and wormwood to the unreconstructed soul of the
Judge. Still they were the only dogs anywhere around capable of
tackling a savage timber wolf, and without their aid the judge's own
high-spirited animals ran a serious risk of injury, for they were
altogether too game to let any beast escape without a struggle.

Luck favored us. Two wolves had killed a calf and dragged it into a
long patch of dense brush where there was a little spring, the whole
furnishing admirable cover for any wild beast. Early in the morning we
started on horseback for this bit of cover, which was some three miles
off. The party consisted of the Judge, old man Prindle, a cowboy,
myself, and the dogs. The judge and I carried our rifles and the cowboy
his revolver, but old man Prindle had nothing but a heavy whip, for he
swore, with many oaths, that no one should interfere with his big dogs,
for by themselves they would surely "make the wolf feel sicker than a
stuck hog." Our shaggy ponies racked along at a five-mile gait over the
dewy prairie grass. The two big dogs trotted behind their master, grim
and ferocious. The track-hounds were tied in couples, and the beautiful
greyhounds loped lightly and gracefully alongside the horses. The
country was fine. A mile to our right a small plains river wound in long
curves between banks fringed with cottonwoods. Two or three miles to our
left the foot-hills rose sheer and bare, with clumps of black pine and
cedar in their gorges. We rode over gently rolling prairie, with here
and there patches of brush in the bottoms of the slopes around the dry
watercourses.

At last we reached a somewhat deeper valley in which the wolves were
harbored. Wolves lie close in the daytime and will not leave cover if
they can help it; and as they had both food and water within we knew
it was most unlikely that this couple would be gone. The valley was a
couple of hundred yards broad and three or four times as long, filled
with a growth of ash and dwarf elm and cedar, thorny underbrush choking
the spaces between. Posting the cowboy, to whom he gave his rifle, with
two greyhounds on one side of the upper end, and old man Prindle with
two others on the opposite side, while I was left at the lower end to
guard against the possibility of the wolves breaking back, the Judge
himself rode into the thicket near me and loosened the track-hounds to
let them find the wolves' trail. The big dogs also were uncoupled and
allowed to go in with th