"I reckon," decided Rube, "the best that we can do is to keep him going, and if we get him into camp to-night, we'll let McIntyre say what shall be done with him." About noon the boys came to a stream and, driving the cattle down to it, made up their minds that they would give them an hour or two of rest. When Mason came up, Jack spoke to him about the crippled steer and asked what he thought about it, repeating what he and Rube had said a little while before. "You're right about that," said Mason. "I don't believe he'd last out the night; for, as you say, the coyotes would kill him. If he were well, he could stand off a bunch of coyotes, but as he is, he wouldn't last long. You talk about crippling up his hind legs. Do you savvy, Jack, how it is that a buffalo or a steer, or a cow, gets hamstrung?" "I always supposed that a wolf just bit through that big tendon that runs down from the ham to the hock, and, of course, if that's cut or broken that cripples that leg entirely." "Right you are," said Mason, "up to a certain point; but did it ever occur to you how big and tough that tendon is, and did you ever stop to think whether a wolf could bite through it with one snap of his jaws?" "No; I confess that I never did. But now that you speak of it, it looks to me like a pretty good-sized contract for any animal to bite through that tendon at a single snap." "That's what it is," answered Mason. "If you ever get a chance to try a knife on that tendon you'll find that unless the knife is sharp like a razor you'll have to put in a good deal of force, and do some little sawing to get the blade through the tendon. We all know that a wolf is big and strong and that he can bite tremendously hard, and that he's got sharp teeth. I believe that maybe a wolf has force enough in his jaws to break a man's wrist, if he caught it just at the right point, but I don't believe that there ever was a wolf whelped that was able to cut through that tendon at a single snap, unless by accident. Of course, he might partly cut through it, and the animal's struggles might break it, but I don't believe that would happen once in a thousand times. The way the wolves hamstring these animals, so far as I've been able to see, is by biting that tendon over and over again, and before long it gets all bruised and more or less shredded, and swells up and stiffens, and the animal is not able to use his leg. If this happens to one or both legs, the first thing you know the animal is down and that's the end of it." "Well, that's news to me," declared Jack. "I never thought of that before. I always just took it for granted that a wolf, because he is big and strong, could and did cut through that tendon by a snap of his jaws; but the way you put it, it looks to me as if that would not be possible."