us 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 the