Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/32



aturalists have made only incidental mention of the rare swift-fox that inhabits a limited area of the badlands and cedar breaks along the east slope of the Rockies.

Moran had searched long for a den of these little fellows, scarcely larger than a squirrel but an exact duplicate in miniature of the coyote.

The fur markets listed them as kit-fox but locally all men called them swifts. Aside from the fact that each year a few were caught in coyote traps or with strychnine bait, little was known of them.

To better study them, Moran shifted his base camp the following spring, moving his outfit into a log cabin used by the BarT ranch for a winter line camp.

On his first day at the cabin Flash had jumped a pair of these tiny swifts in a near-by gulch. Several times since Moran had seen one running like a vivid yellow streak, and he knew the den was somewhere close at hand.

The year-old wolf could not resist the call to