I have never seen a wolf stalking a rabbit, though I have often seen
him stalk fowl. Had he pulled up when he saw me? As I said, I cannot
tell, for now he was standing in the characteristic wolf-way, half
turned, head bent back, tail stretched out nearly horizontally. The tail
sank, the whole beast seemed to shrink, and suddenly he slunk away with
amazing agility. Poor fellow--he did not know that many a time I had fed
some of his brothers in cruel winters. But he came to know me, as I
knew him; for whenever he left me on later drives, very close to Bell's
corner, after I had finished my lunch, he would start right back on my
trail, nose low, and I have no doubt that he picked up the bits of bacon
which I had dropped as tidbits for him.

I drove and drove. The sun neared the horizon now It was about six
o'clock. The poplar thickets on both sides of the road began to be
larger. In front the trail led towards a gate in a long, long line of
towering cottonwoods. What was beyond?

It proved to be a gate indeed. Beyond the cottonwoods there ran an
eastward grade lined on the north side by a ditch which I had to cross
on a culvert. It will henceforth be known as the "twelve-mile bridge."
Beyond the culvert the road which I followed had likewise been worked up
into a grade. I did not like it, for it was new and rough. But less did
I like the habitation at the end of its short, one-mile career. It stood
to the right, close to the road, and was a veritable hovel. [Footnote:
It might be well to state expressly here that, whatever has been said
in these pages concerning farms and their inhabitants, has intentionally
been so arranged as not to apply to the exact localities at which they
are described. Anybody at all familiar with the district through which
these drives were made will readily identify every natural landmark. But
although I have not consciously introduced any changes in the landscape
as God made it, I have in fairness to the settlers entirely redrawn the
superimposed man-made landscape.] It was built of logs, but it looked
more like a dugout, for stable as well as dwelling were covered by way
of a roof with blower-thrown straw In the door of the hovel there stood
two brats--poor things!

The road was a trail again for a mile or two. It led once more through
the underbrush-wilderness interspersed with poplar bluffs. Then
it became by degrees a real "high-class" Southern Prairie grade. I
wondered, but not for long.