Prairie dogs there were none, though he scour the length and breadth of six hundred square miles. Poison had done its work thoroughly and only the empty holes remained, half grown over with grass and weeds, a constant menace to horsemen. Of ground squirrel there were a few, and at certain seasons the sage grouse furnished him succulent meals; but these were trifles, after all, and it took infinite patience and stealth to secure them.
Scartoe crept slantwise up a ridge and took a look around. The sun beat down on a land it had desolated. Where creeks had been were now gorges of baked clay; a long stretch of sage-grass was white with dust and crackling; large fissures dumbly voiced the parched ground’s protests; the bear-grass and cactus showed scrawny and dried; and above this scorched land rose a canopy of jumbled white clouds, magnificent, matchless. A score or two of lean cattle were browsing on the slopes, nibbling the long, yellow bean pods from mesquite trees, but of other signs of life there were none, save the scurrying green and blue and golden-brown lizards, which darted from stone to stone at amazing speed.
And this had been the style of his hunting for weeks, so that he was gaunt and desperate. Nothing in all the world in the shape of meat, except creatures so large and strong he dare not attack. Nothing--his restless eyes became riveted on a bush not fifty yards to his right. Surely something had stirred there. His nose was thrust forward to give his extraordinarily strong sense of smell a chance, and it told him what his eyes were unable wholly to define. There was a calf behind that bush.
His famished stomach drove him forward, while his natural cowardice whispered caution. It was plain to him that the calf was very young. Otherwise he would have wanted the assistance of a brother marauder. Even now, however, those cattle grazing on the slopes haunted him, but a fleeting glance over the immediate vicinity assured him the prey was unguarded. So he stole forward. His advance was a miracle of furtive effort, and such was the beast’s inherited cunning that, quite unconsciously, he took advantage of spots where his color blended so harmoniously with the rough ground that wolf and rock and shrub were indistinguishable.
The gods of little calves must have been wide-awake that day; else what could have prompted the youngster to stir and lift his head? He had heard no sound; no scent had reached his nostrils. The coyote was too old a hand at stalking for that. A pair of round, fear-distended eyes were turned toward the terrible thing that shot through space straight for his neck, and a plaintive bawl was cut short in the middle. That was because the calf got into action--action quicker than any in his life of three weeks. He lurched upward and departed, minus the left ear. The beast snarled and turned to pursue, but a noise diverted him. Like a man waking from a dream, the coyote caught, too late, the rush of hoofs. He shrank aside, but not far enough. The mother’s horns caught him above the shoulder and ripped him to the flank, tossing him five feet into the air. When he came down he tarried not, but, bloody, torn and mad with fear, sought the safety of his cañon retreat.
His wife and five babies were awaiting him. He had been out all night on his prowl for food, and it was now three hours after sunup, the hour when, ordinarily, he would be stretched out on a sunny knoll, taking a nap in the content of a full stomach. A score of yards from the den his nose told him that the family had fed, so he came trotting down the rocky creek-bed, stiffly expectant. The tiny, furry, broad-headed pups were snarling and tugging at the remnants of a meal and, hungry though he was, he paused to watch them with a certain fatherly pride. Then, at a growl from his mate, he slunk forth again on his quest. His wound smarted, but did not cripple him, and hunger was a spur.
“The wolf drove away a couple of buzzards and fell upon this savagely”
He found what his wife had said he would find, the remains of the offal of a heifer which the outfit had killed the previous day for food. Luckier in her search, the mother coyote had come upon the abandoned camp late the previous night, though it was ten miles from home and she disliked such distant hunting; and, having fed, she had carried a huge strip of the entrails to her babies. The wolf drove away a couple of buzzards and fell upon this savagely; and, having gorged, sat down to lick his cut. In a few minutes he moved painfully on the back trail, for his hurts were stiffening.