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. There
was hardly much point in such industry in a country as smooth as this, not
much more difference, say, than the saving of distance which the horse
makes who hugs the fence on the turn and on account of that sticks his head
under the finish wire a nose in front; and Bart clung to his work with
scrupulous care.
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