The coyotes now returned, and with unearthly yells attacked
        their dead brothers, snapping, snarling, and quarrelling over
        their carcasses as they tore the flesh and crunched the bones.

We rose at daylight, and through the dim light could see the coyotes trotting off to the swamp, while near the camp lay heads, legs, and piles of cleanly licked bones, all that was left of the gray wolves we had killed.

After breakfast we set out to find the command, striking across the country, expecting to come upon their trail.  We travelled all day, however, and saw no trail.  At night we camped out again, and were scarcely in camp, when we again heard the wolves howling around us.  They had followed us all day, no doubt expecting another repast, such as had been served to them the night before.  We, however, kept a bright fire burning, and no gray wolves came about; so the coyotes were disappointed, and vented their disappointment all night long in the most dismal howls I ever heard.  At times, it seemed as though there were five hundred of them, and joining their voices in chorus they would send up a volume of sound that resembled the roar of a tempest, or the discordant singing of a vast multitude of people.

While we cooked breakfast, a strong picket of wolves watched all around the camp, feasting their greedy eyes from a distance on my elk-meat.  When we started from camp, a hundred or more of them followed us, often coming quite close to the back pony, and biting and quarrelling about the elk that was never to be their meat.  When we halted, they would halt, and sitting down, loll out their tongues and lick the snow.  At length, I took my shot-gun, and loading the barrels, fired into the thickest of the pack.  Two or three were wounded, and no sooner did their companions discover that they were bleeding and disabled, than they fell upon them, tore them to pieces, and devoured every morsel of their flesh.  I had seen men who would do the same thing with their fellows, but until I witnessed the contrary with my own eyes, I had supposed this practice was confined to the superior brute creation.

The third day out, finding no trace of the command, we concluded to go back to the Medicine and seek the old camp, from which we could take the trail and follow it up until we came upon it.  We reached the Medicine at sundown, and there, to our satisfaction, found the troops still in camp, where we had left them.  They had not marched in consequence of the cold and foggy weather.

        I was soon in my own tent and sound asleep, being thoroughly
        worn out with the exposure and fatigue of my long journey.