care, for he knew that the last place a coyote would enter was the
one where guiding clumps of sage formed an inviting lane across the
traps. He selected an open spot instead and dismounted on a sheep pelt
spread flat upon the ground; with a hand-axe he hewed out a triangular
trap bed a foot across by three inches deep, placing every shred of
fresh earth removed from it in a canvas sack; then he fitted a heavy
Newhouse four in place with both springs bent far to the rear and drove
a slender steel pin out of sight through the swivel ring of the chain.
He smoothed a piece of canvas under the jaws and over the pan and poured
the soft earth over it all, filling it level with the surface and
tamping it firmly with his fingers except that within the six-inch
circle of the jaws. From a second sack he sifted dust over the spot till
it matched the surrounding flat, remounted and leaned from the saddle to
recover the sheep pelt on which he had knelt and used it as a fan to
whip the dust of the flat into curling eddies which settled back so
uniformly as to defy the eyes of any man to detect the location of the
trap. The surplus earth removed from the hole he carried away to be
emptied far from the spot. For Collins knew the qualities of his prey
and a good wolfer leaves no sign. He had used no foolish scent to
disguise his own, knowing that the heat of day and the frost of night
would diffuse his scent and obliterate all trace of it, the same as an
animal's trail grows cold in time, while any foreign odor lingering
longer than his own would only serve as a guide for the cunning prey he
sought.

The wisdom of the fox has furnished theme for song and legend, and only
those who have followed the trap line for both fox and coyote know that
Reynard's vaunted brain is but a dry sponge when compared to the
knowledge-soaked brain of the prairie wolf. It is the way of the coyote
to live near man, confident that his own cunning will offset that of his
arch enemy and lead him unscathed through all the contrivances men may
employ for his destruction. Collins knew that the fox was only trap-shy
while the coyote was--vast difference between the two--trap-wise; that
he would go to a bait, knowing the traps were there, and risk his life
in an effort to uncover them and so leave evidence behind that he was
keener than his foe.

At the end of a week Collins had thrown out three pear-shaped loops of
traps, each line with a length of twenty miles,