There were yet other rude experiences in store for the captive.

Poisoning Wolves was a topic of daily talk at the Ranch, so it was not
surprising that Lincoln should privately experiment on Coyotito. The
deadly strychnine was too well guarded to be available. So Lincoln hid
some Rough on Rats in a piece of meat, threw it to the captive, and
sat by to watch, as blithe and conscience-clear as any professor of
chemistry trying a new combination.

Tito smelled the meat--everything had to be passed on by her nose.
Her nose was in doubt. There was a good smell of meat, a familiar but
unpleasant smell of human hands, and a strange new odour, but not the
odour of the trap; so she bolted the morsel. Within a few minutes began
to have fearful pains in stomach, followed by cramps. Now in all the
Wolf tribe there is the instinctive habit to throw up anything that
disagrees with them, and after a minute or two of suffering the Coyote
sought relief in this way; and to make it doubly sure she hastily
gobbled some blades of grass, and in less than an hour was quite well
again.

[Illustration]

Lincoln had put in poison enough for a dozen Coyotes. Had he put in less
she could not have felt the pang till too late, but she recovered and
never forgot that peculiar smell that means such awful after-pains. More
than that, she was ready thenceforth to fly at once to the herbal cure
that Nature had everywhere provided. An instinct of this kind grows
quickly, once followed. It had taken minutes of suffering in the first
place to drive her to the easement. Thenceforth, having learned, it
was her first thought on feeling pain. The little miscreant did indeed