l, warned at a distance of many miles, with some mysterious
occult knowledge.

A band of antelope joined the buck on the ridge and fled with him toward
Breed, stopped to look back, stamping their feet excitedly, then swept
on past as a rider topped the ridge they had just left.

Breed flattened in his nest, resting his head between his paws. It was
not his way to rush off in panicky flight across the open at the first
glimpse of man, but rather the coyote way of remaining motionless till
the enemy had passed, or slipping away unseen if he came too close. The
horseman came on at an angle that would take him three hundred yards to
one side, then altered his course and angled the other way. He stopped
to look over a bunch of cows, shifted again to view another bunch and
circled round it; came on again but turned to head a stray steer back
toward the rest. Collins was using the same tactics in approaching Breed
that the two coyotes had so recently used to stalk the jack. He seemed
about to pass two hundred yards away but lifted his horse into a keen
run and whirled him straight for the point of the knoll, then shifted
his course again to round the shoulder of the little hill instead of
over its crest, knowing that Breed was running at top speed down the
opposite slope. He pulled the horse back on his haunches and flung from
the saddle with the first glimpse of the fleeing wolf.

Breed did not stop to look back as most other animals would have done
but ran with every ounce of his speed. He flinched away from the sharp
crack near his head as a rifle ball passed him and the crash of the
report reached his ears. The next shot struck close behind and the
biting gravel stung him as the ricochet hissed past within an inch of
him. He held straight ahead but resorted to the coyote ruse of flipping
from side to side in sharp tacks, his tail snapping jerkily outward to
balance him on the turns. Bullets ripped through the sage about him as
Collins emptied his gun. Then he was safe on the far side of a swell and
Collins was grinning ruefully at a wolfless landscape.

"Coyote stuff!" he said. "A man might as well gun up the corkscrew
flight of a jacksnipe as to pour lead through the gaps in a
side-steppin' freak like that. But you, Breed,--you better keep your eye
on me. The Coyote Prophet is out for your scalp--so walk soft, old
boy,--walk soft."

Breed struck a swift, gliding trot and held it clear to the base of the
hills, stoppi