The Yellow Horde

by Hal G. Evarts

As the summer advanced the pups learned to pack-hunt with Breed. [Page 167].

As the summer advanced the pups learned to pack-hunt with Breed. The coyote howls at night were now confined to messages between mate and mate or between mother and pups. The life they led was essentially a family life and they had no interests outside of the family circle. Breed's cry to rally a pack was never raised, for his own domestic duties were many; and if he had sent forth the summons none would have answered it. He sometimes met Peg and ran with him for a while, but these visits were infrequent and brief, each having pressing business of his own.

Breed one day caught the scent of a coyote upwind from him. This in itself was nothing unusual but there was something vaguely familiar about it, something that roused old memories, and suddenly he thought of Cripp. He traced up the scent and as he topped the ridge he stopped short and bared his teeth, the hair rising along his spine. A horrid nightmare of a thing rose from its bed and leered at him. The hair had slipped from its body, leaving the skin shiny and slate-blue. The ears and head were furred, and the legs; tufts of hair sprouted from the shoulders and along the spine, but flanks and sides were bare and the long tail was rat-like, its joints showing through the tight-stretched skin. The lips were drawn back and revealed the blue gums receding from loosened teeth. This was the result of poison that had failed to kill.

Breed knew this grisly apparition for Cripp. The scent was there, and the warped foreleg. Cripp did not recognize his friend. His mind was clouded and the light of insanity gleamed in his sunken eyes. Breed whirled and fled, and a weird cry sounded behind him,—the eerie howl of a maniac.

All through the summer the coyotes shunned the specter of living death that plodded silently up and down the valleys and the ridges. When it came suddenly through the trees, drawn by the scent of a fresh kill, some coyote family scattered swiftly and left the feast. Cripp was as apt to howl in broad daylight as at night, and the sounds were meaningless, the unintelligible jargon of an idiot. Every coyote within hearing bristled with fear whenever Cripp's jabbering reached their ears.

In the background of Breed's mind the purpose to slay Flatear still persisted, but his duties prevented his spending the time to hunt for him. Occasional wolf howls were heard back here in the hills, the calls of strays that had drifted down from the north, following the line of the hills and keeping well back from the dangers of the low country. Each time he heard the wolf note the urge to kill was strengthened in Breed. He had heard Flatear's voice but once and so was unable to identify him by ear alone but must receive added testimony through eyes or nose. Twice he left his family to investigate the source of these cries. One came from a lone female; the other from a big gray dog wolf who had mated with a coyote, and there were five pups trailing after the oddly assorted pair. These pups were much like Breed's own and they gave proof that the coyote strain was stronger than the wolf. Their language was that of their mother. The only trace of wolf parentage was shown in their greater size and the dark fur of their backs. Breed's search for his old enemy proved fruitless. Many things of which Breed was unaware had taken place on his old home range since he had left it, and Flatear, terrified by the latest of these events, had slunk away to the north.

Collins' prediction had been verified. The coyotes in the low country where poison had been strewn broadcast on the range had suddenly turned from stale meat as from disease. Much of their food supply had come from bloated sheep, from locoed horses, and from cows that had eaten larkspur and died, but they would no longer touch these carcasses. Deprived of this source of food, their kills became more frequent and they grew bolder in their raids on calves and sheep.

Then a new and appalling menace reared its ugly head in the foothills, striking not at coyotes alone but at every living thing. There were many coyotes such as Cripp, with the hair slipped from their hides,—the ones that had survived a dose of poison but were unable to shake off its devastating after effects. Hydrophobia broke out among these and they ran amuck, striking alike at friends and foes. Sound coyotes were turned into frothing fiends that helped to spread the wave of madness that swept across three States. Horses and cows died by hundreds and it was no unusual thing for one mad coyote to bite fifty head of sheep in a single night. The five dogs that had harried Breed were themselves infected when they pulled down a mad coyote, and they drove poisoned fangs into forty head of stock before the last of the five was run down and shot.