Breed's great paw had not squarely centered the trap and the jaws
clamped on but two toes. He fought the trap with all his strength,
backing up to gain slack in the chain, then throwing all his weight and
force into his spring as he launched himself into the air, only to be
jerked violently to the ground at the end of the chain.
Four times he sprang, and four times the breath was almost jarred from
his body as he smashed down on his side. As he rose from the last spring
he suddenly stiffened, standing rigidly in one spot while every hair
rose along his spine. Twenty feet away a great gray shape loomed in the
sage. Breed knew it was the midnight killer who had left such sinister
evidence of his handiwork scattered along the foot of the hills,--and
there was no doubt of his purpose. The yellow wolf was handicapped and
knew that he had no chance, but he did not storm and rage aloud as a dog
would have done; his was the coyote way. He backed up inch by inch till
he stood above the trap stake, and this move gave him a four-foot
striking range each way.
Flatear did not fear traps with the full knowledge of their powers and
limitations as the coyotes did, but with the superstitious dread of the
wolf. In common with all his kind he had merely avoided instead of
investigating this danger, and now his understanding could not
distinguish between a trap that was set and one that was sprung and
harmless.
The clank of the trap chain delayed his attack. He feared that the thing
which clamped his enemy's foot might leap out and seize his own. The
killer circled his victim, and the yellow wolf turned round and round in
the same spot, keeping his bared fangs toward his foe. The trap chain
kinked and twisted till it gave him less than a foot of play. Only his
insane hatred of Breed led Flatear to brave his horror of that sound of
grating steel,--but he came in close at last, crouched and sprang. Breed
leaned sharply to one side and met him with a side slash of teeth but
the weight of his enemy threw him and he felt the killer's teeth cut
cleanly into his shoulder and slide along the bone. Flatear reversed his
snap so swiftly that it seemed but a double swing of his head, yet the
second swing drove his teeth along Breed's neck and laid open a six-inch
gash. As Breed struggled to his feet the wolf's fangs sliced at his
throat and ripped it open but not deep enough to kill. A loop of the
kinked trap chain was tightened on Flatear's toes by Breed's convulsive
backward dodge, and a ghastly fear that he himself was trapped swept
through him, transcending even the lust to kill the yellow wolf. He made
one wild leap for safety,--and the tightening kink cracked his toes and
threw him, the same lurch dragging Breed down with him, and they rolled
into a furious tangle of clashing teeth and rattling steel.
Out in the night the coyotes were moving in from all directions in
answer to the call Breed had sent out ten seconds before the steel jaws
gripped him. Shady was trotting leisurely up to the saddle to meet her
lord and mate,--the mate whose life was flowing out through a score of
ugly rents. Breed's strength was ebbing fast, and he no longer had the
power to put killing force behind his teeth. Flatear snapped aimlessly,
his mind half crazed by that fearsome pinching of the chain on his toes.
He felt it loosen and slip off, and he leaped clear of the spot.
A shape moved over the edge of the saddle and the next instant Shady
drove straight at the gray assassin, raging as she came, the dog in her
boiling to the surface. Before she reached him a yellow streak split the
night and Peg's teeth crunched on the wolf's hind leg, the little
coyote's deadly silence contrasting queerly with Shady's fighting
shrieks.
The big wolf fled from this combined attack, one hind leg sagging as he
ran, the muscle torn raggedly across by Peg's one snap. Once more Breed
was indebted to Shady and his coyote followers.
But Breed was far gone. He struggled to rise but fell back again and lay
still, the blood oozing from the rents in his tattered pelt. He raised
his head and looked at Shady, and for a single instant his mouth opened
and his red tongue lolled out in friendly greeting, showing his spirit
still intact even though his body was slit in ribbons; then he lowered
it flat between his paws and moved nothing but his eyes.
Shady crept close to him and licked his wounds. The coyote pack came up
in pairs and circled about their stricken leader, some of them squatting
on their haunches as they regarded his plight, others moving restlessly
about; all of them silent as the grave, the only sound in the notch
being Shady's continuous low wails as she implored her mate to rise and
follow her.
The bitter frost claimed Breed's swollen foot and stiffened it, numbing
all sense of pain. He felt comfortable and content. Then Peg moved up
and sniffed critically at the trapped foot. He set his teeth in it but
Breed did not flinch. The three-legged coyote crouched beside him and
turned his head sidewise, the right side of his jaws flat on the trap,
his teeth sliding along the cold steel and shearing away the frozen
flesh. The leg was dulled to all sensations and Breed felt no pain.
Shady viewed this amputation closely and whined with anxiety as it
proceeded. Peg sliced the meat from the two toes, set his teeth firmly
across the bones and crunched just once. Then he hooked one forepaw over
the trap and scratched it away from Breed's sprawling hind leg, two
severed toes remaining in the trap.
