st act the same game as we have been
doing. Over and over again have I seen them at their tricks; two of them
will play them together. They will creep up through the grass till they
can get to a spot where the antelope can see them, and then they will
just act as if they were mad, rolling over on their backs, waving their
legs about, twisting and rolling like balls, and playing the fool, till
the antelope comes up to see what is the matter. They let them come on
till they are only a few yards away, and then they are on one like a
flash, before he has time to turn and get up his speed. One will catch
him by a leg, and the other will get at his throat, and between them
they soon pull him down. They will sham dead too. Wonderful 'cute
beasts is them coyotes; they are just about the sharpest beasts as
live."

"Do they live entirely upon deer?"

"Bless you, no; they will eat anything. They hang about behind the great
buffalo herds, and eat them as drops; where there are such tens of
thousands there is always some as is old or injured and can't keep up;
besides, sometimes they get scared, and then they will run over a bluff
and get piled up there dead by hundreds. The coyotes pick the bones of
every beast as dies in the plains. The badgers helps them a bit; there
are lots of those about in some places."

[Illustration]

CHAPTER X.

A BUFFALO STORY.

SOMETIMES, instead of taking his rifle and accompanying the other
hunters, Frank would borrow a shot-gun, and go out on foot and return
with a good bag of prairie-fowl, birds resembling grouse. Occasionally,
in the canyons, or wooded valleys, far away from the track, the hunters
came across the trail of wild turkeys; then two of them would camp out
for the night, and search under the trees until they saw the birds
perched on the boughs above them, and would bring into camp in the
morning half a dozen dangling from each of their saddles. Frequently, in
their rides, they came across skunks, pretty black and white little
animals. Frank was about to shoot the first he saw, but Peter, who was
with him, shouted to him not to fire.

"It's a skunk," he said; "it ain't no use wasting your powder on that
varmin. Why, if you were to kill him, and went to take it up, you
wouldn't be fit to go into camp for a week; you would stink that bad no
one couldn't come near you. They are wuss than pizen, skunks. Why, I
have seen dogs sit up and howl with disgust after interfering with