Belford's Magazine, Vol II, No. 10, March 1889

And here arises the question of a certain occult power apparently possessed by this creature alone. It seems to be established by undisputed testimony that he is the most skilful packer of meats, with the least trouble and expense, known in the annals of the art preservative. His hollow logs have been repeatedly split in his absence, and found full of dead fowls, killed in a neighboring farm-yard, squeezed in closely side by side for future use, and all untainted and fresh. How does he accomplish this? There are evidently various things to learn from the field of natural history which might be turned to the uses of man. To say nothing of the value of the patent, this would be a very useful household recipe if known. The inference is that there may be an occult quality in his strange and characteristic endowment not heretofore suspected.

Our western friend has an extensive family relationship. There are at least six varieties of him in various latitudes. No one branch of the family is believed to have any fellowship with any other branch, probably for weighty and sufficient family reasons; though to the ordinary human senses there is so little difference in the sachet that one cannot see reason for being so particular among themselves. Two of him are very common west of the Missouri – one as big as a poodle and variously striped, and the other of a smaller and more concentrated variety, more active also in his habits. It is the bigger of these two who goes about waving his plume and seeking new acquaintances, as though he contemplated going into the Bohemian oats business among the farmers, and who courts admiration while he spreads consternation. It is he who lies in ambush in the corn-shocks, in the early days of the yellow autumn, apparently for the express purpose, through the media of the farmer's boys and the district school, of informing the whole neighborhood, and especially the little girls, that he is still about. It is he who is borne oftenest, in spirit and essence, through the open windows of the settler's house, causing the mistress thereof to wish, and to often say that she wishes, that she had never come away from Ohio, or wherever she used to reside, and where she declares mephitis to have been a nuisance utterly unknown. It is he who lopes innocently along the railroad track, declining to retire, meeting death without a murmur, knowing, perhaps, that his dire revenge will follow the fleeting train, whose wheels have murdered him, for many a mile, even across the plains and into mountain passes, and perhaps return with it and add a little something, a piquant mite, to the loud odors of the Missouri River terminus. The passengers all know he has been killed, and know it for the remainder of the journey, or else they wonder at the pungency of the atmosphere apparently pervading a stretch of country as big as all New England, and which they will talk about as one of the western drawbacks after they have returned home. It is he who rather rejoices than otherwise at the number and ferocity of the farmer's dogs, and who is indirectly blessed if they have the habit of going into the house and lying under the beds. Then indeed may he fulfil his mission. When they at first, and through inexperience, attack him, he routs them all without excitement or anger on his part, causes an armed domestic investigation of them, and their banishment without extradition, and through them impresses himself upon the unappreciative western understanding.

The little one, the other common variety, is perhaps more rarely seen, but he is at least frequently suspected. Not much bigger than a kitten, and almost or quite black, he lacks the look of innocence and the appearance of docility so falsely worn by his relative. Once they both hibernated: at least the books say so. Now, as one of the changes wrought by the settlement of the country, this small one becomes a frequent all-the-year tenant of the farmer's out-buildings. His battery is quite as formidable as the other's is, and may, indeed, be considered as an improvement in the way of rapidity and concentration, like the Gatling gun. The barn is not always his residence; and without inquiring if it is entirely convenient he frequently takes up his domicile in or under the dwelling. A mephitis in the cellar is one of the Kansas things. He does not, while there, produce any of the mysterious noises that indicate ghosts. The house is known not to be haunted, for everybody understands quite well who is there. But the owner must not attempt ejectment. Peace and quiet he insists upon. You must bar him out some time when he is absent on business, wait until spring, or move to another house. It is the middle one of these remedies that is usually adopted, if any. While he stays, there are no joint occupants with him in the place he has pre-empted. He will catch mice like a cat, and the joy of his life is the breaking of a rat's back with one nip behind the head. He has a most formidable array of teeth, and eschews vegetables entirely. He is the foe of all the little animals who live in walls or basements, or in holes or under stones. Even the weazel, that slim incarnation of predatory instinct, declines to enter into competition with him, and goes when he comes, or comes when the other goes. One of them is suspected, from this fact, of eating the other, and mankind, with the only form of disinterestedness of which we can justly boast, does not care which of the two it is.

