Another night of alternate tranquillity and turmoil. But morning came,
by and by. It was another glad awakening to fresh breezes, vast expanses
of level greensward, bright sunlight, an impressive solitude, utterly
without visible human beings or human habitations, and an atmosphere of
such amazing magnifying properties that trees that seemed close at hand
were more than three miles away. We resumed undress uniform, climbed
a-top of the flying coach, dangled our legs over the side, shouted
occasionally at our frantic mules, merely to see them lay their ears
back and scamper faster, tied our hats on to keep our hair from blowing
away, and leveled an outlook over the world-wide carpet about us for
things new and strange to gaze at. Even at this day it thrills me
through and through to think of the life, the gladness and the wild
sense of freedom that used to make the blood dance in my veins on those
fine overland mornings.
THE CAYOTE
The cayote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray
wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags
down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive
and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and
exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all over. The cayote
is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is _always_ hungry. He is
always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures despise
him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is so
spiritless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are pretending
a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he is _so_
homely!—so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful. When he
sees you he lifts his lip and lets a flash of his teeth out, and then
turns a little out of the course he was pursuing, depresses his head a
bit, and strikes a long, soft-footed trot through the sagebrush,
glancing over his shoulder at you, from time to time, till he is about
out of easy pistol range, and then he stops and takes a deliberate
survey of you; he will trot fifty yards and stop again—another fifty and
stop again; and finally the gray of his gliding body blends with the
gray of the sagebrush, and he disappears. All this is when you make no
demonstration against him; but if you do, he develops a livelier
interest in his journey, and instantly electrifies his heels and puts
such a deal of real estate between himself and your weapon, that by the
time you have raised the hammer you see that you need a minie rifle, and
by the time you have got him in line you need a rifled cannon, and by
the time you have “drawn a bead” on him you see well enough that nothing
but an unusually long-winded streak of lightning could reach him where
he is now. But if you start a swift-footed dog after him, you will enjoy
it ever so much—especially if it is a dog that has a good opinion of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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