a wolf; this was the large vicious
mongrel whose feats are recorded in my _Hunting Trips of a Ranchman_.

General Marcy of the United States Army informed me that he once chased
a huge wolf which had gotten away with a small trap on its foot. It was,
I believe, in Wisconsin, and he had twenty or thirty hounds with him,
but they were entirely untrained in wolf-hunting, and proved unable to
stop the crippled beast. Few of them would attack it at all, and those
that did went at it singly and with a certain hesitation, and so each
in turn was disabled by a single terrible snap, and left bleeding on
the snow. General Wade Hampton tells me that in the course of his fifty
years' hunting with horse and hound in Mississippi, he has on several
occasions tried his pack of fox-hounds (southern deer-hounds) after a
wolf. He found that it was with the greatest difficulty, however, that
he could persuade them to so much as follow the trail. Usually, as soon
as they came across it, they would growl, bristle up, and then retreat
with their tails between their legs. But one of his dogs ever really
tried to master a wolf by itself, and this one paid for its temerity
with its life; for while running a wolf in a canebrake the beast turned
and tore it to pieces. Finally General Hampton succeeded in getting a
number of his hounds so they would at any rate follow the trail in full
cry, and thus drive the wolf out of the thicket, and give a chance to
the hunter to get a shot. In this way he killed two or three.

The true way to kill wolves, however, is to hunt them with greyhounds on
the great plains. Nothing more exciting than this sport can possibly be
imagined. It is not always necessary that the greyhounds should be of
absolutely pure blood. Prize-winning dogs of high pedigree often prove
useless for the purposes. If by careful choice, however, a ranchman can
get together a pack composed both of the smooth-haired greyhound and
the rough-haired Scotch deer-hound, he can have excellent sport. The
greyhounds sometimes do best if they have a slight cross of bulldog
in their veins; but this is not necessary. If once a greyhound can be
fairly entered to the sport and acquires confidence, then its wonderful
agility, its sinewy strength and speed, and the terrible snap with which
its jaws come together, render it a most formidable assailant. Nothing
can possibly exceed the gallantry with which good greyhounds, when their
blood is up, fling themsel