or flight. Shady barked angrily as if to drive the
thing away. Then Breed saw a hairless travesty of a coyote move out of a
draw and halt directly in the path of the mad coyote. Cripp stood there
grinning till he felt the other's teeth score his unprotected hide; then
he whirled and snapped back at him. The mad coyote kept straight on and
Cripp followed at his own queer shambling gait. He drew close and ran
alongside, and for a hundred yards they exchanged slashes in a senseless
sort of way. Breed could see the blood oozing from the fur of the mad
coyote's neck, and the blobs of white foam sliding down Cripp's shiny
hide. Then the mad coyote fell and Cripp kept on for another ten yards
before he missed him. He wheeled and returned, stumbled and fell and
crawled back to his foe, and they lay there toothing one another in an
impersonal, detached way, as if it did not matter.

Breed's soul revolted at this scene and he fled the spot. When he raised
his howl that night he was twenty miles farther north, but the coyote
pack answered from close at hand. Many of them witnessed the same scene
from adjacent slopes of the valley. The others had viewed similar
sights, and there was a general coyote movement north through the
mountains, a widespread exodus ahead of the madness that was creeping up
into the hills.

Breed had formerly been imbued with the home-loving nature of the
coyote, and this had led him to restrict his wanderings to a
comparatively limited area instead of ranging hundreds of miles in all
directions after the manner of wolves. This love of a permanent home
range now operated in a peculiar way. All ties were severed behind him,
the land he loved bristling with such a wide variety of dangers as to
preclude all possibility of his return. The wanderlust which now seized
him appeared a complete reversal of his former desire to remain in one
vicinity where every topographical feature was to him a familiar
landmark; but in reality this very wanderlust was an expression of home
love; every step he took away from his old range was unconsciously
actuated by the desire to find some new spot which would take the place
of the old.

For two weeks these wanderings were erratic and uncontrolled by any
conscious purpose. He roamed on the Shoshone and the Thoroughfare, the
Yellowstone and the Buffalo Fork of the Snake, then swung back across
the Sunlight Peaks. Shady had acted queerly of late, frequently leaving
Breed for hour