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 out of a sound sleep, certain that somewhere close
at hand a coyote had howled. During the brief gray light of the
following day Collins stopped and gazed long at a small, wolf-like track
in the snow.
"Coyote!" he announced triumphantly. "It was him that howled."
Twenty yards farther on he crossed a second coyote track, and for half a
mile there were trails pointing to the north. There was one that showed
evidence of a missing foot, a peg-leg such as those he had often seen on
the open range. Then Collins halted and studied the next two trails that
appeared side by side. One was a wolf track, and there were two toes
missing from one hind foot. The smaller tracks were evenly spaced, and
placed one before the other in a straight line after the manner of
coyote and wolf, but ten feet beyond where Collins stood the trail
showed the wavering gait of the dog with an occasional track out to
either side. A sudden mist blurred Collins' eyes and he dashed it off
with the back of his mitts.
"It's Shady," he said. "Old Shady and that yellow Breed,--both still
alive and way off up here." Collins threw back his head and sent forth
the clear piercing whistle that he had used to summon Shady in the long
ago. Three times the shrill blast, long and sustained, was sent far out
across the snowy hills.
Three miles to the north Shady lay curled up with Breed. She suddenly
raised her head. Breed too opened his eyes and cocked one ear to listen.
Shady was conscious of no actual sound. Some faint vibration reached her
ears and seemed to play upon some chord deep within; the impressions
were hazy and indistinct, yet she was aware of a vague sense of loss, a
wave of something akin to homesickness, and she whimpered softly, then
closed her eyes and slept.
Collins heard more and more coyotes howl, and in the next two months he
had brief glimpses of perhaps a dozen as they moved across some opening.
At least half of these seemed larger than the coyotes he had known, and
they had dark fur on their backs. The Coyote Prophet studied long over
these strange things. The coyote voices roused an ache for the homely
cabin in Sand Coulee Basin a thousand miles to the south; and each time
one howled he said:
"I'm going back. Once it comes spring I'll make tracks out of here. This
here's no fit country for a white man, and me--I'm going back."
But Collins did not go back with the opening up of spring. Rumors of a
gold strike sent men stampeding 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 and brought his band out
into the first reaches of the Mackenzie Barrens that stretched back
among the trees.
Breed found no trap lines here, and there were no mad coyotes or poison
baits. Another two days and the trees were left behind, open country
stretching ahead as far as his eye could reach; the brush was stunted
and reminded him of sage; there were clumps of dwarf spruce much like
the twisted cedars of the badland brakes, and thickets of stunted
willows such as those that sprouted from every side-hill spring in Sand
Coulee Basin. It was like a homecoming after being exiled for three long
years,--and Breed was content at last as he bedded on a knoll. The range
was once more dotted with stock--only these were wild caribou--and old
habits cropped out in Breed; he knew there were no men here, yet all
through the short two-hour day he frequently raised his head and his
eyes swept the range for signs of the devilish riders. When he left his
bed he found fresh evidence that he was home, that Sand Coulee Basin
could not be farther away than over the next tongue of high ground; for
he had not traveled a mile before he smelled coyote blood and traced it
upwind to find an old friend stiffened in death, and with her throat
slit open,--the work of the silent assassin that had terrorized the
foothills of Hardpan Spur.
Breed's hatred of Flatear had been dulled with time. He had met hundreds
of wolves since the fight in the notch, and at first he had sought for
his enemy, but later this search had been manifested only by a careful
investigation of each new wolf he met, a vague suspicion that the big
gray might be an enemy; but this had become almost a mechanical process
rather than a distinct impression of why he should expect to find an
enemy among wolves.
Animal memories are a mixture of impressions received through the senses
of hearing, sight and smell, and after a considerable lapse of time it
requires the coordination of all three of these senses to reconstruct
the thought in its entirety. The sight of the slain coyote filled Breed
with rage but lacking a definite object upon which to vent it. The scent
around the spot further enraged him, and the picture of the great gray
beast swam nebulously in his mind. A wolf howl sounded close at hand and
stirred still another long-dormant pool of impressions; the whole
crystallized into a distinct likeness of Flatear,--and Breed was off on
the hunt for his ancient enemy.
Flatear saw a great yellow wolf rushing down on him and he whirled and
bared his teeth. The gray wolf weighed a hundred pounds, Breed slightly
over ninety. They circled cautiously for an opening, hind parts tensed
and drooping, ears laid flat and lips drawn back to expose the yellow
tusks. Flatear sprang first and Breed met the open mouth with his own.
The clash of teeth sounded far across the barrens and silent shapes
changed their direction and moved toward the sound. Three times Breed
took the force of the drive on his teeth and the jaws of both wolves
dripped blood. A wolf came slipping up to watch, and two breeds of the
yellow wolf's pack stationed themselves ten yards away. Three more
wolves appeared; then Peg and Fluff came to the scene and Peg moved
behind Flatear and crouched.
Breed's snarl warned him off. The three-legged coyote was old and hoary,
in his fifteenth year and with but a short span of life ahead; his teeth
were rounded and worn down but his spirit was stout, and he longed to
mix it with the wolf. His leader's order held him back, but he remained
the nearest of the lot, watching every move of the combat as if
appointed judge of it.
Flatear rushed time and again, using his greater weight to batter down
his antagonist's guard, but Breed gave back each time and Flatear's
driving shoulder never reached its mark and his teeth were met with
teeth. Breed was losing ground and Flatear pressed him hard. The yellow
wolf seemed to have but one style of defense and no heart for attack.
