igured at four."

"I didn't know that wolves, lone wolves, would attack cattle."

"It's calves an' yearlin's mostly that they go for. It ain't often that
you see a wolf tacklin' anythin' bigger'n a two-year-old. But if you
figure that a wolf gets rid o' four head a year, an' inflicts himself on
a sufferin' community for a space of about ten years, that's somewhere
in the neighborhood o' forty head. A thousand wolves means about forty
thousand head of cattle, or pretty nigh a million dollars' worth of
stock."

"The beef you've saved by killing wolves," commented Wilbur, "would feed
quite a town."

"Forty thousand is a tolerable sized bunch. An' that's without figurin'
on the wolf cubs there would have been durin' all those years from the
older ones whose matrimonial expectations I disappointed plenty abrupt.
An' it makes a pile o' difference to cattlemen to know they c'n send a
herd grazin' on the national forest, an' be fairly sure they won't lose
much by varmints."

"It surely must," said the boy. "But I hadn't realized that wolves were
such a danger."

"I wouldn't go to say that they was dangerous. An old gray wolf, if you
corner him, is surly an' savage, an' will fight anythin' at any odds.
Out on the Barren Grounds they're bad, but around the Sierras I ain't
heard o' them attackin' humans but twice, an' they was children, lost in
the woods. I figure the kids had wandered around till they petered out,
an' then, when they were exhausted, the wolves got 'em. But I've never
heard of a wolf attackin' a man anywhere in the Rockies."

"But I thought wolves ran in packs often."

"Not in the United States, son, so far as I've heard of. I knew a
Russian trapper, though, who meandered down this way from Alaska in the
early days. He used to spin a lot o' yarns about the Siberian wolves
runnin' in packs an' breakfastin' freely off travelers. But he seemed to
think that it was the horses the wolves were after chiefly, although
they weren't passin' up any toothsome peasant that happened along."

"And do wolves attack horses here, too?"

"Not on the trail, that fashion. But they're some partial to colts."

"How about coyotes?"

"They're mean critters an' they give a pesky lot o' trouble, although
they bother sheep more'n cattle. But a few husky dogs will keep coyotes
at a distance, though they'll watch a chance an' sneak off with a
young lamb or any sheep what is hurt an' has fallen behind the herd. But
they don't wo