The biggest one of the mephitis family lives in Texas, and that empire is not disposed to boast itself withal on that account. He came there from Mexico, possibly on account of his being preposterously considered a table luxury in the latter country. But it is a land of which such eccentricities may be expected. They eat the ground-lizard there, – a variety of the celebrated "Gila monster," – and some other creatures to our pampered notions not less repulsive; though they seem to avoid, by peculiar management, that quadrennial banquet of crow which constitutes our great national dish. Mephitis is, however, purely American wherever he comes from. Europe knows him not in quadrupedal form. He is one of the things got by discovery, though he may not take rank, perhaps, with the gigantic grass we call "corn," or with tobacco, or even with ginseng or sassafras, or the host of acquisitions which would distinguish us as a people even if we had him not at all. And now that we have got him, we must apparently cherish him; and with our usual thrift we have made many attempts to utilize him. He often appears in polite society under the name of sable, or some such thing, and no odor betrays him. Of the strange fluid, which is one of the most wonderful natural defences ever bestowed upon an animal, pharmacy has concocted a medicine, and the perfumers an odor for the toilet. Yet it must be admitted that one of his chiefest uses, so far, is to furnish the western editor with a synonym and comparative, and a telling epithet in time of trouble. He often caps the climax of a controversial sentence as long as one's arm, and if you take the county paper you need not be long in discovering that while we scientific may call him mephitis, he hath another name not often heard by ears polite, or frequently mentioned in the society in which the reader moves.

That other vagabond who may be considered as being vaguely referred to at the head of this chapter has no possible kinship with him who has been desultorily sketched. Yet the two stand together in my mind in a kind of vague relationship of character. I was not surprised at my first sight of a coyote, but he grew greatly upon me afterwards. It was his voice. He is but a degenerate wolf, – the weakest of his family save in the one respect referred to, – but he is an old and persistent acquaintance of every frontiersman, ten times as numerous and prominent in every recollection of that far time of loneliness and silence as any other beast.

If you visit Lincoln Park, at Chicago, you will find a special pen devoted to the comfort and happiness of this little gray outcast of the wilderness; and I may add that he does not appear there to any advantage whatever. On the wide plains where there was nothing, apparently, to eat, he was, for a coyote, usually in good condition. His coat was tolerably smooth sometimes, and he was industrious and alert. Here, where he is regularly fed at the public expense, he is so shabby that one hesitates to be caught looking at him as one goes by. There is that about an animal that expresses unhappiness as plainly as it is expressed by men, and the Lincoln Park coyote is unquestionably the most abject specimen of his entire disreputable family.

The reader will understand that in all I may have to say about the little reprobate I do not refer for any particulars to that incarcerated and unhappy vagabond just mentioned. On the contrary, he was the first sensation of my earliest border experiences. He came the first night, and every night thereafter, for several years. I grew to know him well, and have had many a brief and solitary interlude of mingled amusement and vexation on his account, when there was nothing else on earth to laugh at or be sorry about. I often have shot at him, usually at very long range, but never to my knowledge killed, or even scared him. It is well understood that he always knows whether or not you have with you a gun, and will be distant or familiar accordingly. But finally exasperated by a wariness so constant, I have sought revenge by a form of murder that I do not now claim, upon reflection, was entirely in self-defence or perfectly justifiable, and which to this day remains a red stain upon an otherwise fair reputation. I killed twenty odd of him in a single night with insidious strychnine and a dead mule, and in the morning was astonished not so much at the slaughter as at the fact that he had not suspected the somewhat worn expedient, and avoided the banquet.

