Homeless, unmissed, and deserted, the tiny man could do nothing but sit
there and wait. The day would go, the twilight come, and the night
descend--the night with its darkness, its whispered mysteries, its
wailing coyotes, cruising in solitary melancholy hither and thither in
their search for food.

But the sun was still wheeling, like a brazen disk, on the rim of the
hills, when something occurred. A tall, lanky man, something over
forty years of age, as thin as a hammer and dusty as the road itself--a
man with a beard and a long, gray, drooping mustache, and with drooping
clothes--a man selected by shiftlessness to be its sign and mark--a
miner in boots and overalls and great slouch hat--came tramping down a
trail of the mountain. He was holding in his dusty arms a yellowish
pup, that squirmed and wriggled and tried to lap his face, and
comported himself in pup-wise antics, till his master was presently
obliged to put him down in self-defence.

The pup knew his duty, as to racing about, bumping into bushes,
snorting in places where game might abide, and thumping everything he
touched with his super-active tail. Almost immediately he scented
mysteries in plenty, for Indian ponies and hunters had left a fine,
large assortment of trails in the sand, that no wise pup could consent
to ignore.

With yelps of gladness and appreciation, the pup went awkwardly
knocking through the brush, and presently halted--bracing abruptly with
his clumsy paws--amazed and confounded by the sight of a frightened
little red-man, sitting with his rabbits in the sand.