a herd of beef cattle into that field.

Then I opened a few dozen more gates and we were down on the flats.
Here the lady spied a coyote, furtively skirting some willows on our
left. So, for a few merry miles, we played the game of coyote. It is
a simple game to learn, but requires a trained eye. When one player
sees a coyote the other becomes indebted to him in the sum of one dollar.

This sport dispelled the early morning gloom that had beset me. I won
a dollar almost immediately. It may have been the same coyote, as my
opponent painfully suggested; but it showed at a different breach in
the willows, and I was firm.

Then the game went fiercely against me. Ma Pettengill detected coyotes
at the far edges of fields--so far that I would have ignored them for
jack rabbits had I observed them at all. I claimed an occasional
close one; but these were few. The outlook was again not cheering. It was
an excellent morning for distant coyotes, and presently I owed Mrs.
Lysander John Pettengill seven dollars, she having won two doubleheaders
in succession. This ride was costing me too much a mile. Being so utterly
outclassed I was resolving to demand a handicap, but was saved from this
ignominy by our imminent arrival at the abode of this here Tilton, who
presently sauntered out of a feeding corral and chewed a straw at us
idly.

We soon took all that out of him. The air went something like this:

* * * * *

MRS. L. J. P.--brightly: Morning, Chester! Say, look here! About that gap
in the fence across Stony Creek field--I got to turn a beef herd in there
Thursday.

TILTON--crouching luxuriously on one knee still chewing the straw: Well,
now, about that little job--I tell you, Mis' Pett'ngill; I been kind o'
holdin' off account o' Snell bein' rushed with his final plowin'. He
claims--

MRS. L. J. P.--still brightly: Oh, that's all right! Snell will be over
there, with his men, to-morrow morning at seven o'clock. He said you'd
have to be there, too.

TILTON--alarmed, he rises, takes straw from his mouth, examines the
chewed end with dismay and casts it from him; removes his hat, looks at
this dubiously, burnishes it with a sleeve, and sighs: To-morrow
morning! You don't mean to-morrow--

MRS. L. J. P.--carefully yet rapidly: To-morrow morning at seven o'clock.
You don't want to throw Snell down on this; and he's going to be there.
How many men can you take?

TILTON--dazed: Now--now lemme