  Tyrants fall in every foe!
    Liberty’s in every blow!--
              Let us do--or die!
         --ROBERT BURNS.




        THE COYOTE


The coyote is a long, slim, sick, and sorry-looking skeleton, with a
gray wolfskin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever
sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a
furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip
and exposed teeth.

[Illustration: MARK TWAIN]

He has a general slinking expression all over. The coyote is a living,
breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out
of luck, and friendless. He is so spiritless and cowardly that even
while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is
apologizing for it. And he is _so_ homely!--so scrawny, and ribby, and
coarse-haired, and pitiful.

When he sees you, he lifts his lip and lets a flash of his teeth out,
and then turns a little out of the course he was pursuing, depresses his
head a bit, and strikes a long, soft-footed trot through the brush,
glancing over his shoulder at you, from time to time, till he is about
out of easy pistol range, and then he stops and takes a deliberate
survey of you; he will trot fifty yards and stop again--another fifty
and stop again; and, finally, the gray of his gliding body blends with
the gray of the brush, and he disappears.

All this is when you make no demonstration against him; but if you do,
he develops a livelier interest in his journey, and instantly
electrifies his heels and puts such a deal of real estate between
himself and your weapon, that by the time you have raised the hammer you
see that you need a rifle, and by the time you have got him in line you
need a cannon, and by the time you have drawn a bead on him you see well
enough that nothing but an unusually long-winded streak of lightning
could reach him where he is now.

But if you start a swift-footed dog after him, you will enjoy it ever so
much--especially if it is a dog that has a good opinion of himself,