I


Raindrop may deflect a thunderbolt, or a hair may ruin an empire, as
surely as a spider-web once turned the history of Scotland; and if it
had not been for one little pebble, this history of Tito might never
have happened.

That pebble was lying on a trail in the Dakota Badlands, and one hot,
dark night it lodged in the foot of a Horse that was ridden by a tipsy
cow-boy. The man got off, as a matter of habit, to know what was laming
his Horse. But he left the reins on its neck instead of on the ground,
and the Horse, taking advantage of this technicality, ran off in the
darkness. Then the cow-boy, realizing that he was afoot, lay down in
a hollow under some buffalo-bushes and slept the loggish sleep of the
befuddled.

The golden beams of the early summer sun were leaping from top to top of
the wonderful Badland Buttes, when an old Coyote might have been seen
trotting homeward along the Garner's Creek Trail with a Rabbit in her
jaws to supply her family's breakfast.

[Illustration]

Fierce war had for a long time been waged against the Coyote kind by
the cattlemen of Billings County. Traps, guns, poison, and Hounds had
reduced their number nearly to zero, and the few survivors had learned
the bitter need of caution at every step. But the destructive ingenuity
of man knew no bounds, and their numbers continued to dwindle.