He is always
hungry.
He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures
despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. 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 sage-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 sage-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 minie rifle, and by the time
you have got him in line you need a rifled 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.
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