"And, also, there is the easiest going," said a new voice with a snarly
running whine in it. It came from a small gray beast with pointed ears
and a bushy tail, and the smut-tipped nose that all coyotes have had
since their very first father blacked himself bringing fire to Man from
the Burning Mountain. He had come up very softly at the heels of the
Buffalo Chief, who wheeled suddenly and blew steam from his nostrils.

"That," he said, "is because of the calves. It is not because a buffalo
cannot go anywhere it pleases him; down ravines where a horse would
stumble and up cliffs where even you, O Smut Nose, cannot follow."

"True, Great Chief," said the Coyote, "but I seem to remember trails
that led through the snow to very desirable places."

This was not altogether kind, for it is well known that it is only when
snow has lain long enough on the ground to pack and have a hard coating
of ice, that the buffaloes dare trust themselves upon it. When it is
new-fallen and soft they flounder about helplessly until they die of
starvation, and the wolves pull them down, or the Indians come and kill
them. But the old bull had the privilege which belongs to greatness, of
not being obliged to answer impertinent things that were said to him. He
went on just as if nothing had interrupted, telling how the buffalo
trails had found the mountain passes and how they were rutted deep into
the earth by the migrating herds.

"I have heard," he said, "that when the Pale Faces came into the country
they found no better roads anywhere than the buffalo traces--"

"Also," purred Moke-icha, "I have heard that they found trails through
lands where no buffalo had been before them." Moke-icha, the Puma, lay