before he could rise, although not infrequently the dogs themselves were more or less scratched in the contests.  Some greyhounds, even of high breeding, proved absolutely useless from timidity, being afraid to take hold; but if they got accustomed to the chase, being worked with old dogs, and had any pluck at all, they proved singularly fearless.  A big ninety-pound greyhound or Scotch deer-hound is a very formidable fighting dog; I saw one whip a big mastiff in short order, his wonderful agility being of more account than his adversary’s superior weight.

The proper way to course, however, is to take the dogs out in a wagon and drive them thus until the game is seen.  This prevents their being tired out.  In my own hunting, most of the antelope aroused got away, the dogs being jaded when the chase began.  But really fine greyhounds, accustomed to work together and to hunt this species of game, will usually render a good account of a prong-buck if two or three are slipped at once, fresh, and within a moderate distance.

Although most Westerners take more kindly to the rifle, now and then one is found who is a devotee of the hound.  Such a one was an old Missourian, who may be called Mr. Cowley, whom I knew when he was living on a ranch in North Dakota, west of the Missouri.  Mr. Cowley was a primitive person, of much nerve, which he showed not only in the hunting field but in the startling political conventions of the place and period.  He was quite well off, but he was above the niceties of personal vanity.  His hunting garb was that in which he also paid his rare formal calls—­calls throughout which he always preserved the gravity of an Indian, though having a disconcerting way of suddenly tip-toeing across the room to some unfamiliar object, such as a peacock screen or a vase, feeling it gently with one forefinger, and returning with noiseless gait to his chair, unmoved, and making no comment.  On the morning of a hunt he would always appear on a stout horse, clad in a long linen duster, a huge club in his hand, and his trousers working half-way up his legs.  He hunted everything on all possible occasions; and he never under any circumstances shot an animal that the dogs could kill.  Once when a skunk got into his house, with the direful stupidity of its perverse kind, he turned the hounds on it; a manifestation of sporting spirit which roused the ire of even his long-suffering wife.  As for his dogs, provided they could run and fight, he cared no more for their looks than for his own; he preferred the animal to be half greyhound, but the other half could be fox-hound, colley, or setter, it mattered nothing to him.  They were a wicked, hardbiting crew for all that, and Mr. Cowley, in his flapping linen duster, was a first-class hunter and a good rider.  He went almost mad with excitement in every chase.  His pack usually hunted coyote, fox, jack-rabbit, and deer; and I have had more than one good run with it.