and the Prairie-dogs chattered
at them, just as they once did at the Buffalo.

Down from the gray-green mesa with its green-gray rocks, they marched
with imposing solemnity, importance, and directness of purpose. Some
frolicsome Calves, playing along-side the trail, grew sober and walked
behind their mothers as the river flat was reached. The old Cow that
headed the procession sniffed suspiciously as she passed the "trap
set," but it was far away, otherwise she would have pawed and bellowed
over the scraps of bloody beef till every trap was sprung and harmless.

But she led to the river. After all had drunk their fill they lay down
on the nearest bank till late afternoon. Then their unheard dinner-gong
aroused them, and started them on the backward march to where the
richest pastures grew.

One or two small birds had picked at the scraps of meat, some
blue-bottle flies buzzed about, but the sinking sun saw the sandy mask
untouched.

A brown Marsh Hawk came skimming over the river flat as the sun began
his color play. Blackbirds dashed into thickets, and easily avoided his
clumsy pounce. It was too early for the Mice, but, as he skimmed the
ground, his keen eye caught the flutter of feathers by the trap and
turned his flight. The feathers in their uninteresting emptiness were
exposed before he was near, but now he saw the scraps of meat.
Guileless of cunning, he alighted and was devouring a second lump
when--clank--the dust was flirted high and the Marsh Hawk was held by
his toes, struggling vainly in the jaws of a powerful wolf-trap. He was
not much hurt. His ample wings winnowed from time to time, in efforts
to be free, but he was helpless, even as a Sparrow might be in a
rat-trap, and when the sun had played his fierce chromatic scale, his
swan-song sung, and died as he dies only in the blazing west, and the
shades had fallen on the melodramatic scene of the Mouse in the
elephant-trap, there was a deep, rich sound on the high flat butte,
answered by another, neither very long, neither repeated, and both
instinctive rather than necessary. One was the muster-call of an
ordinary Wolf, the other the answer of a very big male, not a pair in
this case, but mother and son--Yellow Wolf and Duskymane. They came
trotting together down the Buffalo trail. They paused at the telephone
box on the hill and again at the old cottonwood root, and were making
for the river when the Hawk in the trap fluttered his wings. The old
Wolf