another day Breed heard only the howl of the
gale, the snow sliding from the swaying branches and the sudden crash of
falling trees,--not a sound of life. The fury of the wind abated toward
night and an hour after dark there was a sudden lull followed by one
last rush of wind, leaving the white hills wrapped in a vast silence.

Breed heard a single bugle note of a young bull, the last he was to hear
for another ten months, for the mating time of the antlered tribes had
been ushered out with the storm. The gray owls hooted the warning that
they would soon set forth on silent wings to strike down any small
creature that moved across the white carpet under the trees. The elk
were working back up to the bald ridges that had been blown free of
snow. All the night-feeders of the wild prowled in search of food after
the fast.

Breed raised the hunting cry and the coyote pack answered roll call.
They were gaunt and their flanks were pinched up and hollowed from the
three-day famine. They ran silently and with but a single purpose,
spurred on by hunger. A coyote far out on one flank of the pack winded a
bunch of elk and headed for them. The elk accorded him scarcely a glance
as he drew near. In an earlier day, before the white man had invaded the
foothills, the elk herds had wintered there, but the coyotes had not
molested them; of late a few coyotes had invaded the high country, the
summer range, but the elk did not fear them.

The coyote howled, one short eager blast, and angled in between the herd
and a straggler on the edge of it, a yearling elk, a spike bull, his
first antler growth consisting of two pointed spikes eighteen inches
long. He was not alarmed,--but it was a new kind of coyote that faced
him now, one that had learned pack hunting under the leadership of the
yellow wolf.

The coyote made a swift lunge and drove his teeth in one hind leg. The
young bull whirled and aimed a sweeping slash of his polished spears,
intent upon impaling his foe; and as he turned a second coyote flashed
from behind a tree and slashed him. The bull whirled again and struck
wickedly with a smashing forefoot. The rest of the elk had stopped to
gaze in amazement at this strange scene,--at coyotes attacking an elk.

Every coyote in the pack had altered his course at that short howl,
wheeling as at a command. Yellow shapes had appeared as if by magic and
were sliding under the trees on silent feet and circling the bull. There
was someth