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Wild ducks settled on the lake not far from him with a swish and flutter; a coyote ran past, veering as it saw the recumbent figure; a prairie hen rustled by with a shrill cluck, but he seemed oblivious to all. If asleep, he was evidently dreaming, for now and then he started, or his body twitched, and a muttering came from beneath the hat.

I see as in a vision the dying spark of our council fires, the ashes cold and white. I see no longer the curling smoke rising from our lodge poles. I hear no longer the songs of the women as they prepare the meal. The antelope have gone; the buffalo wallows are empty. Only the wail of the coyote is heard. The white man’s medicine is stronger than ours; his iron horse rushes over the buffalo trail.

Now and then an antelope left the rail or a lone coyote crouched in the shadow of a telegraph-pole as the dim headlight swept the right of way. At each stop the Superintendent would jump down, look about, and swing onto the rear car as the train pulled out again. At one time he found that his seat had been taken, also his overcoat, which had been left hanging over the back.

He made that one hundred and forty miles in eleven hours. The partner was in bed, and there was no hope of his rising for a day or two. The weary messenger started toward one of the bunks to get a bit of rest, but before he had thrown himself on the blankets, the coyote yell of the eastbound rider sounded up the road. It was up to Moore to take the sick man's place now.

A hungry coyote and his mate prowling in search of food at a distance of half-a-mile looked large by reason of their isolation. An occasional covey of prairie chicken, noisily winging their way to a far-distant bluff, might well be startling both to horses and driver.

How they blazed their single task! A coyote yelped off on the south slope, dark now as midnight. A bit of weathered rock rolled and tapped from shelf to shelf. And the wind moaned. Helen felt all the sadness and mystery and nobility of this lonely fastness, and full on her heart rested the supreme consciousness that all would some day be well with the troubled world beyond.

It was then that Gabriel Druse learned of the hatred of Tekewani for Felix Marchand, because of what he had done in the reservation, prowling at night like a fox or a coyote in the folds.

He struck the heavy four-foot drifts where the wind had scoured the snow from the ridge above and sifted it deep in the timber. His sharp hoofs and heavier weight let him deep into the snow while the coyotes padded easily along, their feet sinking in but a few inches. He tired himself with desperate charges at some coyote that always eluded him while others drove fangs in him from behind.

"No; Coyote don't shoot these yere little wolves; he p'isens 'em. Coyote would take about twelve foot, say, of a pine tree he's cut down this yere timber is mebby eight inches through an' he'll bore in it a two-inch auger hole every two foot. These holes is some deep; about four inches it's likely.

A coyote whisked into the open and bounced toward them with bucking leaps, strangling and gagging as he came, then whirled and snapped at himself, the froth dripping and foaming from his jaws and the moonlight reflecting from his set, staring eyes.