wn pups to the windfall.

When Shady was once more able to travel Breed led the way to the north,
the band not traveling together, but every coyote's course laid out to
accord with Breed's, and within hailing distance so that each might
apprise the others of his whereabouts at night. When the pups were old
enough to shift for themselves Breed had crossed the Canadian line and
was two hundred miles north of it along the great divide that marks the
boundary between British Columbia and Alberta.

All along this route clear from the Yellowstone there had been coyote
country to the east of him. The prairie wolves had long since populated
the valleys of the Musselshell, and, farther north, the Marias River and
the Breast. There were coyotes east of him now, running the prairies of
Alberta and Saskatchewan, but he had at last arrived at a point west of
the extreme northern limits of the coyote range. All over the continent
to the south and east of him pioneering coyotes were pushing on into new
lands: they had penetrated the hill country of Pennsylvania to the east,
and south almost to Panama; but it had fallen to the lot of the yellow
wolf to lead the way for the horde that was invading the northwest
hills.

During the first storm of the early fall Breed pulled down a yearling
mountain sheep on a high plateau. A motley crew answered the meat call.
Breed, the yellow hybrid, Shady, the half-blood renegade, and four pairs
of coyotes born in Sand Coulee Basin; the dog coyote with his
timber-wolf mate and several of Breed's and Shady's conglomerate pups;
all were there to feed. And when the bones were picked Breed led his
nondescript band on into the unmapped wilds of the British Columbia
hills.

CHAPTER XI

Wolfing was no longer profitable in the foothills and Collins pulled up
stakes and left. He loaded his belongings on his pack horses and
journeyed far to the north. Later he sold his horses and traveled by
canoe, and after a roundabout course he preempted an old cabin between
the Laird Fork of the Mackenzie and the head of Peace River. The climate
was moist and the underbrush growth was often so dense as to force him
to hack out a trail in spots as he laid out his trap line. The side
hills were matted tangles and the valleys shaking bogs, and Collins had
little love for his new surroundings. There were no cheery sounds at
night, only the howls of wolves. In midwinter of his first season in the
north he was roused