The Yellow Horde

by Hal G. Evarts

A piercing series of yelps issued from the timber as Shady gave voice to her agony. The prospector nodded. The mystery was cleared; for he knew that he might shoot a wolf or coyote to mincemeat and neither would make a sound.

"A dog," he said. "A renegade. I should have knowed it all along; her stealing thataway right alongside of Buge; and her bristling up to me—no wolf would carry on like that."

He strode to the tree and unleashed the hound.

"Go to it, Buge!" he said. "Go clean up them pups."

As the dog sped into the timber a sharp note sounded from far down the slope. Shady had partially recovered her upset faculties and called the pups, and they gathered swiftly to her and ran their best. Even in her crippled state Shady could have outrun the trail hound, for her wounds had not yet had time to stiffen, but the pups could scarcely hold their own, and the dog's endurance was far greater.

Breed was returning to the den with a ragged chunk of venison when he heard the double roar of the gun and Shady's agonized yelps. Her later cry to gather the pups indicated the general direction of her flight. Then the steady tonguing of the hound broke forth. Breed flanked the dog's route till he drew abreast of him. The baying voice filled the valley and echoed among the rims till it seemed that the whole breadth of the hills was filled with dogs, but Breed knew that the sound came from but one. He could hear no sounds of man, and he dropped swiftly in behind Buge to decipher the signs of the trail. There were the hot tracks of Shady and the pups, the hound's tracks on top of theirs, and no man had come that way. Breed spurted ahead and sighted the dog, and swung out to flank him and get the wind.

Buge ran with his nose close to the ground. He was gaining on his prey, and his mind was so wholly centered on the trail that he was unaware of the deadly yellow wolf that ran almost abreast of him and forty yards downwind. Breed was puzzled as to how to handle the situation that confronted him. He feared the hound, believing that an ally of man might be endowed with man's strange power for harm. The dog was a slow, cumbersome animal and Breed knew that Shady was far speedier, yet he wished the spotted beast would quit her trail. He saw Buge's nose lifted from the trail as he caught the warm body scent from close at hand. The dog ran now with head held high, the body scent reeking in his nostrils. Then Breed saw Shady and the pups running under the trees a hundred yards ahead. The steady baying rose to a slobbering bellow as the hound followed his prey by sight. The gap narrowed, and Breed could see his slavering jaws, the froth drooling stringily back across his shoulders. The last pup was running desperately a bare twenty yards ahead,—and then the great hound was suddenly thrown off his feet as a fighting yellow devil struck him from the side without a sound to announce his rush. Breed's shoulder had caught him fairly in the middle of a stride and the shock of the impact slammed him down six feet away; as Buge landed heavily on his side two flashing rows of teeth closed on his throat and sliced into it, and his life was torn out with the yellow wolf's backward wrench.

Then Breed ran on after Shady and the pups, knowing now that a single short-haired dog, despite the terrifying volume of his voice, was no formidable antagonist for a wolf when once caught outside the radius of man's protection.

Night settled down over the hills as Breed came to the end of Shady's trail and found her lying in a half-swoon with the pups crouching near. Breed felt that he was leaving this country to return no more, and almost unconsciously he raised the call for the pack, knowing that the pack season was far in the future, yet longing to hear the voices of his friends. Far to the south a pair of coyote voices answered him, and still beyond them, so far that the sound did not reach Breed's ears, a second pair of coyotes relayed the message that the yellow leader called.

Breed urged Shady on, but in three miles the wolf family was forced to lay over for a rest. Here a pair of coyotes overtook them. The slow march was resumed with frequent halts for rest, and before morning two other pairs of coyotes caught up with them, and these were all members of the original pack that had hunted together in Sand Coulee Basin. Just at dawn the dog coyote Breed had met some time earlier in the spring brought his she-wolf mate and joined the band. All of the new arrivals had lost their pups through the efforts of the hound that Breed had slain, and they were free to follow where the leader willed.