by bands of Wolves
that preyed on the sick, the weak, and the wounded. When the Buffalo
were exterminated the Wolves were hard put for support, but the Cattle
came and solved the question for them by taking the Buffaloes' place.
This caused the wolf-war. The ranchmen offered a bounty for each Wolf
killed, and every cowboy out of work, was supplied with traps and
poison for wolf-killing. The very expert made this their sole business
and became known as wolvers. King Ryder was one of these. He was a
quiet, gentlespoken fellow, with a keen eye and an insight into animal
life that gave him especial power over Broncos and Dogs, as well as
Wolves and Bears, though in the last two cases it was power merely to
surmise where they were and how best to get at them. He had been a
wolver for years, and greatly surprised me by saying that "never in all
his experience had he known a Gray-wolf to attack a human being."

We had many camp-fire talks while the other men were sleeping, and then
it was I learned the little that he knew about Badlands Billy. "Six
times have I seen him and the seventh will be Sunday, you bet. He takes
his long rest then." And thus on the very ground where it all fell out,
to the noise of the night wind and the yapping of the Coyote,
interrupted sometimes by the deep-drawn howl of the hero himself, I
heard chapters of this history which, with others gleaned in many
fields, gave me the story of the Big Dark Wolf of Sentinel Butte.

III

IN THE CANYON

Away back in the spring of '92 a wolver was "wolving" on the east side
of the Sentinel Mountain that so long was a principal landmark of the
old Plainsmen. Pelts were not good in May, but the bounties were high,
five dollars a head, and double for She-wolves. As he went down to the
creek one morning he saw a Wolf coming to drink on the other side. He
had an easy shot, and on killing it found it was a nursing She-wolf.
Evidently her family were somewhere near, so he spent two or three days
searching in all the likely places, but found no clue to the den.

Two weeks afterward, as the wolver rode down an adjoining canyon, he saw
a Wolf come out of a hole. The ever-ready rifle flew up, and another
ten-dollar scalp was added to his string. Now he dug into the den and
found the litter, a most surprising one indeed, for it consisted not of
the usual five or six Wolf-pups, but of eleven, and these, strange to
say, were of two sizes, five of them larger and older th