Peg's lips and gums along the right side of his face were seared and
burned from contact with the chilled steel of the trap, raw patches of
flesh showing where the skin had adhered to the frosted springs and had
been wrenched loose. He nursed these wounds with his hot tongue, and
fiery twinges of pain racked him but he did not whine. He curled up and
slept for an hour, then rose and nipped Breed's flank. The cold had
stopped the flow of blood from Breed's cuts and the pain of the nip
roused him from the stupor. He struggled to his feet and stood swaying
while Shady bounced around him with joyous yelps. Then he set off for
the hills, moving at a walk, with his head drooping weakly.
The next morning Collins stood and looked down at the two great toes in
the trap.
"Pegged him," he said. "Pegged old Breed. He'll be minus two hind toes
from now on out--but he could lose two toes off each foot and still beat
the game. The whole coyote tribe must have been up here to look him over
from the number of tracks."
When Collins returned to his shack he found six stockmen awaiting him.
The stampede of the sheep and the big kill made by Breed's pack up in
the hills had enraged the sheepmen. They had confidently expected that
some man would collect Breed's scalp on a fresh tracking snow, but while
every rider had scoured the foothills for Breed's tracks after every
storm, no man had cut his trail. After gorging on warm meat at night a
wolf runs sluggishly the following day; his muscles lack snap and his
wind is leaky, and a good horse can wear him down. Twice in his first
year Breed had been harried far across the foothills by hard-running
horses, and now the first spitting flakes of a coming storm brought
recollections of those desperate races and roused his uneasiness to such
a pitch that he set off for the hills and remained there till the wind
had piled the snow and cleared long stretches which made tracking from a
running horse impossible.
The sheepmen at the cabin informed Collins of the big killing and their
tale was punctuated by every possible epithet applicable to the coyote
tribe. Collins, owning no sheep, was in a position to view the killing
in a more philosophical light than they.
"You can't rightly blame 'em," he said. "Men raise up sheep to kill 'em
in cold blood; coyotes kill 'em when they're hungry. Two sides to it,
'cording to whether you're a coyote or a man."
The stockmen stated the purpose of their visit. Their association had
raised the bounties, making it profitable for wolfers to hunt even in
the summer months when pelts were unprime and valueless; the price for
spring pups had been raised to equal the reward posted for adults; and
now the association would furnish free poison for all wolfers and
advocated its use all through the year. They stated their belief that
this system, if followed ruthlessly, would result in the practical
extermination of prairie wolves. They rested their case and anxiously
awaited the Coyote Prophet's verdict on their plan. Collins shook his
head.
"Part of it's good," he told them, "and part of it's dead wrong. Anyhow
you can't kill 'em all. I've told you so for twenty year and I stand on
what I've said. There'll be a million coyotes left to howl when the last
man dies. The raise on summer bounties is a good move--a man can afford
to kill shedders at that price; and the pup bounty will set men to
digging out their dens. But your main plan was laid out by men that
don't savvy the coyote mind." Collins leaned forward and tapped one
forefinger in the open palm of his other hand to emphasize his point.
"You let this all-year poison idea slide! You mark me--if you try that
on you'll lose; more ways than one. I know 'em! A coyote will take a
chance on guns and traps, but he's superstitious about these strychnine
baits. After a few turn up on the range with a dose of it the rest will
quit your line. Your traps won't show one catch. There's only one time
to use it and that's after you've bait trapped and trail trapped till
only the wisest are left. Then shoot the whole range full of poison; get
it all out at once and knock off all you can. Then take your poison up
and quit! You hear me,--quit! Then they'll sort of halfway forget before
another year and you can spring it again. But I'm a-telling you the
facts,--if you leave poison scattered round loose for six months you'll
see coyotes increasing fast and there'll be hell to pay amongst your
sheep; you'll break behind two ways at once. There'll be just enough
that forget themselves and take on a poison feed to keep the rest in the
notion of passing up all dead meat. They won't even touch bloats or
winter-killed stock. When they're hungry they'll make a kill,--and
they'll work on your sheep."
"I've stripped off three times more pelts than any wolfer that's mixed
poison with his traps. Now my trap line is played out and I'm going to
throw poison into 'em for a month,--and quit."
As Breed lay convalescing from his wounds he reviewed the dangers of his
chosen range, not knowing that the one horror which he feared more than
all else combined was about to sweep through the foothills. His former
attitude toward Flatear had been one of aversion for his gruesome
practices, but with no touch of personal enmity. But the gray wolf had
not only pounced on him at a season when mating was past and dog wolves
at peace, but had almost torn him to shreds while he was helpless in the
grip of a trap. Breed now felt a terrible hatred growing in him, a
desire to kill the slinking gray beast as soon as he gained sufficient
strength to take his trail.
