OCR Text |
Show twenty feet behind th cojiote.Cand, to save the life of him, he cannot understand under-stand why it Is that he 'cannot get perceptibly per-ceptibly closer; and he begins to get aggravated, ag-gravated, and it makes htm madder and madder to see how gently the coyote glides along and never panti or, eat j or ceas to smile; and he grows ptiH j more' and more lncenwd to e how I shamefully he has been taken in by ;tn j entire stranger, and v hat an ignoble swindle that long, calm soft-footed trot la And next the dog notices that he is getting fagged, and that the coyote actually ac-tually has to slacken speed a little to keep from running away from him. And then that town dop is mad in earn. st. and he begins to strain, and weep, mul rwear, and paw the sand hlRh-r than ever, and reach for the coyote with concentrated con-centrated and deeperate enei'K.v. This sport finds him tlx fert behind the gliding enemy, and two miles from his friends. And then, in thf Instant that a wild new hope is llphtitu.- m h;s face, the coyote turn and MiiKe" oind-ly oind-ly upon him onrt more, and with a something about it which sterns to say: "Well, -I shall have to t.:ir rr.yy.-if away from you. -but business is tu?i-nes, tu?i-nes, and It will not do for n e to be fooling along this way all day ' And forthwith there. rushlr.tr mnnd. and the sudden stJttting of a i'T.P crack through the ftmosphere; and behold, that dog Is sttltary and aione In the midst of a va solitude. Twain's Description of a Coyote, The coyote of the farther deserts Is a long, slim, slick and sorry looking skeleton skele-ton 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 coyote is a living, breathing breath-ing allegory of want. He is always hungry. hun-gry. He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures despise de-spise him, and even the fleas would desert de-sert him for a velocipede. He Is so spir- mess ana cowaraiy uiui even wnue ms 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 sagebrush, glancing over his shoulder shoul-der 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 yarcs, and stop again; another fifty, and stop again; and, finally, the gray of his gliding body blends with the gray of the sagebrush, and he disappears. 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 that he knows something about speed. The coyote will go swinging swing-ing gently off on that deceitful trot of his. and every little while he will smile a fraudful smile over hia shoulder that will fill that dog entirely full of encouragement en-couragement and worldly ambition, and make him lay his head still lower to the ground and stretch his neck farther to the front, and pant more fiercely, 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! All this time the dog is only a short j ' - |