"I do. Take me from the ranch, sir, and blindfold me even, and I verily believe I'd find my way back again. Now a bit more about the coyotes. If you are to be of help you must hear all I can tell you so that you will know the better how to fight 'em. Sometimes they'll yelp like a dog and trick you into thinking your own collies are in trouble; but do not trust them. 'Twill be no collies but themselves that are barking. Again they will cheat you into believing that they are far away, so gentle will be their cry; that is to throw you off the track. Or they will bark in two keys as if there were twice as many of them as there really are. They are the canny ones! Then when you pick up your gun and go where you think they are, they will no be there; 'twill be at a different spot they are at work." "Well, Don," said Mr. Clark, "I do not see but you and I have something ahead of us. I am afraid we shall be of very little help, Sandy. Why, one ought to be an expert to catch such a gamester as a coyote!" "Then you're no grudging us the loss of six lambs, Mr. Clark." "I do not see how you did so well--to lose only six in a great flock like this!" "But even so, sir, I was that wrathful when I found I had been outwitted I could have cried. You see six or seven coyotes put their heads together, as they have a way of doing, and cut a group of lambs off from the herd--got between them and the flock. It took the dogs to drive 'em away. Robin and the Prince are great fighters, and Colin is not far behind. Before we got rid of them, though, we had lost three lambs. The next time they tried a different trick: part of them barked and drew the dogs to a corner of the pasture, and then the rest came down on the unprotected end of the fold and carried away three more lambs." "Is there nothing that will stop them?" asked Donald. "We have tried many things. Some herders put strychnine in the carcasses of dead lambs and poison a few of the coyotes; most of them are too clever to be caught that way, though. The government has also killed many. Perhaps to-night, Don, you may have a share in the good work. But I warn you do not send a bullet through one of my dogs, thinking his barking is the yelp of one of these range thieves." "Indeed I'll be careful," Donald promised, as he sprang up and ran to the edge of the rimrock to wave a good-bye to Luigi, who was disappearing round a curve of the trail. "The lad is happy as a king here on the range, Sandy," Mr. Clark remarked. "He takes to it as if he had been bred on the hills, sir." "I wish he might like the work well enough to go into the business with me some time." "There is no telling. He is but young yet. When he is old as I, mayhap he may choose to settle down and be a wool-grower." "How old are you, Sandy?" "I should be near thirty, sir, I'm thinking, though I haven't always had a birthday cake out here on the hills," was the whimsical reply. "Thirty! A rare age for such a level head as yours!"