The Yellow Horde

by Hal G. Evarts

There was but one ray of hope in the whole dangerous business and men seized on that. Mad coyotes lost their cunning and ran stupidly on some chosen course, biting every living thing that crossed their trails, but refusing to be turned aside even to avoid an approaching man. Riders poured through the foothills on fleet horses, shooting down the stricken ones, all other business suspended till this menace had been stamped out. And through it all the ravages among the wily coyotes were far less than among domestic stock.

The spreading of coyotes over new territory, which had been only gradual before, was accelerated by the poison and madness that had blighted the foothills. Thickly settled districts far to the east, where coyotes had formerly appeared but infrequently, were now invaded by great numbers. Poison and traps could not be used effectively against them in localities where there were dogs on every farm, and the coyotes were safer there than on the open range. Reports that reached Collins showed that for eight hundred miles south along the base of the hills the coyotes were quitting the flats and roaming through the fastnesses of the Rockies.

Breed noted the steady flow of strange coyotes into the high basins of his new range. In the late summer his pups dropped one by one from the family circle, going off on some business of their own. During the latter part of August Breed was conscious of a vague sense of loneliness. This grew more pronounced and then suddenly he knew! The rally call for the pack rolled through the valleys and echoed among the peaks, and from far and near he heard familiar voices raised in answer. The parental responsibilities were over for one season, the pups gone forth on their own, and the members of the pack were free to follow the yellow wolf.

As Breed ran through the hills the pack gathered, and each coyote fell into his old place. Peg and his mate ran close on the right of Breed,—but the place on the left was vacant.

Cripp was coming, however. The cry for the pack had penetrated the fog that obscured his reason and touched a responsive chord buried deep beneath. That cry was meant for him. The coyotes made a kill and feasted, but before their hunger had been satisfied a living skeleton came moving toward them, and they scattered wildly and left the meat to Cripp.

Several strange coyotes joined Breed's pack and these new members seemed possessed of some haunting fear. Breed noted their constant air of expectancy and the intent regard with which they favored every coyote that drew near to them. They seemed always suspicious that some friend would suddenly turn upon them, and whenever some eager coyote clashed his teeth while feeding, these strangers that had come so recently from the low country started uneasily at the sound.

Night after night Cripp followed the pack and came to the kill. The coyotes all avoided him but the strangers were assailed with a ghastly dread of his grinning mask, and their fears were communicated to the rest of the pack. Breed himself caught it. An air of tense watchfulness pervaded their gatherings, a guarding against some menace as yet unknown but which the actions of the strangers indicated might be upon them at any moment.

After a week of this sort of thing Breed and Shady were bedded on a ridge slope that flanked a broad meadow when Breed saw a moving speck at the far edge of it. It proved to be a coyote, though at first its peculiar gait denied this. He came straight on across the open, and Breed saw one of his new friends trot from a willow clump in the meadow, take one look at the advancing stranger and become galvanized into a flitting streak that left the valley. Even at that distance his deadly fear was evident, and Breed knew that the unknown danger had become actual and was embodied in the queer-gaited coyote that was coming toward him.

He ran with an automaton-like stiffness, never changing his course, and occasionally stumbling as if unaware of the character of the ground over which he passed. His head swung out slightly to either side and he snapped each time. There was something sinister in every move, as if his body was driven on without conscious volition, actuated by some dreadful, unclean force. Breed knew it for some sort of poisoning, and his muscles bunched for flight. Shady barked angrily as if to drive the thing away. Then Breed saw a hairless travesty of a coyote move out of a draw and halt directly in the path of the mad coyote. Cripp stood there grinning till he felt the other's teeth score his unprotected hide; then he whirled and snapped back at him. The mad coyote kept straight on and Cripp followed at his own queer shambling gait. He drew close and ran alongside, and for a hundred yards they exchanged slashes in a senseless sort of way. Breed could see the blood oozing from the fur of the mad coyote's neck, and the blobs of white foam sliding down Cripp's shiny hide. Then the mad coyote fell and Cripp kept on for another ten yards before he missed him. He wheeled and returned, stumbled and fell and crawled back to his foe, and they lay there toothing one another in an impersonal, detached way, as if it did not matter.

Breed's soul revolted at this scene and he fled the spot. When he raised his howl that night he was twenty miles farther north, but the coyote pack answered from close at hand. Many of them witnessed the same scene from adjacent slopes of the valley. The others had viewed similar sights, and there was a general coyote movement north through the mountains, a widespread exodus ahead of the madness that was creeping up into the hills.