am. 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