supper fire. "A few cows and calves make
the best day-dream material I've struck yet; wish I had more of the
same. I'd make old Dame Fortune put a different brand on me, pronto.
She could spell it with an F, but it wouldn't be football. If the
cards fall right," he mused, when the fire was hot and crackling, and
he was slicing bacon with his pocket-knife, "I'll get the best of her
yet. And--" His coffee-pail boiled over and interrupted him. He
burned his fingers before he slid the pail to a cooler spot, and after
that he thought of the joys of having a certain gray-eyed girl for his
housekeeper, and for a time he forgot about his newly acquired herd.

And then his day-dreams received a severer jolt, and one more lasting.
He began to realize something that he had always known: that there is
something more to the cattle business than branding the calves and
selling the beef.

When the first calf went to dull the hunger of the wolves that howled
o'nights among the rocks and stunted pines on Bannock Butte, Ward swore
a good deal and resolved to ride with his rifle tied on the saddle
hereafter. Also, he went back immediately, got a little fat, blue
bottle of strychnine, and returned and "salted" the small remnant of
the carcass. It was no part of his dreams to have the profit chewed
off his little herd by wolves.

When the second calf was pulled down in spite of the mother's defense,
within half a mile of his cabin, Ward postponed a trip he had meant to
make to the Wolverine and went out on the trail of the wolves. In the
loose soil of the lower ridge he tracked them easily and rode at a
shuffling trot along the cow-trail they had followed, his eyes keen for
some further sign of them. He guessed that there would be at least one
den farther up in the gulch that opened out ahead, and if he could find
it and get the pups--well, the bounty on one litter would even his
loss, even if he were not lucky enough to get one of the old ones. He
had a shovel tied to the saddle under his left leg, to use in case he
found a den.

So, planning a crusade against these enemies to his enterprise, he
picked his way slowly up the side of the deep gully that had a little
stream wandering through rocks at the bottom. His eyes, that Billy
Louise had found so quick and keen, noted every little jutting shelf of
rock, every badger hole, every bush. It looked like a good place for
dens of wolf or coyote. And with the sun shining down