The Guerilla Chief, and Other Tales. Reid Mayne

the gaunt form of the large Mexican wolf. We saw great holes eaten in the hips of horses and mules; but not a scratch upon the corpse of a Mexican soldier!

      “Why is it?” I asked of a singular personage who was riding immediately behind me, unattached to my troop, and whose experience over Texan and New Mexican battlefields I presumed would help me to an explanation. “Why is it that the wolves have left their bodies untouched?”

      “Wagh!” exclaimed the individual thus interrogated, with an expression of scornful disgust suddenly overspreading his features. “Wolves eat ’em! No – nor coyot’s neyther. A coyot won’t eat skunk; an’ I reck’n thur karkidges aint less bitterer than the meat o’ a skunk.”

      “You think there’s something in their flesh that the wolves don’t relish – something different from that of other people?”

      “Think! I’m sartin sure o’t. I’ve see’d ’em die whar we killed ’em – when the Texans made their durned foolish expedishun northart to Santa Fé. I’ve seed ’em lyin’ out in the open paraira, for hul weeks at a time, till they had got dry as punk – jest like them things they bring from somewhar way out t’other side of the world. Durn it, I dis-remember the name o’ the place, an’ the things themselves. You know what I’m trackin’ up, Bill Garey? We seed ’em last time we wur at Sant Looey – in that ere queery place, whur they’d got Ingun things, an’ stuffed bufflers, an’ the like.”

      “Mummeries?” replied the person thus appealed to, another unattached member of the corps of rifle-rangers. “Are that what you’re arter, old Rube?”

      “Preezackly, Bill Mum’ries; ay, the name war that – I reccolex it. They gits the critters out o’ large stone buildin’s, shaped same as the rockly islands we seed, when we were trappin’ that lake out t’ords California.”