trotted about leaving
dumb signs on mud banks and brushwood by which others of his kind might
know where to find him at stated times.

Sunset is the time when he is almost sure to be among the gopher
burrows. In vain the saucy jay shrieks out a warning to the gophers. Of
all the prairie creatures, they are the stupidest, the most beset with
curiosity to know what that jay's shriek may mean. Sunning themselves in
the last rays of daylight, the gophers perch on their hind legs to wait
developments of what the jay announced. But the badger's fur and the
gopher mounds are almost the same colour. He has pounced on some playful
youngsters before the rest see him. Then there is a wild scuttling down
to the depths of the burrows. That, too, is vain; for the badger begins
ripping up the clay bank like a grisly, down--down--in pursuit, two,
three, five feet, even twelve.

Then is seen one of the most curious freaks in all the animal life of
the prairie. The underground galleries of the gophers connect and lead
up to different exits. As the furious badger comes closer and closer on
the cowering gophers, the little cowards lose heart, dart up the
galleries to open doors, and try to escape through the grass of the
prairie. But no sooner is the badger hard at work than a gray form seems
to rise out of the earth, a coyote who had been slinking to the rear all
the while; and as the terrified gophers scurry here, scurry there,
coyote's white teeth snap!--snap! He is
here--there--everywhere--pouncing--jumping--having the fun of his life,
gobbling gophers as cats catch mice. Down in the bottom of the burrow,
the badger may get half a dozen poor cooped huddling prisoners; but the
coyote up on the prairie has devoured a whole colony.

Do these two, badger and coyote, consciously hunt together? Some old
trappers vow they do--others just as vehemently that they don't. The
fact remains that wherever the badger goes gopher-hunting on an
unsettled prairie, there the coyote skulks reaping reward of all the
badger's work. The coincidence is no stranger than the well-known fact
that sword-fish and thrasher--two different fish--always league together
to attack the whale.

One thing only can save the gopher colony, and that is the gun barrel
across yon earth mound where a trapper lies in wait for the coming of
the badger.

IV

_The 'Coon_

Sir Alexander MacKenzie reported that in 1798 the North-West Company
sent out only 100 raccoon from