The trouble with him is, that he does not avoid anything that may be imagined to be good to eat. If there was ever an animal preternaturally and continually hungry, it was the old-time coyote of the plains of western Kansas and the mountains and plateaux of southern New Mexico. Yet no one ever saw a starved coyote, or found a dead one. The odor of the camp-fire frying-pan reached him a long way off, and was irresistible. He crept nearer and nearer, as the evening passed, and finally the camp was surrounded by a gray cordon who crouched and licked their jaws, and kept still and waited. But when the little fire was dead and the voices had ceased, and every man lay wrapped in slumber and his blankets, the tuneful side of his nature would get the better of him, and he began to faintly whine. He was getting the key-note, and ascertaining the pitch. The first faint yelp, imprudently uttered, affected his companions as yawning does men, and now a still hungrier one gives utterance to a screech so entirely coyotish that the example is irresistible. Then pandemonium awakes. Each vagabond rises up, sits upon his tail, elevates his chin, and gives utterance to a series of yelps that rise in crescendo, regardless of time, or measure, or interval, or the lateness of the hour. Then, when the camp was new, and the men were beginners in that strange and lonely life that often kept its unexplained and indescribable charm for them ever afterwards, there would be responsive sleeplessness and profanity. The hardest ordeal was to become finally accustomed to this nightly pandemonium, which no effort could prevent, no vigilance avoid. The first effect was to be slightly, though privately, frightened. The next was to intensify the feeling of lonesomeness. One lay in torment, silent, sleepless, wondering if it was a common thing, and if it were possible to yelp a human creature to death in the course of time. Then one talked to his companions, and perhaps expressed himself in a couple of languages. The most futile of all toil would be an attempt to drive the singers away. Silent only for a moment, they would all come back again and make up for lost time. This is how the early wanderers in what is destined to be the garden of the Union first made the acquaintance of the most characteristic animal of the country, and this is why he dwells in the memory of every man who ever slept beneath the sparkling dome west of the Missouri the sweet sleep of toil and health – a sleep that by-and-by was uninterrupted by all the night-sounds the wilderness might invent except the stealthy footfall of some human stranger.

And when the gray vagabond had become an accustomed nuisance he began to exercise his real calling; for all his other modes of obtaining a livelihood are mere by-play to his actual business, which is stealing. In this line he is something preternatural. He had in those days a remarkable liking for harness, straps, raw-hide, saddles, boots. He chewed the lariat from the pony's neck, and would steal a saddle and gnaw it beyond use or recognition by the owner. He would walk backward and draw anything that had a rancid smell a mile or so from where he found it. He was accused of deliberately drawing the cork and spilling the horse liniment, and of then lapping the fluid from the ground regardless of consequences. He would chew a belt of cartridges for the sake of the tallow with which they were coated, and spit them out again in a dilapidated pile of sheet metal. Vagabond luck saved him from having the top of his head blown off during this meal; and I have known a Mexican youth to be killed in trying to straighten some of them out again. Whips and thongs were dainties, chewed, swallowed, and digested without danger or difficulty. The owner was under the necessity of looking after his boots more carefully when they were off than when they were on, and axle-grease was a precious commodity stored for safe-keeping with the teamster's spare shirt, in some arcanum of the equipage where the utmost diligence would not reveal it.

It was a most desolate country, whose silent leagues bore no sustenance, and whose creatures, save him, were few. He was everywhere, and the secret of his existence lay in his one virtue – industry. He gathered a livelihood from the things despised of all others, and he seasoned it with content and made it answer. Never a beetle or a lizard crossed his path unchased. Plainsmen said that when he encountered one of the little land-turtles or terrapins, then common, he staid with it until it died and the shell came off. He killed the virulent little prairie rattlesnake, also plentiful enough, by seizing it in the middle and snapping its head off with a single jerk, as one cracks a whip. But if he had been bitten he would always have recovered. He chased jackass rabbits in pairs, and while one ran straight after the rabbit the other would cut across the angle, and thus the two would run down an animal that, when really on business, is able to fling his heels derisively in the face of the best-bred greyhound. And when they had caught him there was always a controversy. No coyote ever divided honorably. That "honor among thieves," so often mentioned, was not in his education. He sucked eggs – all that he could find; and when anything died within ten miles or so he knew it. He was contemporary with the bison, and was the bison's assassin; for when age and decrepitude overtook the shaggy bull, and three or four lame and grizzled companions went off together, he and his companions literally nagged them to death one by one. If the veteran lay down, they bit him. As long as he remained on foot they followed and teased him. When he died, they fought over and ate him, denying even a morsel to the buzzards and ravens. They followed the Indian hunting-parties, thankful for the morsels that fell to them, which were not many; for the noble red man was himself no disdainer of viscera: he included the whole internal economy under the possible head of tripe, and if in haste ate it raw; and all he left of a dead buffalo was a hard-earned morsel even for a coyote, if he had come far to get it.

