” said the cook.
“I been watching him and he ain’t budged. Yes, he has, too. I’ll swan, I never seen him do it.”
The prairie wolf now sat a good three hundred yards away, his back to the camp, as though indifferent and contemptuous of it. Dave knelt on one heel, took slow, careful aim, and fired. A spurt of sand five yards short of the coyote was the result. The animal half turned his head, the sensitive upper lip quivered and curled over the wicked fangs, for all the world like a sneer, and then he resumed his placid scrutiny of nothing. Mac forcibly removed the rifle from Dave’s grasp, deaf to his picturesque explanation of the miss, adjusted the sight and lay down.
“You had it sighted for a hunderd yards,” he rebuked. “I put her up a few notches.”
“Whee-ee-ee,” whined a snub-nosed leaden pellet. A spurt of sand five yards beyond the coyote was the result. It aroused the animal to instant activity. If he was not beyond range, then the wagon had a better gun than he had ever met with, so he glided away like a shadow.