foothills of their home land. This was the summer range
of the elk herds and once well down the slope of the divide they found a
country that seemed devoid of game.

After advancing in loose formation for five miles without any coyote
finding a promising trail, Breed caught a fugitive scent of meat. He
circled and looped, now catching it, then losing it again. The broad
valley stood white and silent, gripped in a dead calm, and the few
vagrant breezes were imperceptible, merely the sluggish drift of local
air pockets that shifted a few feet and settled.

The yellow specks that moved in pairs far out across the snow fields
slowed and halted, changed their routes and headed toward the leader who
was questing about with uplifted nose. Then Breed dropped his head and
ran with nose close to the snow, twisting and turning in one locality of
less than a hundred yards in extent. The eyes of every advancing coyote
were fastened on Breed. They saw him stop abruptly and shove his nose
into the snow, and the little puff of steam which rose around his head
as he breathed hard into the drift was clearly visible to them all. They
put on more speed as he began to dig, and when the first of them reached
him they saw a tawny expanse of elk hair at the bottom of the
excavation.

They tore away the snow and uncovered the whole carcass of a
winter-killed elk that had been refrigerating there for months. Breed
lingered near this spot for three days, the coyotes bedding near by in
pairs, and up here where there were no men they fed in the daytime
whenever so inclined. There was not an hour of the day or night when
Breed could not see one or more coyotes tearing at the elk. When the
last scrap of meat, hide and hair had been devoured and the bones gnawed
white and clean, Breed moved on in search of more.

There were always some few stragglers that lagged behind the elk herds
and failed to start for the winter range till after the passes were
blocked with snow. These turned back and starved when the grass was
buried deep and their feet were cut and worn from pawing through the
crust to reach it; for the elk is strictly a grazing animal and cannot
live entirely by browsing on the twigs and brush as do moose and deer.

For a month Breed prowled this high basin country, and in all that time
his feet never once touched earth except when crossing some bald ridge
from which the wind had whittled the snow. His menu consisted
exclusively of frozen