s at a time and climbing to some commanding point from
which she would look far off across the hills, as if seeking something
which was always just beyond the range of her vision; but she always
came back to him. Breed found nothing out of the way in this. Mated
coyotes were prone to follow separate trails for hours, even days, and
then meet again. Shady had clung to him persistently, refusing to be out
of his sight except when at the den with her pups, and this new
manifestation seemed a natural one to Breed, an evidence that his mate
had come to trust in her ability to shift for herself in the wild. But
it was not this. Now that her pups had been schooled and sent out to
face the world alone, Shady hungered to see the man who had raised her
from a pup, and to feel his fingers scratching behind her ears.

As the pack straggled out among the ragged Sunlight Peaks Shady looked
down across the lower slopes; one valley opened into another in an
interminable procession and far down across the spruce tops a rift
between two flanking hills afforded a view of the low country,
shimmering in the sun. Sand Coulee Basin, her old home! And a variegated
mass in the distance marked the Rainbow Buttes, rising isolated and
alone from out the badlands. Shady struck a swift gliding trot and
dropped down the slope, disappearing in the first twisted masses of
timber-line spruce.

For the first few hours after her departure Breed gave it no thought,
but when she failed to turn up he grew increasingly uneasy. Ten hours
and he called to her and there was no reply, twelve and he circled to
pick up her trail but it had cooled. He prowled the peaks for three days
and nights, disconsolate and lonely, even though in close touch with the
coyote pack, and sending out call after call for his mate. Shady had
spent the first two days in almost continuous travel, put in a single
hour with the Coyote Prophet, reveling in the feel of his exploring
fingers and the friendly sound of his voice; then she departed as
suddenly as she had come and spent two more days in reaching the summit
of the Sunlight Peaks where she had left her mate, for after all his
hold on her was far more gripping than that exercised by the man.

She heard Breed's lonely cry and answered it, and an hour later she was
frisking about him with doggish enthusiasm. The yellow wolf accepted her
lavish display of affection with dignity; his joy in the reunion was a
match for her own, but th