e wolf in him was unequal to matching the
effusiveness of the dog in her.

CHAPTER X

All through the Yellowstone country the evidence of Breed's teachings
was apparent on every hand. The progeny of the members of his original
band had been taught pack-hunting by their parents, as they themselves
had learned the art from Breed. For a hundred miles each way from Two
Ocean Pass the hills were full of the disciples of the yellow wolf. The
elk now fled from coyotes as once they had fled from wolves. The coyotes
brought all their native trickery and resourcefulness into play and made
pack-hunting a very different affair from that practiced by timber
wolves. They did not hunt bunched, but scattered, saving their own
strength and wearing down that of their prey. When an elk was singled
out the coyotes relayed him and kept him on the move. Whenever he
attempted a straightaway flight some coyote flashed out in front of him
to turn him back, and he was headed through bogs and spongy ground on
the slides at the foot of old snow drifts until his strength was gone.

Breed's movements now lost their aimlessness, and each day found him a
few miles farther north. The home love in him was working, but he
himself was unconscious of the fact that he was seeking some land that
would answer all requirements. It was not given to him to plan largely
for the future, and each move was occasioned by the dissatisfaction with
the country in which he found himself, rather than from any definite
idea of mapping out a course for a permanent range and there
establishing his home.

Nevertheless he held steadily to the north and the faithful pack moved
with him. Other coyotes flanked their line of march, urged on by fear of
the madness that lay behind and finding courage for their pioneering in
the fact that every night they heard the howls of the coyote pack ahead.

The game herds were milling restlessly in high basins. The blacktail
bucks had short new coats of sleek blue-gray; they had shed the long
hair of the previous season,--the season of short blue, the Short Blue
Moon of the Northwest Indian tribes. Broad vistas of the low country
showed through revealing gaps in the hills, marked by the blue-gray
tinge of the sage; a pale haze hung in the hills and turned distant
green spruce slopes to silvery blue; the rivers had long since passed
the flood tide of melting drifts, and were cleared of the roily effects
of late summer rains, and la