f the coyote in Shady
to lead her to rustle food for her mate. For five days Breed lived
wholly upon the chunks of meat which Shady purloined from the frozen
bait piled against Collins' shack,--the meat which he intended to poison
and strew all across the range as soon as he had finished taking up his
traps. On the sixth night Shady found that the whole of the great stack
of meat had entirely vanished and near morning she returned without
food.

Breed's strength had flowed steadily back to him and he craved meat. By
noon his hunger was a hollow ache. Then suddenly he knew that there was
meat two miles west of him. The wind was square at his back so he could
not possibly have scented it, and any man who had seen him rise from his
bed and head for meat that lay two miles downwind would have charged the
act to that mysterious intuitive knowledge that animals are supposed to
have.

There is one sure way by which men of the open locate animal carcasses:
the location of winter-killed stock or range cows mired down in an
alkali bog is pointed out to them at a distance of several miles. Game
wardens make use of it to locate the illegal kills of poachers, and
rangers to locate the kills of cougars and wolves. In all countries
there are meat-eating birds and their flights reveal much to practiced
eyes.

Breed's mysterious information came from seeing an eagle pitch down far
to the west of him. Two minutes later another swooped from another
angle. Ravens and magpies winged toward the spot,--and Breed set off at
once toward the converging lines of their flight. His hunger overcame
his dislike for daylight traveling, but he held to high ground instead
of the valleys.

He came to the edge of a shallow basin devoid of all vegetation except
an occasional spear of grass, chalk-white patches on the surface of the
earth showing it to be an alkali sink. A hundred yards beyond the last
tongue of sage that reached out into it Breed could see a quarter of
beef, two eagles jealously guarding it. Magpies and ravens flitted
about, waiting for their share of the feast. One of the eagles made
frequent moves to scatter them when they came too close, rushing at them
with a queer hopping run, his wings half spread and trailing back. Breed
could plainly hear the snapping of his powerful beak.

The larger eagle suddenly took flight, rising with awkwardly flapping
wings and cutting eccentric loops and curves, each dip calling forth a
raucous scre