Another
night
of
alternate tranquillity
and
turmoil.
But
morning
came,
by
and
by.
It
was
another
glad
awakening
to
fresh
breezes,
vast
expanses
of
level
greensward,
bright
sunlight,
an
impressive
solitude
utterly
without
visible
human
beings
or
human
habitations,
and
an
atmosphere
of
such
amazing
magnifying
properties
that
trees
that
seemed
close
at
hand
were
more
than
three
mile
away.
We
resumed
undress uniform, climbed a-top
of
the
flying
coach, dangled
our
legs
over
the
side, shouted occasionally
at
our
frantic
mules, merely
to
see
them
lay
their
ears
back
and
scamper
faster,
tied
our
hats
on
to
keep
our
hair
from
blowing away,
and
leveled
an
outlook
over
the
world-wide carpet
about
us
for
things
new
and
strange
to
gaze at.
Even
at
this
day
it
thrills
me
through
and
through
to
think
of
the
life,
the
gladness
and
the
wild sense
of
freedom
that
used
to
make
the
blood dance
in
my
veins
on
those
fine
overland mornings!
Along
about
an
hour
after
breakfast
we
saw
the
first
prairie-dog villages,
the
first
antelope,
and
the
first
wolf.
If
I
remember
rightly,
this
latter
was
the
regular cayote (pronounced ky-o-te)
of
the
farther
deserts.
And
if
it
was,
he
was
not
a pretty
creature
or
respectable either,
for
I got
well
acquainted
with
his
race
afterward,
and
can
speak
with
confidence.
The
cayote
is
a long, slim,
sick
and
sorry-looking skeleton,
with
a
gray
wolf-skin stretched
over
it, a tolerably bushy tail
that
forever
sags
down
with
a
despairing
expression
of
forsakenness
and
misery, a
furtive
and
evil
eye,
and
a long, sharp face,
with
slightly lifted
lip
and
exposed
teeth.
He
has a
general
slinking
expression
all
over.
The
cayote
is
a living,
breathing
allegory
of
Want.
He
is
always
hungry.
He
is
always
poor,
out
of
luck
and
friendless.
The
meanest
creatures
despise
him,
and
even
the
fleas
would
desert
him
for
a velocipede.
He
is
so
spiritless
and
cowardly
that
even
while
his
exposed
teeth
are
pretending a threat,
the
rest
of
his
face
is
apologizing
for
it.
And
he
is
so
homely!—so scrawny,
and
ribby,
and
coarse-haired,
and
pitiful.
When
he
sees
you
he
lifts
his
lip
and
lets
a flash
of
his
teeth out,
and
then
turns
a
little
out
of
the
course
he
was
pursuing,
depresses
his
head
a bit,
and
strikes a long, soft-footed
trot
through
the
sage-brush, glancing
over
his
shoulder
at
you,
from
time
to
time,
till
he
is
about
out
of
easy
pistol
range,
and
then
he
stops
and
takes
a
deliberate
survey
of
you;
he
will
trot
fifty
yards
and
stop again—another
fifty
and
stop again;
and
finally
the
gray
of
his
gliding
body
blends
with
the
gray
of
the
sage-brush,
and
he
disappears.
All
this
is
when
you
make
no
demonstration
against him;
but
if
you
do,
he
develops
a livelier
interest
in
his
journey,
and
instantly electrifies
his
heels
and
puts
such
a
deal
of
real
estate
between
himself
and
your
weapon,
that
by
the
time
you
have
raised
the
hammer
you
see
that
you
need
a
minie
rifle,
and
by
the
time
you
have
got
him
in
line
you
need
a rifled cannon,
and
by
the
time
you
have
"drawn a bead"
on
him
you
see
well
enough
that
nothing
but
an
unusually
long-winded
streak
of
lightning
could
reach
him
where
he
is
now.
But
if
you
start a swift-footed
dog
after
him,
you
will
enjoy
it
ever
so
much—especially
if
it
is
a
dog
that
has a
good
opinion
of
himself,
and
has been brought
up
to
think
he
knows
something
about
speed.
The
cayote
will
go
swinging gently
off
on
that
deceitful
trot
of
his,
and
every
little
while
he
will
smile
a fraudful
smile
over
his
shoulder
that
will
fill
that
dog
entirely
full
of
encouragement
and
worldly
ambition,
and
make
him
lay
his
head
still
lower
to
the
ground,
and
stretch
his
neck
further
to
the
front,
and
pant
more
fiercely,
and
stick
his
tail
out
straighter behind,
and
move
his
furious
legs
with
a
yet
wilder frenzy,
and
leave
a
broader
and
broader,
and
higher
and
denser
cloud
of
desert
sand
smoking
behind,
and
marking
his
long
wake
across
the
level
plain!