Breed was too weak to hunt but there was enough of the coyote in Shady
to lead her to rustle food for her mate. For five days Breed lived
wholly upon the chunks of meat which Shady purloined from the frozen
bait piled against Collins' shack,--the meat which he intended to poison
and strew all across the range as soon as he had finished taking up his
traps. On the sixth night Shady found that the whole of the great stack
of meat had entirely vanished and near morning she returned without
food.
Breed's strength had flowed steadily back to him and he craved meat. By
noon his hunger was a hollow ache. Then suddenly he knew that there was
meat two miles west of him. The wind was square at his back so he could
not possibly have scented it, and any man who had seen him rise from his
bed and head for meat that lay two miles downwind would have charged the
act to that mysterious intuitive knowledge that animals are supposed to
have.
There is one sure way by which men of the open locate animal carcasses:
the location of winter-killed stock or range cows mired down in an
alkali bog is pointed out to them at a distance of several miles. Game
wardens make use of it to locate the illegal kills of poachers, and
rangers to locate the kills of cougars and wolves. In all countries
there are meat-eating birds and their flights reveal much to practiced
eyes.
Breed's mysterious information came from seeing an eagle pitch down far
to the west of him. Two minutes later another swooped from another
angle. Ravens and magpies winged toward the spot,--and Breed set off at
once toward the converging lines of their flight. His hunger overcame
his dislike for daylight traveling, but he held to high ground instead
of the valleys.
He came to the edge of a shallow basin devoid of all vegetation except
an occasional spear of grass, chalk-white patches on the surface of the
earth showing it to be an alkali sink. A hundred yards beyond the last
tongue of sage that reached out into it Breed could see a quarter of
beef, two eagles jealously guarding it. Magpies and ravens flitted
about, waiting for their share of the feast. One of the eagles made
frequent moves to scatter them when they came too close, rushing at them
with a queer hopping run, his wings half spread and trailing back. Breed
could plainly hear the snapping of his powerful beak.
The larger eagle suddenly took flight, rising with awkwardly flapping
wings and cutting eccentric loops and curves, each dip calling forth a
raucous scream. He fought his way to a height of two hundred yards, then
lost all muscular control and fell loosely to the ground, his mate
taking wing as he smashed down on the flat.
A vague dread seized Breed. He watched the magpies close in to the feed.
A score of them took the air at half-minute intervals, fluttered wildly
and with a spasmodic jerking of their long tails and pitched down in
death. The rest of them left the meat. Breed's mind again proved capable
of associating ideas, of constructing theories from known facts. The
birds had been alive. There were no clanking traps or sound of gunshots
to account for it,--yet they had died. Their crazy flappings had been in
sharp contrast to their usual grace when in the air. Their actions had
not been normal, and Breed someway thought of the ways of poisoned
coyotes. He had never seen a poisoned horse or cow, or till now a
poisoned bird,--had always believed it an affliction of coyotes alone;
yet he felt the quickening of long dormant fears. He knew that meat was
poisoned and he would not go near. He drew farther back in the sage and
rested till night.
He started out with Shady at dusk and they were joined by Peg and his
mate, the four of them hunting together. Peg killed a jack and Breed's
share of it partially satisfied the gnawing of his hunger. As he
traveled on he sampled the wind for some sign of the gray killer. It had
narrowed down to a feud between the yellow wolf and the gray, an undying
hatred, and whenever they next met there would be one of them whose
trail the coyotes would never again cross on the range.
Then all thought of hunger, all thought of his feud with Flatear,
everything but stark horror was suddenly swept from Breed's mind. A
horrid, racheting cough sounded from straight ahead. A coyote whisked
into the open and bounced toward them with bucking leaps, strangling and
gagging as he came, then whirled and snapped at himself, the froth
dripping and foaming from his jaws and the moonlight reflecting from his
set, staring eyes. They drew away from him and he writhed on the ground
in nasty convulsions,--stiffened and stretched out with his eyes bulging
from their sockets and glaring forth in death.
Breed headed for the hills and Shady and the two coyotes clung close to
his flanks, as if numbers relieved the horror of the thing they had just
seen.
Three times before they reached the hills they were terrified by the
appearance of former friends who had suddenly been stricken into foaming
maniacs. Breed turned on the first rise of the hills and howled. The
members of the coyote pack read the message. Breed was bidding farewell
to the land of sage. Perhaps he knew that he would never see the gray
foothills again.
Six pairs of coyotes gathered toward his cry. They had seen much and
lived to pass their knowledge on. Every one of them had run the gauntlet
of rifle fire; they had been hounded by dogs. Most of them had been
maimed by traps,--and now this affliction that turned coyotes mad with a
single bite of meat.
They followed Breed back into the hills, a wise band, the pick of the
coyote tribe and well able to cope with new conditions and teach their
future pups the work of pioneering in strange countries which lay ahead
of them.