ne night, the strange restlessness that was in the hearts of the
coyotes, making the prairie ridges clamorous with their choruses,
disturbed Dusty Star so strongly that it brought him trouble in his
dreams. He woke with a sense that something was calling him. As he
listened, he recognized the familiar and yet always uncanny way in which
the coyotes arrange their evening chorus--the short barks of the opening
bars, which grow louder and more acute, till they change to the final
howl. They were singing to-night as coyotes had chorused it a million
times before. Yet to-night there seemed to Dusty Star to be something
special in the cry, as if it were an invitation to him from the prairie
folk to go out and do something, or be something, which he had neither
done nor been before. Without waiting to question what the thing might
be, he got up softly, and crept out of the tepee. Outside, the camp lay
very still. Most of the inhabitants had gone to bed. Only here and there
a lodge glimmered with the light of an inside fire which had not yet
died down.

Dusty Star looked carefully round on every side to see if anything
moved, and then glided away into the darkness.

The coyote calls had died away now, but he fancied that they had come
from the direction of Look-out Bluff. The bluff was known to be a bad
place. The Thunder-bird (so they said) visited it in the moon when the
grass is green, and darkened it with his wings. Old Ahitopee, moreover,
who had gone upon the Wolf Trail many moons ago, was reported to make
evil medicine there, and to hob-a-nob with the prairie wolves.
Nevertheless, Dusty Star took his courage in both hands, and went
towards the bluff.

He was about half-way there, when he caught, far out upon the prairies,
a faint, but carrying note. He stopped, listening intently, but it did
not come again. For all that, Dusty Star was certain that he had heard
the hunting call of a wolf.

He went on. Overhead, in the black sky, the stars glittered like
arrow-heads of white fire. But, under his moccasins, the prairie seemed
blacker than the sky. It was dead, dark, motionless. Yet the darkness
seemed to have movement in it, as of a furtive travelling which you
could not see. _Things walked!_

At the foot of the bluff, Dusty Star stopped. If old Ahitopee were
making medicine, it might be as well to avoid that side of the bluff.
Those who went upon the Wolf Trail did not like to be disturbed. He
listened very carefull