Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/70

 when with the BarT boys but that when off his own range men sought his life. He accommodated himself to this.

His two stronger strains were balanced by the coyote intelligence which, except for his eyes, was his sole inheritance from the little yellow prairie wolf grandfather.

The reason coyotes are caught in traps while wolves are not is because wolves avoid all man scent while a coyote believes in himself—he simply cannot resist the call to pit his intelligence against that of man. This curiosity costs many coyote lives, but his kind has survived in numbers on ranges where man has long since exterminated the wolves.

Flash began to lead a strange dual life which accorded well with his opposing strains of blood and in which this coyote brain stood him in good stead.

Stock dogs were scarce on the range. They did not long survive the poison baits which wolfers laid for coyotes. The BarT men firmly believed Flash to be the best stock dog in the world. There was talk of taking him to the Frontier Day fair in the far off capitol and issuing a free-for-all