them through known laws. Breed knew of it from the
elk movements, and it is probable that the elk in turn were warned from
some similarly natural source,--perhaps from atmospheric changes, more
likely from the flight of migratory birds.

A marshland may be empty of certain species of ducks in the fall; then
suddenly a flock will pitch down out of the blue, followed by another
and another till the whole sky is streaked with the oncoming horde. They
will feed and start on, the belated arrivals not even alighting but
holding straight ahead. The flight ceases as suddenly as it commenced
and inevitably a storm drives down out of the north in the wake of the
flocks. But this is not instinct. The storm strikes those birds that
have remained farthest north and as they scurry ahead of it the more
southerly ones take wing. Many ducks fly at rates of speed that are well
over a hundred miles an hour and so can distance the swiftest storms.
Even the ears of man may detect the difference between the
wing-whistlers of a flock of mallards or other slow-flying ducks and the
humming screech of redhead or canvasback hurtling through the night with
tremendous speed; and animals note such things more readily than man.

In any event Breed knew of the coming storm many hours before the first
soft flakes fell and melted on his yellow coat. He took shelter under
the low-hanging branches of a stunted spruce and slept. It snowed for
two days and throughout that time there was little sound in the hills.
Each coyote in the pack had sought out a similar shelter, the mated
pairs bedding together, the others singly. No one of them howled during
the storm. The elk and deer held to their beds without a sound. The few
stragglers who had not yet crossed out through the passes were the only
ones that moved, pushing on through the storm, and the herd bulls
traveling with them bugled to hold their cows together; but the
snow-filled air deadened these distant sounds. And for two days Breed
heard nothing but the soft hissing of the snow through the branches or
the groaning of overburdened trees. The third night a big gray owl
hooted gruffly an hour before dawn, and as if dispersed by the sound of
his voice the last gray clouds scudded past and the stars flamed from
the steel-blue sky of night.

A savage wind sprang up with the sun, shrieking along the exposed ridges
and rippling the valleys of lodgepole pine, hurling its force against
the spruce slopes. For