Wild Animals I Have Known | Page 8

to express his utter contempt for my
devices. After this he left my drag and went about his business with the
pack he guarded so effectively.
This is only one of many similar experiences which convinced me that
poison would never avail to destroy this robber, and though I continued
to use it while awaiting the arrival of the traps, it was only because it
was meanwhile a sure means of killing many prairie wolves and other
destructive vermin.
About this time there came under my observation an incident that will
illustrate Lobo's diabolic cunning. These wolves had at least one
pursuit which was merely an amusement; it was stampeding and killing
sheep, though they rarely ate them. The sheep are usually kept in flocks
of from one thousand to three thousand under one or more shepherds.
At night they are gathered in the most sheltered place available, and a
herdsman sleeps on each side of the flock to give additional protection.
Sheep are such senseless creatures that they are liable to be stampeded
by the veriest trifle, but they have deeply ingrained in their nature one,
and perhaps only one, 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 werewolf,
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. Loho 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 or 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