Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/377

Rh ranks as earliest progenitor; he becomes the center of myths, and finally is apotheosized.

Our coyote is a true Westerner, and typifies the independence, the unrestrained gayety and brisk zeal which enter into the heart of him who sights the Rocky Mountains. He is little known at present eastward of real bunch-grass plains. In early days, however, he was common enough in the open country of Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, and northward, whence he received the name “prairie-wolf.” Threading the passes, he wanders among the foot-hills of all the complicated mountain system that forms the “crest of the continent,” and dwells plentifully in California valleys.

In the United States and British America, then, he is a creature of the open country, leaving high mountains and forests to the large, gray “mountain” or “timber” wolf (Canis lupus). Perhaps this is less his choice than his necessity, for in Mexico and Central America he seeks his food more often in forests than elsewhere, yet keeps his characteristic cunning and cowardice, becoming there a wild dog of the jungles, as, in the north, he is the hound of the plains. It is that tropical region, in fact, which gives us his name, for coyote is a pure Nahuatl word, with the final e softened into an eh. This ultimate must not be lost sight of in the pronunciation, which is coy-ó-té, not ki-yōt (or even kyoodle!), as often heard. Dr. D. G. Brinton writes me that the derivation seems to be from the root coy, which means a hole, and alludes to the earth-burrowing habits of the animal. I have met with a word of very similar sound, in a Californian language, said to mean “hill-dog.”

When this wolf can not find a natural hollow to suit him, nor evict some unhappy hare, prairie-dog, or badger, he digs for himself a dry burrow, or perhaps a den among loose rocks. The butte districts of the upper Missouri and the lower Colorado valleys are, therefore, his strongholds. There the decay of sandstone strata, or the breakage due to volcanic eruptions and upheavals, give him the choice of a large number of crannies, while the desolation and remoteness of wide tracts, untenanted by men, afford him the seclusion he loves.

In such seclusion his young family of five to eight pups is brought forth during the latter part of spring, the date ranging earlier or later with the latitude, and the consequently varying advance of warm weather. It is during the weeks going just before and following immediately after the birth of the puppies that the old dog-coyotes work their hardest and most systematically. In hunting at this time, our wolf adds to his ordinary pertinacity and zeal, the sagacity and endurance necessary to turn his victims and drive them back as near as possible to his home, knowing that otherwise his mate and her weaklings will be unable to partake of the feast.

A remarkable picture of this was given some years ago, by a writer in an English magazine, who, in one of the best “animal chapters” it