Page:Patches (1928).pdf/151

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sheep was a common thing. They never ate them, not caring for mutton, but merely killed them for the excitement of the chase.

Two Toes had killed calves and colts in Nebraska and had driven several horse-raisers who had ranches in southeastern Montana nearly to despair. In Wyoming he had killed calves and yearlings and done much damage on the cattle ranches. Although he never ate mutton he did like a tender young colt, but his favorite diet was calves and yearling heifers. He was so fastidious that he never ate an adult animal and as this band of wolves never ate anything that they did not kill themselves they were immune to all kinds of poison.

Old Two Toes' cunning in perceiving traps was almost beyond belief. His nose always warned him of danger and never was at fault. He would go where some trapper had set twenty-five to fifty steel traps for his little band and with diabolical cunning would discover each trap. Some of them he would uncover and these he would spring by scratching sticks or stones on them. Several government hunters, employed especially for the purpose, had camped on his trail for four or five years.

He was well-known to the biological branch of a certain department of the government in Washington. Just as a great city catalogs its crooks and keeps a