s, trying to stem the tide
and turn it back. The resistless sea of fleece surged on and was
swallowed in the gloom of the heavy timber down the slope. And in the
center of it all Breed and the coyote pack were working.

They ripped through the mob and split it; drove through again. The sheep
split into a hundred small detachments and blundered on under the trees.
The men stumbled through the down-timber windfalls and their shouts and
the frantic barking of the dogs rose above the clamor of the sheep,--but
there was not a sound from the yellow killers who had started the
stampede. Every coyote knew the location of the men and each one singled
out a stray band for his own and swept ahead with it. The dogs worked
like fiends but the marauders were in too great force for them. Whenever
a dog bore down upon a coyote the raider fled straight away from the
sheep and their blats recalled the dog to duty. The mad wave rolled down
the slope and up the next.

The first light of dawn revealed each of the three dogs holding a large
band of sheep. The two herders and the camp tender had each rounded up a
smaller bunch. They worked their separate ways back toward the bed
ground, gathering strays along the way. The camp tender held them in the
open while the two herders and the dogs combed the surrounding hills for
stragglers; and as they worked they cursed the coyote and his ways. It
was no unusual thing in their experience for a few coyotes to fly at a
bunch of sheep and scatter them, cutting out a few that straggled away
from the protection of men and dogs, but this savage attack in pack
formation and the harrying of five thousand head of sheep far through
the hills was new to them.

All through the morning they rounded stragglers toward the flock and
shortly after noon they headed the tired sheep down toward the
foothills, fearing a repetition of the stampede. Just at dusk they
milled the sheep and bedded them on a ridge in the low country, a mile
from the base of the timbered hills.

The camp tender looked them over with practiced eye and shook his head.

"There's no chance to make a count now," he said. "But when we do make
one it's dollars to dimes that we'll tally out two hundred short."

CHAPTER III

Collins had waited till the fur was prime and the flesh side of the
coyote pelt showed flint white before throwing out his trap line. He
made the first set three hundred yards from the cabin, choosing the spot
with