Lobo, Rag and Vixen | Page 5

Ernest Thompson Seton
strong weakness, namely, to follow their leader.
And this the shepherds turn to good account by putting half a dozen
goats in the flock of sheep. The latter recognize the superior
intelligence of their bearded cousins, and when a night alarm occurs
they crowd around them, and usually, are thus saved from a stampede
and are easily protected. But it was not always so. One night late in last
November, two Perico shepherds were aroused by an onset of wolves.
Their flocks huddled around the goats, which being neither fools nor
cowards, stood their ground and were bravely defiant; but alas for them,
no common wolf was heading this attack. Old Lobo, the weir-wolf,
knew as well as the shepherds that the goats were the moral force of the
flock, so hastily running over the backs of the densely packed sheep, he
fell on these leaders, slew them all in a few minutes, and soon had the
luckless sheep stampeding in a thousand different directions. For weeks
afterward I was almost daily accosted by some anxious shepherd, who
asked, "Have you seen any stray OTO sheep lately?" and usually I was
obliged to say I had; one day it was, "Yes, I came on some five or six
carcasses by Diamond Springs;" or another, it was to the effect that I
had seen a small 'bunch' running on the Malpai Mesa; or again, "No,
but Juan Meira saw about twenty, freshly killed, on the Cedra Monte
two days ago."
At length the wolf traps arrived, and with two men I worked a whole
week to get them properly set out. We spared no labor or pains, I
adopted every device I could think of that might help to insure success.
The second day after the traps arrived, I rode around to inspect, and
soon came upon Lobo's trail running from trap to trap. In the dust I
could read the whole story of his doings that night. He had trotted along
in the darkness, and although the traps were so carefully concealed, he
had instantly detected the first one. Stopping the onward march of the
pack, he had cautiously scratched around it until he had disclosed the
trap, the chain, and the log, then left them wholly exposed to view with
the trap still unsprung, and passing on he treated over a dozen traps in
the same fashion. Very soon I noticed that he stopped and turned aside

as soon as he detected suspicious signs on the trail, and a new plan to
outwit him at once suggested itself. I set the traps in the form of an H;
that is, with a row of traps on each side of the trail, and one on the trail
for the cross-bar of the H. Before long, I had an opportunity to count
another failure. Lobo came trotting along the trail, and was fairly
between the parallel lines before he detected the single trap in the trail,
but he stopped in time, and why and how he knew enough I cannot tell;
the Angel of the wild things must have been with him, but without
turning an inch to the right or left, he slowly and cautiously backed on
his own tracks, putting each paw exactly in its old track until he was off
the dangerous ground. Then returning at one side he scratched clods
and stones with his hind feet till he had sprung every trap. This he did
on many other occasions, and although I varied my methods and
redoubled my precautions, he was never deceived, his sagacity seemed
never at fault, and he might have been pursuing his career of rapine
to-day, but for an unfortunate alliance that proved his ruin and added
his name to the long list of heroes who, unassailable when alone, have
fallen through the indiscretion of a trusted ally.
[Illustration: Lobo and Blanca.]

III
Once or twice, I had found indications that everything was not quite
right in the Currumpaw pack. There were signs of irregularity, I
thought; for instance there was clearly the trail of a smaller wolf
running ahead of the leader, at times, and this I could not understand
until a cowboy made a remark which explained the matter.
"I saw them to-day," he said, "and the wild one that breaks away is
Blanca." Then the truth dawned upon me, and I added, "Now, I know
that Blanca is a she-wolf, because were a he-wolf to act thus, Lobo
would kill him at once."
This suggested a new plan. I killed a heifer, and set one or two rather
obvious traps about the carcass. Then cutting off the head, which is
considered useless offal, and quite beneath the notice of a wolf, I set it
a little apart and around it
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