, as they themselves had learned the art from Breed. For a hundred miles each way from Two Ocean Pass the hills were full of the disciples of the yellow wolf. The elk now fled from coyotes as

e coyotes relayed him and kept him on the move. Whenever he attempted a straightaway flight some coyote flashed out in front of him to

fact that he was seeking some land that would answer all requirements. It was not given to him to plan largely for the future, and each move was occasioned by the dissa

lanked their line of march, urged on by fear of the madness that lay behind and finding courage

e low country showed through revealing gaps in the hills, marked by the blue-gray tinge of the sage; a pale haze hung in the hills and turned distant green spruce slopes to silvery blue; the rivers had long since passed the flood tide of melting drifts, and were

he whistling snorts of lovelorn bucks reached his ears day after day. The clarion bugles of challenging bulls was p

he general trend of it all was a northward migration for the coyote pack. Some days they gained twenty miles, some but thre

d of Flatear surge up in him, but though he frequently met wolves none of them proved to be his enemy. The big grays showed only a

er set in, he was well across Montana and nearing the Canadian line. The deep snowfall had driven the game down out of the peaks to the lower valleys of the hills and Breed was forced to follow. He moved westward across the South Fork of the Flathead to the Kootenai Range. There w

sing the range from the Flathead to Swan River and back. Many of these mated with the unattached coyotes as they strag

eener interest in home building than she had the season past, working short shifts to relay Breed on the digging, and the three tunnels that led to this new nest hole

territory. Deer were still plentiful, even after a winter of hard hunting, and he f

e opposite slope. He knew that a band of deer had been startled to sudden flight, that the jerky gleams of white were the brief exposures of the underparts of their tails as they were upflung in hurdling windfalls. The wind was wrong and Breed could not catch the scent. He traced their course through the timber by their white flags and saw t

strange to him, but again the association of ideas came to his aid. Shady's occasional fits of barking and her strange ways; the wolf hounds that had belonged to men and had chased him in Sand Coulee Basin; this note th

farther from home as the dee

on the west slope of the Kootenais, an

nd she hunted by herself in the neighborhood of the den, but her earnest efforts

en, he heard again the note of the hound. It rose and fell, an eager bellow that moved slowly through the hills, and Breed did not like the music. This same baying reached hi

he met a second pair, a dog coyote and a she-wolf, and they too were traveling aimlessly, their family torn from them. But Breed had no way of linking these disasters with the music of the trail hound. The prospector kept a single hound and when he found a fresh wolf kill in the spring he put the dog on the tracks that led f

re breeds, and the pups were uniform. They were heavier than coyotes and their backstrips were dark; but their language was pure coyote, their voices perhaps slightly deeper and with fuller volume, but the change was so slight as to escape detect

a single night, and the family would soon have left the den but that Shady indulged in one of he

lope. The breeze held steadily from the west and Shady caught a whiff of wood smoke and moved toward it to investigate. She scouted along the edge of the timber, watching the cabin in the little clearing for

ber she stopped. She heard the rattle of a chain,-the hound was anchored! From long experience in the past Shady knew the futility of striving to break a chain. The dog w

the next corner by more than a foot. She moved along the side of the house till within ten feet of him and sat down, h

seized it, swinging clear of the ground, all four feet braced against the logs, then fell sprawling as the nail from which it was suspended bent and allowed the cord to slip. She started off across the open, and the first fold of canvas flapp

lapping limply in the open, and he found Shady's dust tracks round the cabin, and swore. He ducked hurriedly into the house and reappeared with a shot

she knew there was naught to fear from him. The man started excavating with a light miner's pick and a short-handled shovel which he unslung from his back. In half an hour he had opened one tunnel till he could peer into the den hole. Then he unwound a strange instrument from about his waist, a wolfer's "feeler", three strands of wire twisted into a pliable cable ten feet long,

arther. He grasped it flat between the palms of his hands and twirled the cable rapidly from right to left. There was a sudden spitting explosion of baby snarls from the depths of the hole. The man gave one tentative tug and felt

disgorged a shower of frightened pups that scattered toward the timber as so many flushed partr

r had he seen such a mad outpouring of pups as this, and in all his long life in the hills a she-wolf had never rushed him, even in defense of her pups. Shady's charge was reversed s

pierced both ears and furrowed along her skull. The man turned and pulled the second barrel at the rearmost pup and he went down limply

r agony. The prospector nodded. The mystery was cleared; for he knew that h

along; her stealing thataway right alongside of Buge; and

e tree and unle

he said. "Go cle

lled the pups, and they gathered swiftly to her and ran their best. Even in her crippled state Shady could have outrun the trail hound

anked the dog's route till he drew abreast of him. The baying voice filled the valley and echoed among the rims till it seemed that the whole breadth of the hills was filled with dogs, but Breed knew that the sound came from but one. He could hear no sounds of man, and

e spotted beast would quit her trail. He saw Buge's nose lifted from the trail as he caught the warm body scent from close at hand. The dog ran now with head held high, the body scent reeking in his nostrils. Then Breed saw Shady and the pups running under the trees a hundred yards ahead. The steady baying rose to a slobbering bellow as the hound followed his prey by sight. The gap narrowed, and Breed could see his slavering jaws, the froth drooling stringily back across his shoulders. The las

haired dog, despite the terrifying volume of his voice, was no formidable an

return no more, and almost unconsciously he raised the call for the pack, knowing that the pack season was far in the future, yet longing to hear the voices of his friends. Far to the sou

wo other pairs of coyotes caught up with them, and these were all members of the original pack that had hunted together in Sand Coulee Basin. Just at dawn the dog coyote Breed had met some time earlier in th

vide. Shady then took shelter in a windfall, and for the next three days she refused to move. Her wounds stiffened and festered from imbedded s

oice far down the slope and he threw all t

ign till he found the body of the hound. It was morning when he reached his own home, and the following night Peg and Fluff had led their pups off in the general direction taken by Breed. The trail had cooled, but in moist and sheltered spots

eed's, and within hailing distance so that each might apprise the others of his whereabouts at night. When the pups were old enough to shift for themselves B

yotes east of him now, running the prairies of Alberta and Saskatchewan, but he had at last arrived at a point west of the extreme northern limits of the coyote range. All over the continent to the south and east of him pioneering coyotes w

rid, Shady, the half-blood renegade, and four pairs of coyotes born in Sand Coulee Basin; the dog coyote with his timber-wolf mate and several of Breed's and Shady