kes and streams, now free of sediment,
showed blue-green to their very depths; the high peaks were held in
silhouette against a clear blue sky. Everything showed a touch of
blue,--such is the Short Blue Moon.

And the love-making time of the antlered tribes is ushered in with the
season of short blue. As Breed moved north the whistling snorts of
lovelorn bucks reached his ears day after day. The clarion bugles of
challenging bulls was promise of meat in plenty. Bighorn rams squired
their bands of ewes on the plateaus and pinnacles above timber line.

Breed's course was by no means a straight line. Hunts drew him to the
east and west and frequently back to the south, but the general trend of
it all was a northward migration for the coyote pack. Some days they
gained twenty miles, some but three or four, and on others they lost
ground. At the end of a month the land of the Yellowstone was a hundred
miles southeast.

The big gray wolves were more plentiful here, but scattered and not
traveling in packs. At every wolf howl Breed felt the old hatred of
Flatear surge up in him, but though he frequently met wolves none of
them proved to be his enemy. The big grays showed only a casual interest
in coyotes, evidencing neither enmity nor delight at any chance meeting,
indifference the keynote of their attitude.

Autumn blended into early winter and the gain toward the north was less
apparent, Breed lingering in the vicinity of good hunting grounds as he
found them, moving on when the supply of meat diminished. He held to the
main divide of the Rockies, and when the heavy storms of midwinter set
in, he was well across Montana and nearing the Canadian line. The deep
snowfall had driven the game down out of the peaks to the lower valleys
of the hills and Breed was forced to follow. He moved westward across
the South Fork of the Flathead to the Kootenai Range. There were fewer
elk here than in the Yellowstone, living in scattered bunches and not
congregating in droves of hundreds on the winter feed grounds. Deer
ranged the Kootenai country in plentiful numbers and Breed elected to
stay. Mating was close at hand and the northward movement halted.

Stray coyotes drifted continually up from the south and joined the ranks
of the pack, and there were stray wolves crossing the range from the
Flathead to Swan River and back. Many of these mated with the unattached
coyotes as they straggled north. Breed's pack was rapidly thinned down,