Raymond S. Spears

“ While two or three of the men rode around the edge of the tall prickly-pear and pointed their sharp noses out over the spines, blinking as they saw the reflection of the setting sun down the masses of spines and thorns, like the pathway of moonbeams on the ripples of water or across an alkali flat, the other humans in quick and hasty alarm fell from their horses, who sighed and blew with relief and wished they had a drink. ”

“ What kind of a wolf is it—how big—that he can kill a bull elk! And there he’s killed a mountain sheep, too! We better hurry up. ’Tain’t safe up in these mountains, with packs of wolves running around!”
The two hastily loaded a sled full of hay; and while one held the elk at bay with a pitchfork to keep them from eating the fodder off the sled as fast as it was pitched on, the other made the load. Then they wired up the fence again good and strong, and raced away on their steep back trail down into the valley, far below, glad to escape with their lives. ”

“ With all their experience, the sight-hunters didn’t know prickly-pear when they saw it. They must needs bound high, looking for the game they hunted, and come down amid the thorns and spines from above. The humans and Airedales, topping the ridge, heard the squealing anguish and reckoned that the wolf was at last at bay, and was fighting five or six times its weight, tooth-armament, and agility—and winning out. ”

“ The battle with the pack of wolves was over, and the humans had escaped. People just had to believe now, especially as forty miles away, out over the open prairies, Deputy Sheriff Cubhaus, an old-timer, found a wolf-track in the snow, a wolf which had a crooked paw, and which was traveling for further orders eastward.
THE alarm was sent forth to watch out for the infamous old rascal. Crook Paw was on the rampage. His insolence knew no bounds! He was raiding the Trans-Missouri Empire! Men who hadn’t seen anything larger than a jack-rabbit in fifteen years thrilled to the call to battle. ”

“ Deep snow had driven elk and mountain sheep down from the heights. When they reached the lower limits of forested wilderness they found that the hay, wild fodder of the meadows and sidehills, had all been carefully reaped and cut close. The snow-covered mounds of hay stood in the midst of clearings and along valley bottoms. Here and there five thousand feet below were log cabins, with humans waiting around the fires for Spring to come—the Chinook to open up the frozen land. Around each haystack was a high barbed-wire fence. ”

“ The bounties supplied the wolvers with sustenance, and the capture of the brutes gave them sport for which they gave up their ambition to become men of substance and position in the community.
The trappers and hunters were wandering strangers in the lands where they had swept the wild life from the very horizons, so that the passing tourists could roll in automobiles from range to range of prairie, mountains, and, looking with all the eyes that they had, still fail to discover a sign of any life larger than prairie-dogs, save for an occasional lank, hungry, thirsty and fugitive jack-rabbit. ”

“ Packs of wolves that didn’t think anything of pulling down bull elk and eating mountain sheep alive just had to be taken care of! The Government couldn’t expect people to stand for that.
If something wasn’t done to clear the range of wolves, after they’d eaten what they wanted of game they’d be coming after the fat herds and flocks of tame meat. And next anybody knew, it wouldn’t be safe for humans, no sir, not for American citizens, to follow their own public highways. ”

“ Crook Paw had come to challenge the supremacy of humans. The Last Gore school house, nine miles east of Rosemary Butte, built of sod and old-fashioned, burning lignite in its stove, with eleven helpless little pupils and a brave school-teacher, Miss Amanda Yonson, had no idea of figuring in the annals of the prairies. ”

“ The idea that a wild live thing could be more valuable than a dead hide, farmer-stretched in the sun, and worth for its spongy, greasy, foul-smelling mass of hair, blood and fat several cents in coin of the realm, was preposterous. ”

“ He circled; he ran over bare rock; he tried back-tracking and jumping from high bluffs; the old-time hunters on his trail knew every trick he played, and the time came when the tired dogs and the tired horses discovered their sneaking, cringing quarry darting from cover at only a few hundred yards’ distance. ”

“ The men pulled their revolvers and carbines, and, to make the occasion one never to be forgotten, shot and yelled into the air with all the sane, intelligent and superior dignity of humanity in the presence of the lower orders of brutes and such. ”

“ No use any ordinary man trying to do anything with that wolf. Why, he’d likely kill a man’s sheep just out of spunk an’ deviltry! I better not show I’m int’rested in his tracks too much. He might notice! ”

“ The cattle, sheep, horse and homeland associations each offered a hundred-dollar reward for the killing of infamous Crook Paw. Popular subscription added another hundred, and the county offered a hundred, too. Thus the old scalawag of a wolf was worth a Winter's wages for a trapper or hunter. ”