A baby Coyote is a shapeless, senseless, wriggling, and--to every one
but its mother--a most uninteresting little lump. But after its eyes are
open, after it has developed its legs, after it has learned to play in
the sun with its brothers, or run at the gentle call of its mother when
she brings home game for it to feed on, the baby Coyote becomes one of
the cutest, dearest little rascals on earth. And when the nine that
made up Coyotito's brood had reached this stage, it did not require the
glamour of motherhood to make them objects of the greatest interest.

The summer was now on. The little ones were beginning to eat flesh-meat,
and Tito, with some assistance from Saddleback, was kept busy to supply
both themselves and the brood. Sometimes she brought them a Prairie-dog,
at other times she would come home with a whole bunch of Gophers
and Mice in her jaws; and once or twice, by the clever trick of
relay-chasing, she succeeded in getting one of the big Northern
Jack-rabbits for the little folks at home.

[Illustration]

After they had feasted they would lie around in the sun for a time. Tito
would mount guard on a bank and scan the earth and air with her keen,
brassy eye, lest any dangerous foe should find their happy valley; and
the merry pups played little games of tag, or chased the Butterflies, or
had apparently desperate encounters with each other, or tore and worried
the bones and feathers that now lay about the threshold of the home.
One, the least, for there is usually a runt, stayed near the mother and
climbed on her back or pulled at her tail. They made a lovely picture as
they played, and the wrestling group in the middle seemed the focus
of it all at first; but a keener, later look would have rested on the
mother, quiet, watchful, not without anxiety, but, above all, with a