Ruler brayed a musical volley of hound notes, taking after the pups in long bounds that closed up on them fast. A gray wolfish streak was doing some fancy steps, twisting and turning through the greasewood bushes. Sid galloped, Scotty galloped; after them thundered Big John and the Colonel. The wind whistled around Sid’s ears as his pinto let out speed. “Run him down, fellers--watch out for prairie dog holes!” snorted Big John, swerving the wild, white horse to the left to cut across the coyote’s trail. The two Arizonans had fanned out in a wide bend; Sid and Scotty jounced along together, pawing at their revolvers which were tightly jammed in the saddle holsters; the horses streaked along with a rapid clatter of hoof beats on the vast level floor of the desert, which was the stage setting for their coyote run. Sid yelled with glee. What a lot of _room_ there was in this country! Bare mountains and mesas ringed the horizon, but for miles the flat, gray sage and green greasewood dotted the red sand. The dogs looked like little black specks, leaping and twisting through the low bushes. The whole plain was flat as a floor, and the horses under them reached out with flying hoofs in the unrestrained joy of racing. Then a jack rabbit jumped from behind a sage bush, and the three pups dropped their hot coyote trail and started after him. “Wa--_hoo_! Stop them, boys!” roared the Colonel from his huge roan. “Break ’em of that!” He kept on after the coyote and Ruler. Sid tugged out his revolver and fanned the air ahead of the jack rabbit. His bullets threw up spats of white dust, and Pepper and Bourbon, who were yipping and squealing in hot pursuit, nearly turned somersaults as a bullet threw a splash of sand right before their faces. The dogs leaped back, falling all over each other, and then the swift ponies wheeled around in front of them. Scotty leaned far out of his saddle with swinging quirt. “Back, Pep! Out of that, Bourbon! Nix on rabbit!--_Skip!_--VAMOOSE!” he barked, lashing at them with his quirt. Sid thundered up on Pinto and they headed the pups and drove them back, whimpering and cringing, to where they had left the coyote track. The men were now at least a mile away across the level basin, stringing along with Big John’s white horse in the lead and Ruler far ahead of them all. The coyote was evidently headed for some craggy red sawteeth where he could make his escape from the horses uphill.