“Dunno.”

“Mebbe he was follerin’ a wagon, an’ got lost,” Buck Higgins suggested hopefully.

“Wagon nothin’!” snorted Bill.  “Nobody in these parts’d have a dog like that, an’ if they did, what would he be doin’ follerin’ a wagon?  He ain’t built to run, he’s built to fight.”

Where the dog had come from was something of a mystery.  Neighbors were not near by, in those days, in Montana, the nearest being fourteen miles off, and the railway twenty-two, and nothing there but a water tank.  There was some discussion regarding the matter which ended in a deadlock.  It was certain that none of the ranchmen in the vicinity owned such a dog, and even so, or if a visitor owned him, how would he get to the Bar O?  Walk, with “them legs”?

While the discussion went on, the subject of it gulped down large chunks of beef which Whitey had begged from the cook, and after that he went with the men and boys to the ranch house, where, with an apologetic leer, and a wiggle of his tail, he stretched himself on the veranda, and fell into a deep sleep.  He was very grateful, but he was also very tired.

In a lonely ranch house matters are of concern which would create little comment in a city.  This dog’s coming was in the nature of an event at the Bar O. Bill, the foreman, and all the punchers were ready to neglect work for a considerable time and talk about it.  Even Injun occasionally looked interested.  But all the talk could not solve the problem of the animal’s presence.

The only one who knew lay sleeping on the veranda and couldn’t tell.  It isn’t likely that he dreamed, but if he did it might have been of being tied to the handle of a trunk in an overland limited baggage car; of the train’s stopping for water at a lonely tank; of the earthy, wholesome country smell that came through the door, left open for coolness.

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.