esult. Her mode of fighting was the impulsive
way of the dog, the act almost simultaneous with the desire, and this
protracted, cold-blooded calculation was new to her.

Breed gave an opening at last, turning and reaching for a bite of meat,
and exposing the unprotected side of his neck. Flatear struck for it
without a sound, driving straight across the steer with all his weight
behind the gleaming rows of teeth. Breed dropped flat and as his enemy
swept over him he swung his head up and sidewise in a terrible slash
that tore an ugly rent in the gray wolf's paunch. They whirled face to
face,--and both were treated to a series of tremendous surprises which
shattered all previous convictions.

Shady harked back to the ways of her domestic ancestors, to the custom
of dashing into a neighborhood dog fight and mauling the one strange dog
in the lot, regardless of sex,--and Breed had been her friend long
before he had become her mate. Flatear was the one strange dog to Shady,
and he found himself assailed by a screeching fury who fought without
care or caution, her sole aim being to sink her teeth in any available
part of him. As he leaped away from this unnatural she-wolf he was met
by a second surprise. The coyote pack had learned to strike when the
leader struck. Peg flashed round a sage and laid open his flank, and as
he whirled to face this new enemy Cripp slashed him from behind. Three
coyotes darted past Breed and before he had recovered from the shock of
the surprise his enemy had fled.

Flatear did not flee from fear but from an overwhelming sense of the
whole world gone mad, the shattering of tradition and the overthrow of
natural laws. The chaos in his mind sent him flying from this insane
place within six seconds after his first attack. A mating she-wolf had
been transformed into a she-fiend and in the same second he had been
mobbed by coyotes. No doubt he believed with Collins that strange things
had come to pass of late in the ranks of the coyote tribe. Flatear
headed back for the hills out of which he had come, and as he ran his
bewilderment crystallized into a consuming hatred for the strange yellow
wolf, the hybrid beast who had upset the established order of things. He
did not know that Breed himself had been so nearly paralyzed with sheer
astonishment that he had not joined the attack.

The coyotes settled once more to the enjoyment of their interrupted
banquet. Breed little realized that he had made a m