This is only one of many similar experiences which convinced me that poison would never avail to destroy this robber, and though I continued to use it while awaiting the arrival of the traps, it was only because it was meanwhile a sure means of killing many prairie wolves and other destructive vermin.

About this time there came under my observation an incident that will illustrate Lobo’s diabolic cunning.  These wolves had at least one pursuit which was merely an amusement, it was stampeding and killing sheep, though they rarely ate them.  The sheep are usually kept in flocks of from one thousand to three thousand under one or more shepherds.  At night they are gathered in the most sheltered place available, and a herdsman sleeps on each side of the flock to give additional protection.  Sheep are such senseless creatures that they are liable to be stampeded by the veriest trifle, but they have deeply ingrained in their nature one, and perhaps only one, strong weakness, namely, to follow their leader.  And this the shepherds turn to good account by putting half a dozen goats in the flock of sheep.  The latter recognize the superior intelligence of their bearded cousins, and when a night alarm occurs they crowd around them, and usually, are thus saved from a stampede and are easily protected.  But it was not always so.  One night late in last November, two Perico shepherds were aroused by an onset of wolves.  Their flocks huddled around the goats, which being neither fools nor cowards, stood their ground and were bravely defiant; but alas for them, no common wolf was heading this attack.  Old Lobo, the weir-wolf, knew as well as the shepherds that the goats were the moral force of the flock, so hastily running over the backs of the densely packed sheep, he fell on these leaders, slew them all in a few minutes, and soon had the luckless sheep stampeding in a thousand different directions.  For weeks afterward I was almost daily accosted by some anxious shepherd, who asked, “Have you seen any stray Oto sheep lately?” and usually I was obliged to say I had; one day it was, “Yes, I came on some five or six carcasses by Diamond Springs;” or another, it was to the effect that I had seen a small ‘bunch’ running on the Malpai Mesa; or again, “No, but Juan Meira saw about twenty, freshly killed, on the Cedra Monte two days ago.”

At length the wolf traps arrived, and with two men I worked a whole week to get them properly set out.  We spared no labor or pains, I adopted every device I could think of that might help to insure success.  The second day after the traps arrived, I rode around to inspect, and soon came upon Lobo’s trail running from trap to trap.  In the dust I could read the whole story of his doings that night.  He had trotted along in the darkness, and although the traps were so carefully concealed, he had instantly detected the first one.  Stopping the onward march of the pack, he had cautiously scratched around it