e fell
into his old place. Peg and his mate ran close on the right of
Breed,--but the place on the left was vacant.

Cripp was coming, however. The cry for the pack had penetrated the fog
that obscured his reason and touched a responsive chord buried deep
beneath. That cry was meant for him. The coyotes made a kill and
feasted, but before their hunger had been satisfied a living skeleton
came moving toward them, and they scattered wildly and left the meat to
Cripp.

Several strange coyotes joined Breed's pack and these new members seemed
possessed of some haunting fear. Breed noted their constant air of
expectancy and the intent regard with which they favored every coyote
that drew near to them. They seemed always suspicious that some friend
would suddenly turn upon them, and whenever some eager coyote clashed
his teeth while feeding, these strangers that had come so recently from
the low country started uneasily at the sound.

Night after night Cripp followed the pack and came to the kill. The
coyotes all avoided him but the strangers were assailed with a ghastly
dread of his grinning mask, and their fears were communicated to the
rest of the pack. Breed himself caught it. An air of tense watchfulness
pervaded their gatherings, a guarding against some menace as yet unknown
but which the actions of the strangers indicated might be upon them at
any moment.

After a week of this sort of thing Breed and Shady were bedded on a
ridge slope that flanked a broad meadow when Breed saw a moving speck at
the far edge of it. It proved to be a coyote, though at first its
peculiar gait denied this. He came straight on across the open, and
Breed saw one of his new friends trot from a willow clump in the meadow,
take one look at the advancing stranger and become galvanized into a
flitting streak that left the valley. Even at that distance his deadly
fear was evident, and Breed knew that the unknown danger had become
actual and was embodied in the queer-gaited coyote that was coming
toward him.

He ran with an automaton-like stiffness, never changing his course, and
occasionally stumbling as if unaware of the character of the ground over
which he passed. His head swung out slightly to either side and he
snapped each time. There was something sinister in every move, as if his
body was driven on without conscious volition, actuated by some
dreadful, unclean force. Breed knew it for some sort of poisoning, and
his muscles bunched f