Then I opened a few dozen more gates and we were down on the flats. Here the lady spied a coyote, furtively skirting some willows on our left. So, for a few merry miles, we played the game of coyote. It is a simple game to learn, but requires a trained eye. When one player sees a coyote the other becomes indebted to him in the sum of one dollar. This sport dispelled the early morning gloom that had beset me. I won a dollar almost immediately. It may have been the same coyote, as my opponent painfully suggested; but it showed at a different breach in the willows, and I was firm. Then the game went fiercely against me. Ma Pettengill detected coyotes at the far edges of fields--so far that I would have ignored them for jack rabbits had I observed them at all. I claimed an occasional close one; but these were few. The outlook was again not cheering. It was an excellent morning for distant coyotes, and presently I owed Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill seven dollars, she having won two doubleheaders in succession. This ride was costing me too much a mile. Being so utterly outclassed I was resolving to demand a handicap, but was saved from this ignominy by our imminent arrival at the abode of this here Tilton, who presently sauntered out of a feeding corral and chewed a straw at us idly. We soon took all that out of him. The air went something like this: * * * * * MRS. L. J. P.--brightly: Morning, Chester! Say, look here! About that gap in the fence across Stony Creek field--I got to turn a beef herd in there Thursday. TILTON--crouching luxuriously on one knee still chewing the straw: Well, now, about that little job--I tell you, Mis' Pett'ngill; I been kind o' holdin' off account o' Snell bein' rushed with his final plowin'. He claims-- MRS. L. J. P.--still brightly: Oh, that's all right! Snell will be over there, with his men, to-morrow morning at seven o'clock. He said you'd have to be there, too. TILTON--alarmed, he rises, takes straw from his mouth, examines the chewed end with dismay and casts it from him; removes his hat, looks at this dubiously, burnishes it with a sleeve, and sighs: To-morrow morning! You don't mean to-morrow-- MRS. L. J. P.--carefully yet rapidly: To-morrow morning at seven o'clock. You don't want to throw Snell down on this; and he's going to be there. How many men can you take? TILTON--dazed: Now--now lemme see! MRS. L. J. P.--quickly: You can take Chris and Shorty and Jake and yourself. Any one else? TILTON--swept over the falls: Why, no'm; I don't guess there's any other I could spare, account of-- MRS. L. J. P.--almost sweetly: All right, then. To-morrow; seven sharp. TILTON--from the whirlpool, helplessly: Yes'm! Yes'm! MRS. L. J. P.: Morning! * * * * * We ride on. Tilton fades back toward the corral; he has forgotten to replace his hat.