And
all
this
time
the
dog
is
only
a
short
twenty
feet
behind
the
cayote,
and
to
save
the
soul
of
him
he
cannot
understand
why
it
is
that
he
cannot
get
perceptibly closer;
and
he
begins
to
get
aggravated,
and
it
makes
him
madder
and
madder
to
see
how
gently
the
cayote
glides
along
and
never
pants
or
sweats
or
ceases
to
smile;
and
he
grows
still
more
and
more
incensed
to
see
how
shamefully
he
has been taken
in
by
an
entire
stranger,
and
what
an
ignoble
swindle
that
long, calm, soft-footed
trot
is;
and
next
he
notices
that
he
is
getting
fagged,
and
that
the
cayote actually has
to
slacken
speed
a
little
to
keep
from
running
away
from
him—and
then
that
town-dog
is
mad
in
earnest,
and
he
begins
to
strain
and
weep
and
swear,
and
paw
the
sand
higher
than
ever,
and
reach
for
the
cayote
with
concentrated
and
desperate
energy.
This
"spurt" finds
him
six
feet
behind
the
gliding
enemy,
and
two
miles
from
his
friends.
And
then,
in
the
instant
that
a wild
new
hope
is
lighting
up
his
face,
the
cayote
turns
and
smiles
blandly
upon
him
once
more,
and
with
a
something
about
it
which
seems
to
say: "Well, I
shall
have
to
tear
myself
away
from
you, bub—business
is
business,
and
it
will
not
do
for
me
to
be
fooling
along
this
way
all
day"—and
forthwith
there
is
a
rushing
sound,
and
the
sudden
splitting
of
a
long
crack
through
the
atmosphere,
and
behold
that
dog
is
solitary
and
alone
in
the
midst
of
a
vast
solitude!
It
makes
his
head
swim.
He
stops,
and
looks
all
around; climbs
the
nearest
sand-mound,
and
gazes
into
the
distance;
shakes
his
head
reflectively,
and
then,
without
a word,
he
turns
and
jogs
along
back
to
his
train,
and
takes
up
a
humble
position
under
the
hindmost wagon,
and
feels unspeakably mean,
and
looks
ashamed,
and
hangs
his
tail
at
half-
mast
for
a week.
And
for
as
much
as
a
year
after
that, whenever
there
is
a
great
hue
and
cry
after
a cayote,
that
dog
will
merely glance
in
that
direction
without
emotion,
and
apparently
observe
to
himself, "I
believe
I
do
not
wish
any
of
the
pie."
The
cayote
lives
chiefly
in
the
most
desolate
and
forbidding desert,
along
with
the
lizard,
the
jackass-rabbit
and
the
raven,
and
gets
an
uncertain
and
precarious
living,
and
earns
it.
He
seems
to
subsist
almost
wholly
on
the
carcases
of
oxen,
mules
and
horses
that
have
dropped
out
of
emigrant
trains
and
died,
and
upon
windfalls
of
carrion,
and
occasional
legacies
of
offal
bequeathed
to
him
by
white
men
who
have
been
opulent
enough
to
have
something
better
to
butcher
than
condemned
army
bacon.
He
will
eat
anything
in
the
world
that
his
first
cousins,
the
desert-
frequenting
tribes
of
Indians will,
and
they
will
eat
anything
they
can
bite.
It
is
a
curious
fact
that
these
latter
are
the
only
creatures
known
to
history
who
will
eat
nitro-glycerine
and
ask
for
more
if
they
survive.
The
cayote
of
the
deserts
beyond
the
Rocky
Mountains
has a
peculiarly
hard
time
of
it,
owing
to
the
fact
that
his
relations,
the
Indians,
are
just
as
apt
to
be
the
first
to
detect
a
seductive
scent
on
the
desert
breeze,
and
follow
the
fragrance
to
the
late
ox
it
emanated
from,
as
he
is
himself;
and
when
this
occurs
he
has
to
content
himself
with
sitting
off
at
a
little
distance
watching
those
people
strip
off
and
dig
out
everything edible,
and
walk
off
with
it.
Then
he
and
the
waiting
ravens
explore
the
skeleton
and
polish
the
bones.
It
is
considered
that
the
cayote,
and
the
obscene
bird,
and
the
Indian
of
the
desert,
testify
their
blood kinship
with
each
other
in
that
they
live
together
in
the
waste
places
of
the
earth
on
terms
of
perfect
confidence
and
friendship,
while
hating
all
other
creature
and
yearning
to
assist
at
their
funerals.
He
does
not
mind
going a
hundred
miles
to
breakfast,
and
a
hundred
and
fifty
to
dinner,
because
he
is
sure
to
have
three
or
four
days
between
meals,
and
he
can
just
as
well
be
traveling
and
looking
at
the
scenery
as
lying
around
doing
nothing
and
adding
to
the
burdens
of
his
parents.
We
soon
learned
to
recognize
the
sharp,
vicious
bark
of
the
cayote
as
it
came
across
the
murky
plain
at
night
to
disturb
our
dreams
among
the
mail-sacks;
and
remembering
his
forlorn
aspect
and
his
hard
fortune,
made
shift
to
wish
him
the
blessed
novelty
of
a
long
day's
good
luck
and
a limitless
larder
the
morrow.