Lobo was upon her.  Seizing her by the neck he suddenly held back with all his force and so threw her heavily to the ground.  The shock must have been tremendous, for the heifer was thrown heels over head.  Lobo also turned a somersault, but immediately recovered himself, and his followers falling on the poor cow, killed her in a few seconds.  Lobo took no part in the killing—­after having thrown the victim, he seemed to say, “Now, why could not some of you have done that at once without wasting so much time?”

The man now rode up shouting, the wolves as usual retired, and he, having a bottle of strychnine, quickly poisoned the carcass in three places, then went away, knowing they would return to feed, as they had killed the animals themselves.  But next morning, on going to look for his expected victims, he found that, although the wolves had eaten the heifer, they had carefully cut out and thrown aside all those parts that had been poisoned.

The dread of this great wolf spread yearly among the ranchmen, and each year a larger price was set on his head, until at last it reached $1,000, an unparalleled wolf-bounty, surely; many a good man has been hunted down for less.  Tempted by the promised reward, a Texan ranger named Tannerey came one day galloping up the canon of the Currumpaw.  He had a superb outfit for wolf-hunting—­the best of guns and horses, and a pack of enormous wolf-hounds.  Far out on the plains of the Panhandle, he and his dogs had killed many a wolf, and now he never doubted that, within a few days, old Lobo’s scalp would dangle at his saddle-bow.

Away they went bravely on their hunt in the gray dawn of a summer morning, and soon the great dogs gave joyous tongue to say that they were already on the track of their quarry.  Within two miles, the grizzly band of Currumpaw leaped into view, and the chase grew fast and furious.  The part of the wolf-hounds was merely to hold the wolves at bay till the hunter could ride up and shoot them, and this usually was easy on the open plains of Texas; but here a new feature of the country came into play, and showed how well Lobo had chosen his range; for the rocky canons of the Currumpaw and its tributaries intersect the prairies in every direction.  The old wolf at once made for the nearest of these and by crossing it got rid of the horsemen.  His band then scattered and thereby scattered the dogs, and when they reunited at a distant point of course all of the dogs did not turn up, and the wolves, no longer outnumbered, turned on their pursuers and killed or desperately wounded them all.  That night when Tannerey mustered his dogs, only six of them returned, and of these, two were terribly lacerated.  This hunter made two other attempts to capture the royal scalp, but neither of them was more successful than the first, and on the last occasion his best horse met its death by a fall; so he gave up the chase in disgust and went back to Texas, leaving Lobo more than ever the despot of the region.