Shady's first impression after taking the wrong turn in the coulee was
one of vast relief at having evaded the dogs. The recovery of her breath
was accompanied by a vague sense of loss which rapidly deepened into an
ache of loneliness so oppressive that her whole spirit was weighed down
by it. She started up through the long crescent-shaped neck of badlands
that partially encircled Collins' cabin and extended clear to the foot
of the spur, knowing that this was Breed's favorite route when making
for the hills. She moved slowly and with many halts, cocking her head
sidewise and tilting her ears for some sound of her mate. She came out
into a funnel-shaped basin that sloped down from the first sharp rise of
the spur. The small end of it formed a saddle between two knobs, leading
to Collins' shack as through a natural gateway.
Shady trotted to the saddle and gazed down at the wolfer's cabin five
hundred yards away, the spot which had meant home to her over the
greatest part of her life. The door stood invitingly open. She turned
and saw the five dogs pouring down the funnel of the basin. The sudden
purposeful increase of speed which Breed had noticed as the dogs left
his field of view had been occasioned by the sight of Shady standing in
the notch.
Without an instant's hesitation Shady headed straight for that open
door, a haven of refuge which had served her well in the past when
assailed by the dogs of visiting ranchers. The dogs were jaded and Shady
was fresh, and she reached her goal without their gaining an inch.
Collins sat smoking his pipe when he was startled by the frenzied
entrance of his former pet. Shady failed to pause for greetings but made
one mad leap from the door and slid to the farthest corner under the
wolfer's bunk.
Collins grunted with surprise and for a space of five seconds his brain
refused to function with its usual snap. Then he rose and crossed to the
door to discover the reason for Shady's headlong home-coming,--and
slammed it shut with but a single second to spare.
One dog rose on his hind feet, standing higher than a man, and savagely
raked the door from top to bottom with his claws while another opened
his jaws wide and closed them, his teeth splintering across the smooth
surface as he sought to gnaw his way inside. The remaining three circled
the cabin, sniffing explosively at the cracks between the logs. Shady
was seized with a fit of excessive shivering induced by these dread
sounds, and Collins heard her hind leg-joints beating a spasmodic tattoo
on the cabin floor. Then he turned on his ready grin.
"Just one split second more," he said, "and they'd have surged in here
and wrecked this plant for fair,--and that's a fact!"
That night when Breed sent out his call for Shady there was no answering
cry. He called again and again, an agony of longing and entreaty in his
tones. A sickening dread entered his soul,--the fear that his mate had
been caught in a trap, shot by some rider or killed in some other way by
man. He little suspected that Shady was at that instant resting her head
on a man's knee and enjoying the feel of his fingers scratching behind
her ears.
"Good old Shady," Collins said, roughing her head between his hands.
"You're a renegade now, old girl,--a she-outlaw, that's what you are.
You've gone over to the wild bunch, and men will be out after your
scalp; and they'll get it too. You'll go ambling up to some man and
he'll blow you up. You won't stick with me now unless I keep you
chained. You'll go back to 'em,--and if you're lucky you may go right on
living for mebbe a month. You don't know the ropes out there and they'll
pick you up."
Shady suddenly stiffened at Breed's first cry.
"Don't need to be afraid of that," Collins assured her. "That's old
Breed. He won't bother you. It must be hell, Shady, to be born astraddle
of a fence like you, afraid of tame dogs and the wild bunch too."
Breed howled again and Shady moved to the door and whined, scratching
and sniffing along the crack. Her uneasiness increased with every howl.
She clawed so vigorously at the door that it rattled on the hinges; then
her pent-up emotions sought partial relief in action and she ran in
crazy circles about the cabin, weaving in and out among the furniture at
top speed, running over and under the bunk and leaping over chairs, then
brought up in front of Collins and gazed pleadingly up into his face.
The Coyote Prophet regarded her speculatively.
"I read you wrong, Shady," he said. "You're not afraid of Breed--you
want to go to him, that's what; he's a friend of yours. Surely now, an
old savage like him didn't go and take up with a little misfit like
you."
Breed's voice sounded again and Shady raised her own, the whole cabin
ringing with her long-drawn howl. Up in the funnel basin Breed had
picked up her trail and was trying to work it out from among the trails
left by the dogs. He stopped abruptly and listened. A strange muffled
sound had reached him, hollow and drumlike, but there was a familiar
chord in it, and Breed swept ahead on Shady's trail, his hope of finding
her alive renewed.
"You're mated up with that yellow wolf," Collins stated. "Two freaks
paired up! If you track round with Breed you may live longer than I
thought. He'll show you how to beat the game." The Coyote Prophet
crossed to the door and opened it. "Go to it, Pet," he said. "He's
a-calling you." But the last remark was addressed to a streak that
vanished into the night.
Shady met Breed in the notch and frisked wildly around him. Breed's
delight in this reunion was as deep as hers but he was more dignified
and staid, his emotions less openly apparent. All through the night
Shady held so close to him as to brush against him frequently as they
ran.
