There had been a stirring in the grass near the track. A glimpse of an animal that looked something like a fox and something like a wolf, and wasn't either one, a wild animal that was sneaking around the train for the odd bits of food that were sometimes left in its wake. As the pungent scent of this beast reached the bulldog's snub nose, the leash that held him to the trunk became a thing of little worth. With a violent lurch he broke it, leaped from the door, landed sprawling alongside the track, and was off in pursuit of the strange animal.
Now, any one who knows how a bulldog is built and how a coyote is built can imagine how much chance the first has to catch the second. The dog followed by sight, not by scent. With his head held as high as his short neck would allow he dashed on. The coyote didn't bother very much. After getting a good start he doubled on his tracks for a little way, turned aside, and sat down. And if he wasn't too mean to laugh, he may at least have smiled as his enemy rushed forward toward nowhere.
Then that bulldog ran and ran until he couldn't run any more. Then he walked till he couldn't walk any farther. Then he slept all night, while other coyotes howled dismally near by. And in the morning he started off again, thinking he was going toward the train and his sorrowful master, really going in the opposite direction. But there was one thing that man hadn't taught him to do in all the years, and that was to quit, so he kept on. And at last, as any one will who keeps going long enough, he had to arrive somewhere and he reached the Bar O Ranch.
So you and I and the dog know how he got there, but Bill Jordan, the punchers, and the boys didn't, and presently they gave up trying to figure it out.
"'Tain't likely his owner'll show up, so he's ours," said Bill Jordan.
"He's Whitey's," Buck Higgins maintained. "He saw him first."
This law was older than any ranch house, or any cowpuncher, so it held good, and Whitey became the proud owner of the dog. The matter of his name came next in importance. Of course he had one, and he was awakened, and asked to respond to as many dog names as the party could think of. These were many, running from Towser to Nero, but they brought no response from the sleepy animal.
"Must be somep'n unusual," Buck Higgins decided, and he ventured on "Alphonse" and "Julius Cæsar," but they didn't fit.
"Well, we jest nachally got t' give him a name," said Shorty Palmer.
Again the list was gone over, but nothing seemed quite right. "Oughta be somep'n' 'propriate," said Bill Jordan. "How 'bout Moses? He was lost in th' wilderness."
"Wilderness nothin'!" objected Buck. "In the bullrushes. Them ain't prairie grass."
"Besides," said Whitey, "he ought to have a fighting name. Napoleon!"
"'Tain't English."
"Wellington."
"Too long."
As he seemed to have no choice in naming his own dog, Whitey turned in despair to Injun, who had stood solemnly by. "How about you?" Whitey asked. "Haven't you a name to suggest?"
The dog knew that he was the subject of the talk, and possibly felt that he ought to keep awake, for he sat on the veranda and blinked at the humans. Injun gazed at him stolidly.
"Huh!" he grunted. "Sittin' Bull."
"Great!" cried all the others.
This matter settled, the men went away. Sitting Bull stretched himself out on the veranda and again fell asleep, and Whitey told Injun that the dog's coming probably was a good omen. That there ought to be something doing on the ranch now.
CHAPTER II
A Suprise
It was early morning, and the Bar O Ranch slept, heedless of the keen late-autumn air that had in it just a faint, brisk hint of the fall frosts to come. Whitey came out of the ranch house and moved toward the stable. Sitting Bull trudged after him.
The dog was entirely rested, having slept the better part of two days and nights. He seemed to know that Whitey was his new owner. Dogs have an instinct for that sort of thing. And though Bull was civil and friendly enough with every one else on the ranch, he took to Whitey by selection.
At six o'clock each night Bull sat near the ranch-house front door as though waiting for some one. He waited a long time. Bill Jordan, who prided himself on what he knew about dogs, and men, said that Bull's former owner probably was a city man, and was in the habit of coming home at six; that the dog was waiting for him to appear. Be that as it may, in the days to come Bull gave up this custom. No one knew what he felt about the loss of his old master. He became a Montana dog. The city was to know him no more.
Now he waddled along after Whitey, who was making for a straw stack, near the stable. Among the field mice, gophers, rabbits, and such that thought this stack was a pretty nice place to hang around, were two hens that were of the same opinion. At least they made their nests in the stack and laid their eggs there. And they were the only hens that the Bar O boasted, for hens were scarce in Montana in those days—as Buck said, "almost as scarce as hen's teeth, an' every one knows there ain't no such thing."
It was Whitey's particular business to gather the eggs of those hens, which they saw fit to lay early in the morning. So Whitey came to the stack early, to be ahead of any weasels or ferrets, who had an uncommon fondness for eggs. This morning as he moved around the stack he didn't find any eggs, but he saw something black and pointed sticking out of the straw. Whitey took hold of the object and pulled, and the thing lengthened out in his hands.
And right there a sort of shivery feeling attacked Whitey's spine and moved up until it reached his hair, which straightway began to stand on end, for the object was a boot and in it was a man's leg. The boot came, followed by the leg, followed by a man. From what might be called the twin straw beds, another man emerged. Both sat upright in the straw and rubbed their eyes. Whitey didn't wait to see if any more were coming, or even to think of where he was going. He fled.
Instinct took him toward the ranch house, and good fortune brought Bill Jordan out of the door at the same moment.
"Bill!" yelled Whitey, "there's two men in the straw stack!"
Bill did not appear unduly excited. "They ain't eatin' the straw, are they?" he inquired.
"No, but they look awfully tough, and they nearly gave me heart-disease," Whitey panted.
"If tough-lookin' folks could give me heart-disease, I'd of bin dead long ago," Bill responded. "Let's go an' size 'em up."
Bill strolled to the stack with Whitey. The two men, now thoroughly awake, were still sitting upright in the straw. In front of them stood Sitting Bull. His lower jaw was sticking out farther than usual, and he was watching the men and awaiting events.
In Front of Them Stood Sitting Bull
"Hey! Call off yer dog, will ye?" requested one of the men.
"He ain't mine," Bill answered calmly, indicating Whitey. "He's