And when the white hunter came, then was the time of feasting for canis latrans in all his squalid days. He was the only creature benefited by a ceaseless slaughter of about twenty years; a slaughter which meant nothing but a passion for killing, and which, leaving every carcass where it fell, in about that time exterminated the biggest, most imposing, and most numerous of the wild beasts of America.

By-and-by the railroads began to stretch their lonesome lines across the plains, and the settlers began to come. For a certain time the coyote seemed to retire before them, and there seemed a prospect for his final extermination. Not he. When the cattle-men and pioneers grew too plentiful and meddlesome; when the new-comer began to lie in wait at night for the protection of the pigs and chickens reared in hope and toil; and when the unhesitating shot-gun was the companion of his vigils, sir coyote began to come back east and reoccupy the region he had left. But under changed conditions. He is an animal of mental resource and acumen, and he changed his life. It is almost useless to add that he became worse. Middle and eastern Kansas have him in considerable numbers now, and it is noticeable that whereas he once had the impudence to sit and bark at the intruder like a dog as he passed by, he is now seldom seen or heard. Then he was merely a thief; now he is a freebooter besides. He once burrowed in the hill-top, and launched his family upon the world in a comparatively open and respectable manner, equipped only with teeth, instinct, and perseverance, confident of their future. He has now retired to the woods that line the streams, and joined that disreputable brush society which was never very respectable among either coyotes or men. He is clannish. Generation after generation stick together in the same retired locality, and sally forth at night among a population greatly richer in eatables than any he was formerly accustomed to. He no longer wanders to and fro through a vastness in which his personality was in keeping, and his slanting eyes and three-cornered visage now find furtive occupation beside fence-chinks and through cracks and knot-holes. He knows a thousand devious ways which all in the end lead to the barn-yard. It is a bleak time with him when he is forced to resort to the catching of mice again; but when I see him loafing on the sunny side of the stacks in a distant field I know what he is there for, and wish him luck for old acquaintance' sake.

Strangest of all, he has almost lost his voice, and the era of free concerts is over. Down at the bottom of a ravine, perhaps immensely tickled at some toothsome find, he sometimes so far forgets himself as to give a yelp or two. This feeble demonstration usually attracts the attention of others than those intended, and perhaps the farmer's boy, the inevitable mongrel dog with cock ears and phenomenal activity, and the frequent fowling-piece harass him greatly for the time being. But it is not to be supposed that he has lost his ancient qualifications for the performance of characteristic exploits. He merely suppresses them for the present because it is his interest to do so. Versatile, persistent, and patient, he almost deserves respect for his uncomplaining acceptance of the conditions of a changed world, his contempt for public opinion, and the common-sense which has led him to decline to follow all his contemporaries into the limbo of extermination. When I see him now, the leer in his eye and the grin on his mouth almost seem those of recognition. As of old, he wags his way along the top of the high divide, but now fenced and full of spotted cattle, with the same pensive, quick-turning, alert head, the same jog-trot, the same lolling red tongue, the same plume trailing along behind, ever mindful of a coyote's affairs, ever thinking of his next meal. Yet he is so much like his cousin, the dog, that know him never so well you can hardly help whistling to him. And when you have passed by, if you will look back you will see him sitting upon his tail and looking after you with the same expression which in the olden time made you know that he was wondering where you were going to camp, and whether, when he had barked you into stupidity or death, there was anything about you rancid, portable, dragable, tough, but perchance coming within the wide range of a coyote's menu.

