pleasing my host with
a compliment, I said: "That gentleman with whom you were in converse
last evening told me he never passed a more delightful hour than he
spent listening to you. You recall whom I mean?"

"Recall him? Shore," retorted my friend as he recurred to the pitcher
for a second comforter. "You-all alloodes to the little gent who's
lame in the nigh hind laig. He appeals to me, speshul, as he puts me
in mind of old Colonel Coyote Clubbs who scares up Doc Peets that time.
Old Coyote is lame same as this yere person."

"Frighten Peets!" I exclaimed, with a great air; "you amaze me! Give
me the particulars."

"Why, of course," he replied, "I wouldn't be onderstood that Peets is
terrorised outright. Still, old Colonel Coyote shore stampedes him an'
forces Peets to fly. It's either _vamos_ or shoot up pore Coyote; an'
as Peets couldn't do the latter, his only alternative is to go
scatterin' as I states.

"This yere Coyote has a camp some ten miles to the no'th an' off to one
side of the trail to Tucson. Old Coyote lives alone an' has built
himse'f a dugout--a sort o' log hut that's half in an' half outen the
ground. His mission on earth is to slay coyotes--'Wolfin'' he calls
it--for their pelts; which Coyote gets a dollar each for the furs, an'
the New York store which buys 'em tells Coyote to go as far as he
likes. They stands eager to purchase all he can peel offen them
anamiles.

"No; Coyote don't shoot these yere little wolves; he p'isens 'em.
Coyote would take about twelve foot, say, of a pine tree he's cut
down--this yere timber is mebby eight inches through--an' he'll bore in
it a two-inch auger hole every two foot. These holes is some deep;
about four inches it's likely. Old Coyote mixes his p'isen with beef
tallow, biles them ingredients up together a lot, an' then, while she's
melted that a-way, he pours it into these yere auger holes an' lets it
cool. It gets good an' hard, this arsenic-tallow does, an' then Coyote
drags the timber thus reg'lated out onto the plains to what he regyards
as a elegible local'ty an' leaves it for the wolves to come an' batten
on. Old Coyote will have as many as a dozen of these sticks of timber,
all bored an' framed up with arsenic-tallow, scattered about. Each
mornin' while he's wolfin', Coyote makes a round-up an' skins an'
counts up his prey. An' son, you hear me! he does a flourishin' trade.

"Why don't Coyote p'isen hunks of meat you asks? For