avenously at the frozen meat.
Her eyes were hollowed from hard journeying and lack of food. Breed knew
her for Cripp's mate and he momentarily expected to see his friend. When
her hunger was appeased she faced back toward the divide over which she
had come and howled; then, as if knowing her cry would go unanswered,
she turned and left them as abruptly as she had come. She had no time to
lose and she could not dig a den, yet she planned the best she knew.
There would be no mate to rustle food for her, and meat would be the
first essential while her pups were young. Five miles beyond Breed's
home ridge she found an elk drifted deep under the snow in the heavy
timber. She crawled into the heart of a windfall jam, choosing one where
the lay of the land would prevent her being drowned out when the drifts
should melt, and stayed there till her five pups were born.

When Breed returned home near morning he heard queer squeals issuing
from the yawning mouth of the den. Shady's doglike faith that a place
would somehow be provided for the great event had been justified and she
had taken possession of the den which her wild mate had so carefully
prepared.

Shady wandered no more with Breed, but stayed at home in the den, and
for the first week all that Breed saw of her was a brief glimpse of her
nose as she came to the mouth of the hole, seized the elk meat which he
brought as an offering and backed down out of sight with it. After that
he occasionally saw the whole of her but these views were hasty.
Whenever Shady emerged from the den her tail barely cleared the mouth of
it before she twisted back and dived headlong from sight, panic-stricken
lest some mishap had befallen the pups during her long eight-foot trip
from them to daylight. After two days of hourly excursions of this sort
she spent a few moments outside the den, and thereafter these periods
were lengthened until she remained on the warm slope fully as much as in
the den.

Night after night Breed heard the howls of the lone she-coyote that had
denned in the windfall. Always she faced toward the land that had been
her home. A she-coyote whose mate is killed after the running moon will
raise her pups alone and refuse to accept another mate; yet the howls
she sent out were calls for a mate, and from this Breed knew that she
did not believe that Cripp was dead. He pondered long over this mystery
of why Cripp still lived but did not join his mate.

The supply of elk mea