A vague dread seized Breed. He watched the magpies close in to the feed. A score of them took the air at half-minute intervals, fluttered wildly and with a spasmodic jerking of their long tails and pitched down in death. The rest of them left the meat. Breed's mind again proved capable of associating ideas, of constructing theories from known facts. The birds had been alive. There were no clanking traps or sound of gunshots to account for it,—yet they had died. Their crazy flappings had been in sharp contrast to their usual grace when in the air. Their actions had not been normal, and Breed someway thought of the ways of poisoned coyotes. He had never seen a poisoned horse or cow, or till now a poisoned bird,—had always believed it an affliction of coyotes alone; yet he felt the quickening of long dormant fears. He knew that meat was poisoned and he would not go near. He drew farther back in the sage and rested till night.
He started out with Shady at dusk and they were joined by Peg and his mate, the four of them hunting together. Peg killed a jack and Breed's share of it partially satisfied the gnawing of his hunger. As he traveled on he sampled the wind for some sign of the gray killer. It had narrowed down to a feud between the yellow wolf and the gray, an undying hatred, and whenever they next met there would be one of them whose trail the coyotes would never again cross on the range.
Then all thought of hunger, all thought of his feud with Flatear, everything but stark horror was suddenly swept from Breed's mind. A horrid, racheting cough sounded from straight ahead. A coyote whisked into the open and bounced toward them with bucking leaps, strangling and gagging as he came, then whirled and snapped at himself, the froth dripping and foaming from his jaws and the moonlight reflecting from his set, staring eyes. They drew away from him and he writhed on the ground in nasty convulsions,—stiffened and stretched out with his eyes bulging from their sockets and glaring forth in death.
Breed headed for the hills and Shady and the two coyotes clung close to his flanks, as if numbers relieved the horror of the thing they had just seen.
Three times before they reached the hills they were terrified by the appearance of former friends who had suddenly been stricken into foaming maniacs. Breed turned on the first rise of the hills and howled. The members of the coyote pack read the message. Breed was bidding farewell to the land of sage. Perhaps he knew that he would never see the gray foothills again.
Six pairs of coyotes gathered toward his cry. They had seen much and lived to pass their knowledge on. Every one of them had run the gauntlet of rifle fire; they had been hounded by dogs. Most of them had been maimed by traps,—and now this affliction that turned coyotes mad with a single bite of meat.
They followed Breed back into the hills, a wise band, the pick of the coyote tribe and well able to cope with new conditions and teach their future pups the work of pioneering in strange countries which lay ahead of them.