The fight was a mere procession of retreats before Flatear's heavy
drives, and the gray wolf grew accustomed to this monotonous defense,
and his attacks were unconsciously conformed to it, becoming equally
mechanical, his one purpose to wear his enemy down by sheer strength and
weight.
And when Breed, instead of cringing away, struck at him with every ounce
of his ninety pounds, Flatear was unprepared. He had started his spring
and Breed's counter drive was aimed so low that his chest skimmed the
ground. Flatear slashed savagely downward but the yellow wolf's head was
well under him, and even as Flatear's teeth grazed Breed's shoulder his
forward sweep was checked in mid-air as powerful jaws closed on a
foreleg with a sickening crunch of bones. The opposing weights of both
wolves pivoted on that one leg, and in addition to the fracture
Flatear's whole side and shoulder were wrenched clear to his spine.
There was an uneasy movement among the spectators, now numbering more
than a score, wolves and coyotes for the first time in history mingling
to witness the settling of a personal feud. Peg now sat down
contentedly, his tongue lolling out in a satisfied grin.
Breed's tactics changed and he wheeled round his disabled enemy with
lightning feints; then his shoulder struck Flatear with a solid smash
that crumpled him and he went down with Breed's teeth at his windpipe.
His end was of the sort which he himself had handed to so many
others,--and the new range was safe for coyotes.
The silent spectators were startled by a faint whining sound. This
whimpering grew louder and the wolves slunk away but the coyote pack
remained. Breed's sudden hunt for Flatear had caught Shady unprepared,
but she had finally cut his trail and was following it to the spot.
For three months Breed saw no more of wolves, and when next he did see
them the beasts were white. He had led the pack to the basin of the
Copper River at the edge of the Arctic Circle. Their travels were over,
and they now ranged a limited area of less than a hundred miles in
extent. Except that no high hills flanked their new home, its features
were much like the old. There were no longer any days and nights, but a
seemingly endless period of varying degrees of twilight, and the rolling
hills were deep with snow.
Breed had met many new animals since leaving the land of the
Yellowstone; he had known moose and goats in British Columbia, caribou
on the barrens and the iron-gray sheep at the head of the Nelson. Now
there were strange shaggy beasts with hair that hung nearly to the
ground, and they came out of the north in small droves, the white wolves
traveling on the flanks of the herds. He found musk ox easy prey and
there was no lack of meat.
A few days after the first of these appeared Breed and Shady topped a
ridge and saw the one thing necessary to make the image of the old home
complete. A light twinkled some half a mile away, as Breed and Shady had
so often seen the lights of Collins' cabin. Shady whined as she looked
at it and Breed raised his voice and howled. As if in answer to the howl
a shrill whistle floated to them and Shady at once slipped from Breed's
side and headed for the fire.
Collins had turned back from the fabled gold fields, heartsick for the
sight of his native foothills, disgusted with the Arctic night and a
flat white world, and with two companions he had braved the terrors of a
winter journey and headed into the south. They traveled light, supplies
for three packed on a single sled, drawn by six dogs. Food had run low
and for a week they had been forced to subsist on starvation rations;
one more day and they would have killed a dog,--and then they crossed
the trail of a musk ox herd. There was now food in plenty but Collins'
mental exhaustion did not vanish with returning physical strength. He
was obsessed with the idea that he would never see the sagebrush hills
again and his companions could not rouse him.
They fastened the dogs in a clump of dwarfed spruce and built a small
fire on the downwind side of the trees.
The old wolfer sat huddled in his furs before the fire, dreading to
enter the little tent to crawl into his sleeping bag alone with his
thoughts; for the white madness was driving its iron into his soul and
striking at his reason. His mind coined queer white couplets; the white
wolf pack and the white ice pack,--a whole world shrouded in white
night.
His companions had looked upon the white madness before; had seen men
die from the deadly monotony of it all. It was conceivable that a book
of bright pictures, anything with warm colors might penetrate the pall
of white fog that clouded his brain and shatter the obsession,
reinstating reason on its tottering throne. But there was only the
howling of white wolves out across the white snow fields. Then a wolf
howl sounded from close at hand.
It seemed to pierce Collins' stupor and strike some memory filed long
ago in his subconscious mind, and he suddenly straightened and glared at
them.
"I can pick him out from amongst a thousand wolves," he stated. "There's
no wolf shiver to that howl. It's a yellow wolf! As yellow as gold, not
a damned white hair on him anywheres! It's Breed, the yellow wolf of
Sand Coulee Basin--there's color come into this white hell hole at
last!"
A shrill whistle pealed from his lips and his companions shook their
heads. Then the wolf howled again and they stiffened with surprise as a
score of wild voices answered. The sounds were new to them and the snowy
waste was filled with bewilderingly different inflections that ripped
back and forth through opposing waves of sound till it seemed that
jeering cachinnations rose from a thousand fiends.
They read the gleam in Collins' eyes and his disjointed utterances as a
sign of hopeless madness,--but in reality it was returning sanity. A new
warmth stole over him, and the certainty that he would win through.
"Here they come," he said. "The little yellow devils! They've spread
from the Arctic to the Neck, like I always knowed they would. There's
music a white man can listen to--the music of the little yellow wolves."
Then the two men sat silent and wondered if they themselves were mad.
For the dogs were snarling and straining at their leashes in the scrub
spruce, and a strange yellow she-wolf with a strip of dark fur along her
back came creeping toward the fire. Her eyes regarded the two men
suspiciously and one ear tipped toward the dogs beyond. She slipped up
and rested her head on Collins' knee, enjoyed his friendly voice and
rubbing fingers for a single minute, then vanished in the night as the
yellow breed-wolf called his pack.