toward the fabled spot, a long journey
to the north and east. Three parties crossed over the old trail past
Collins' shack. The old wolfer caught the fever and followed the last of
them. Before he left he made one last prophecy.

He predicted that the hill coyotes of the northwest from the Yukon to
the Yellowstone would be larger and have dark fur on their backs from
frequent infusions of wolf blood; that within a dozen years the fur
markets would distinguish between these dark silky-furred ones and the
woolly yellow coyotes of the plains. He scrawled this message on a
wrinkled scrap of paper, signed it, tacked it on the wall, and started
off down the trail.

A month later a party of five men stopped overnight in the deserted
cabin. One of them deciphered the queer scrawl.

"Crazy," he announced. "Some old coot went off his nut from being holed
up alone--and this is all he left."

A tall lean man whose warped legs betrayed his sage-country origin
leaned over and studied the signature.

"Collins," he mused. "Now whoever would have figured to cut his trail up
here? He maybe was crazy,--but anyway, I'll bet five hundred that scrap
of paper will pan out just like it says."

A hundred miles beyond the cabin Breed and Shady were educating their
third litter of pups. The nature of the country had prevented the
excavating of a proper den and Shady had taken possession of a windfall.
Breed was vastly disgusted with this new land, heartily sick of being
shut in by the interminable hills and of traveling through swampy
jungles of tall brush, and he was glad when the pups were old enough to
shift for themselves.

He gathered the pack and started on, his course this time more east than
north, and he covered better than twenty miles each day with a definite
purpose of leaving behind him this country so thickly overlaid with
brush that its effect upon him was almost a feeling of suffocation. He
came out into the lower hills and crossed occasional open spots. Then,
after ten days, he crossed through a rolling country and just at dusk
came out on the shoulder of a hill; before him lay broad stretches of
low plains, open meadows alternating with strips of heavy timber, the
whole a wonderful park-like landscape swimming in the twilight. From
nearby hills he heard the coyotes beginning to tune up, and each one was
facing toward the plains, the first spot they had seen in three years
which reminded them of home. Breed led the way a