The Yellow Horde

by Hal G. Evarts

But Breed was far gone. He struggled to rise but fell back again and lay still, the blood oozing from the rents in his tattered pelt. He raised his head and looked at Shady, and for a single instant his mouth opened and his red tongue lolled out in friendly greeting, showing his spirit still intact even though his body was slit in ribbons; then he lowered it flat between his paws and moved nothing but his eyes.

Shady crept close to him and licked his wounds. The coyote pack came up in pairs and circled about their stricken leader, some of them squatting on their haunches as they regarded his plight, others moving restlessly about; all of them silent as the grave, the only sound in the notch being Shady's continuous low wails as she implored her mate to rise and follow her.

The bitter frost claimed Breed's swollen foot and stiffened it, numbing all sense of pain. He felt comfortable and content. Then Peg moved up and sniffed critically at the trapped foot. He set his teeth in it but Breed did not flinch. The three-legged coyote crouched beside him and turned his head sidewise, the right side of his jaws flat on the trap, his teeth sliding along the cold steel and shearing away the frozen flesh. The leg was dulled to all sensations and Breed felt no pain. Shady viewed this amputation closely and whined with anxiety as it proceeded. Peg sliced the meat from the two toes, set his teeth firmly across the bones and crunched just once. Then he hooked one forepaw over the trap and scratched it away from Breed's sprawling hind leg, two severed toes remaining in the trap.

Peg's lips and gums along the right side of his face were seared and burned from contact with the chilled steel of the trap, raw patches of flesh showing where the skin had adhered to the frosted springs and had been wrenched loose. He nursed these wounds with his hot tongue, and fiery twinges of pain racked him but he did not whine. He curled up and slept for an hour, then rose and nipped Breed's flank. The cold had stopped the flow of blood from Breed's cuts and the pain of the nip roused him from the stupor. He struggled to his feet and stood swaying while Shady bounced around him with joyous yelps. Then he set off for the hills, moving at a walk, with his head drooping weakly.

The next morning Collins stood and looked down at the two great toes in the trap.

"Pegged him," he said. "Pegged old Breed. He'll be minus two hind toes from now on out—but he could lose two toes off each foot and still beat the game. The whole coyote tribe must have been up here to look him over from the number of tracks."

When Collins returned to his shack he found six stockmen awaiting him. The stampede of the sheep and the big kill made by Breed's pack up in the hills had enraged the sheepmen. They had confidently expected that some man would collect Breed's scalp on a fresh tracking snow, but while every rider had scoured the foothills for Breed's tracks after every storm, no man had cut his trail. After gorging on warm meat at night a wolf runs sluggishly the following day; his muscles lack snap and his wind is leaky, and a good horse can wear him down. Twice in his first year Breed had been harried far across the foothills by hard-running horses, and now the first spitting flakes of a coming storm brought recollections of those desperate races and roused his uneasiness to such a pitch that he set off for the hills and remained there till the wind had piled the snow and cleared long stretches which made tracking from a running horse impossible.

The sheepmen at the cabin informed Collins of the big killing and their tale was punctuated by every possible epithet applicable to the coyote tribe. Collins, owning no sheep, was in a position to view the killing in a more philosophical light than they.

"You can't rightly blame 'em," he said. "Men raise up sheep to kill 'em in cold blood; coyotes kill 'em when they're hungry. Two sides to it, 'cording to whether you're a coyote or a man."

The stockmen stated the purpose of their visit. Their association had raised the bounties, making it profitable for wolfers to hunt even in the summer months when pelts were unprime and valueless; the price for spring pups had been raised to equal the reward posted for adults; and now the association would furnish free poison for all wolfers and advocated its use all through the year. They stated their belief that this system, if followed ruthlessly, would result in the practical extermination of prairie wolves. They rested their case and anxiously awaited the Coyote Prophet's verdict on their plan. Collins shook his head.