As for the wolf-dog, he went off like a black bolt into the eye of the wind, streaking it west to hunt out the easiest course.

A wolf--and surely there was more of wolf than of dog in Black Bart--has a finer sense for the lay of ground than anything on four feet.

He knows how to come down the wind on his quarry keeping to the depressions and ravines so that not a taint of his presence is blown to the prey; and he will skulk across an open plain, stealing from hollow to hollow and stalking from bush to bush, so that the wariest are taken by surprise.

As for Black Bart, he knew the kind of going which the stallion liked as well, almost, as he knew his own preferences, and he picked out a course which a surveyor with line and spirit-level could hardly have bettered.

He wove across the country in loosely thrown semicircles, and came back in view of the master at the proper point.