When We Say Of One And Another, They Are Night Prowlers, It Is Perhaps True Only As The Things They Feed Upon Are More Easily Come By In The Dark, And They Know Well How To Adjust Themselves To Conditions Wherein Food Is More Plentiful By Day.

And their accustomed performance is very much a matter of keen eye, keener scent, quick ear, and a better memory of sights and sounds than man dares boast.

Watch a coyote come out of his lair and cast about in his mind where be will go for his daily killing. You cannot very well tell what decides him, but very easily that he has decided. He trots or breaks into short gallops, with very perceptible pauses to look up and about at landmarks, alters his tack a little, looking forward and back to steer his proper course.

I am persuaded that the coyotes in my valley, which is narrow and beset with steep, sharp hills, in long passages steer by the pinnacles of the sky-line, going with head cocked to one side to keep to the left or right of such and such a promontory.

I have trailed a coyote often, going across country, perhaps to where some slant-winged scavenger hanging in the air signaled prospect of a dinner, and found his track such as a man, a very intelligent man accustomed to a hill country, and a little cautious, would make to the same point. Here a detour to avoid a stretch of too little cover, there a pause on the rim of a gully to pick the better way,--and it is usually the best way,--and making his point with the greatest economy of effort.

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