Thither
some obscure, low-flying birds were slowly winging; thither a gray
coyote, overtaken by the morning, was awkwardly limping. And
thither a tramping wayfarer turned, plowing through the dust of the
highway still unslaked by the dewless night, to climb the fence and
likewise seek the distant cover.
For some moments man and beast kept an equal pace and gait with a
strange similarity of appearance and expression; the coyote bearing
that resemblance to his more civilized and harmless congener, the
dog, which the tramp bore to the ordinary pedestrians, but both
exhibiting the same characteristics of lazy vagabondage and semi-
lawlessness; the coyote's slouching amble and uneasy stealthiness
being repeated in the tramp's shuffling step and sidelong glances.
Both were young, and physically vigorous, but both displayed the
same vacillating and awkward disinclination to direct effort. They
continued thus half a mile apart unconscious of each other, until
the superior faculties of the brute warned him of the contiguity of
aggressive civilization, and he cantered off suddenly to the right,
fully five minutes before the barking of dogs caused the man to
make a detour to the left to avoid entrance upon a cultivated
domain that lay before him.
The trail he took led to one of the scant water-courses that
issued, half spent, from the canada, to fade out utterly on the hot
June plain. It was thickly bordered with willows and alders, that
made an arbored and feasible path through the dense woods and
undergrowth.
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