Shady rapidly absorbed much of Breed's caution. Two days after their
race with the dogs Shady had occasion to revise her estimates of
horsemen. Twice in the same day, after imprudently showing herself in
the open, she heard the vicious reports of their guns and the balls
tossed up spurts of earth about her. Thereafter she followed Breed's
lead in all such cases. Breed's way was the wolf way, recognizing no
individuals among men but classing them as a dangerous whole. Shady,
having lived among them, knew them as individuals, but this knowledge
was soon blurred and she too acquired the views of the wild things
toward men and lumped them as a whole. There was but one reservation.
She placed Collins, the one man who had been kind to her, in a class by
himself.
This eccentricity was the source of much worry to Breed. Shady could see
no good reason why she should not revisit Collins when the mood so moved
her. One night she turned abruptly from her course and headed for the
twinkling lights of the wolfer's cabin. Breed turned with her. Cripp and
Peg, each with his mate, ran on either flank. The coyotes stopped two
hundred yards from the house but Shady held straight ahead. Breed tried
to dissuade her but to no avail. He nipped her sharply, and its only
effect was to cause her to tuck her tail and spurt for the house.
Breed stopped twenty yards away, every nerve quivering from excitement
over this suicidal move. He heard Shady scratch at the door. It swung
back and a flood of light streamed out into the night. Breed heard a
man's voice booming out a welcome; saw his mate jump up and put her paws
against him, their outlines framed in the lighted doorway. Then the door
closed and his mate was inside with a man, the arch enemy of all wolves.
Breed whirled and fled. He ran blindly and at high-pressure speed as if
he fled before an actual enemy. All his sense of balance was thrown out
of gear, the fitness of things upset, and he felt his reason tottering.
For his ear, attuned to receive the meaning of all animal sounds, could
detect the least tremor of menace in any animal note; when a range bull
bellowed Breed knew whether the tones held invitation to his cows or
husked a warning to some intruder that had strayed over into his chosen
range. In any animal voice the quiver of anger or fear was easily
apparent to him; and there had been no vibrations of anger in the man's
tones, only those of friendliness.
The coyotes were hard pressed to keep abreast of him, and after a wild
race of some four miles he wheeled abruptly and retraced his course, the
longing for his mate combining with curiosity to draw him irresistibly
back to the spot where this impossible thing had transpired.
His pace slackened as he neared the house, then increased as he heard
Shady's voice. Shady had met Breed in the notch after her first visit to
the cabin and she naturally assumed that she would find him there again.
She repaired to the spot at once after leaving the cabin and waited for
him to come.
For three nights in succession Shady made her pilgrimage to meet her one
friend among the world of men. Breed could not unravel the mystery of
these visits. He could only know the actual that reached him over the
trails of his physical senses. Sights, scents and sounds were facts to
him. Those senses combined to show him that the unnatural visits were
real,--that Shady actually entered the lair of a man and came back
smelling strong of him. Yet when she was with him Breed felt a sense of
unreality in his memories of those visits, partaking of the same vague
qualities that dreams possessed for him after waking.
But he fathomed it at last, evidence that his brain came from his coyote
mother, a brain that is capable of constructive reasoning, of taking two
facts which the physical senses have verified and evolving a third from
them,--the association of ideas.
His nose told him that there was something in Shady's scent that was
similar to that left by the dog pack. His eyes had proved that those
dogs were the companions of men. Eyes, ears and nose testified that
Shady visited the haunts of men and was accepted as a friend. His nose
further told him that Shady was half coyote, and her voice added proof
of this. From out this fragmentary assortment of facts Breed found a
satisfactory answer. He knew that Shady was of the wild, yet that she
was also linked with the world of men, thus combining two things which
in the past had seemed widely separate, a chasm too wide to span,
dividing the animals of the wild from those belonging to man.
Each recurring visit confirmed this fact. Shady missed two nights, but
on the third she headed for the cabin with the coming of night. The
comparative warmth of early winter had given way to the gripping,
penetrating cold of January. Breed's appetite increased with a
corresponding drop in temperature and he was hungry. But from Shady's
actions he knew that she was seized with one of those queer lapses which
called her back to former ways and he delayed the hunt until she should
return from this trip. The coyotes had all mated and the season for
pack-hunting was past, yet many of them still rallied to his call; but
on this night he lingered in the notch and waited for Shady to come back
to him before summoning the pack.
He prowled uneasily about the narrow saddle, and in his nervousness over
Shady's protracted absence he forgot the danger of following cow trails
and padded restlessly up and down those which threaded through the gap.
And as he waited for her a mortal enemy found the chance he had sought
so long and began stalking him from behind.
Flatear dropped from the hills to follow his ruthless trade and as he
swung down the funnel basin Breed's scent was wafted to his nose. The
breeze held up the slope,--he had the wind on the yellow wolf. He
shifted across the wind but it carried no coyote scent. His victim was
alone. Flatear followed up the drifting current of scent and sighted
Breed at a hundred yards. His feet made no sound and the wind held
right; the breed-wolf was unaware of his approach.
Breed saw a sudden flow of light from the cabin and knew that Shady was
leaving it to come back to him. He sent forth the rally call to the pack
and turned to trot along a cow trail. He gave a sudden mighty leap into
the air and crashed down four feet away as he struck the end of the
chain swiveled to the trap that had crushed his foot.