James W. Steele.

A MEMORY

On Narragansett's storm-beat sandWe walked with slow, reluctant feet;I held enclasped her slender hand,With loved possession, deep and sweet.Out on the wave the wild foam swung,The circling sea-gulls upward sprung;While o'er the level sand the seaCame rolling soft and dreamily.The sunset's glow was on her cheek,Where love and heaven seemed to blend;So full our hearts we could not speak,As summer's glories found an end.What tender lights sieved through the mist,As waves and sunlight sparkling kissed,While o'er the sea, to setting sun,Swung thunder of the evening gun!Ah! gentle form, what gift was thineTo give the sky a deeper blue,To make the barren sands divine,And heaving sea a rosier hue?'Twas morn of life, and love's sweet glanceGave dreary years their one romance,When yielding form and tender eyesReturn to earth its paradise.On Narragansett's dreary sand,Now bent and old, alone I stray,Nor see the lights, nor waves, nor land,But one lone grave so far away.The storm-tossed foam and gulls distraughtReturn like dreams, with haunted thought —"No more, no more, oh! never more!"Moan the dark waves along the shore.Paul Davis.

THE NIGHT OF THE FRENCH BALL

A detective is well used to the unusual and to meeting as cold facts what, when told, seems a tissue of the wildest improbabilities. During my experience I had one case which for certain strange features I have never had surpassed. It seemed to make itself into my hand as clear as a first lesson in reading for a child, until almost the end, and then came points which are hard enough to unravel.

It occurred years ago, on the evening of the French Ball. I was free, and attended it. It was the usual thing. The Academy of Music was filled with gay women and young fellows about town. By twelve o'clock the wanton hilarity was beginning to get well under way. The women were leaning heavily on their partners' arms and indulging in loud laughter, while the steps were more vigorous than decorous. The high-kicking had begun. My attention had been particularly drawn to one young woman. She was not very tall, but was beautifully made. She was dressed like a Columbine. Her short, pointed skirt of yellow silk and blue velvet came hardly to her knees, and the waist was quite décolleté. On her blond hair was perched a conical cap with tiny silver bells on it. Around her face was wound a piece of white lace to serve as a mask. I noticed her because she was such an exquisitely graceful dancer. Her small feet, cased in gold shoes with high heels, twinkled as prettily as possible as they lightly touched the waxed floor. The dancing was an intense pleasure to her evidently. She could hardly keep her feet still during any pause in which she had not to move. They would beat impatiently upon the floor, and she would toss one in front of the other and sway her sinuous little figure, impatiently waiting till her turn to dance came again.

As I was standing near the door looking at her a party of several young men came into the Academy. They stood and looked about and passed remarks on the scene as if they had not yet become acquainted with its features. They had been to a theatre, probably, and came to the ball after it. The eyes and cheeks of two or three of them were bright, as if they had been drinking. One young fellow seemed to be the object of much attention from the others. He was a German, of medium height, with blue eyes and exceedingly blond hair, while a rich color mantled in his cheeks. The others would make some remark or comment on the scene to him, and he would laugh or smile with the air of a philosopher who had come to find a cynical enjoyment in the insane folly of his kind. The others addressed him in German or French, and called him "Graf." From his manner and appearance it did not require much astuteness to conclude that he was a young German of rank who was visiting the country.

One of his companions turned to him with a broad smile and made some remark, pointing out one of the dancers. I looked in the direction and saw my pretty blond Columbine pirouetting gracefully around, with her arms stretched out to her partner, a big fellow who was a little fuddled with wine, and who had strayed out of the orbit of the girl in a turn in the dance. She was not going to be balked of her share in the measure, and tripped about by herself quite contentedly till he should come back. It was an amusing touch to see the fairy-like creature smiling good-naturedly, while the lumbering fellow who was dancing with her, or who should have been dancing with her, was gyrating beyond her reach. I glanced at the group of fellows to see if it was she they were observing.