Breed moved east across the Flathead and for two days he urged Shady on relentlessly till they were far up the sheltering slopes of the main divide. Shady then took shelter in a windfall, and for the next three days she refused to move. Her wounds stiffened and festered from imbedded shot, and she was dry and feverish. Three stray coyotes crossed the Flathead and joined those that prowled within a few miles of Shady's retreat.
The third night Breed heard a well-known voice far down the slope and he threw all the force of his lungs into a welcoming cry.
A coyote invariably deserts a den that is neared by man. Peg had discovered Breed's rifled den and his keen nose interpreted the signs. He had heard the leader's call and wondered why it had been raised so early in the year. He followed the sign till he found the body of the hound. It was morning when he reached his own home, and the following night Peg and Fluff had led their pups off in the general direction taken by Breed. The trail had cooled, but in moist and sheltered spots he found sufficient trace to guide him, and in the heavy timber where the great drifts lingered he could follow it by sight. Then at last he heard Breed's voice above him and an hour later Peg and Fluff led six half-grown pups to the windfall.
When Shady was once more able to travel Breed led the way to the north, the band not traveling together, but every coyote's course laid out to accord with Breed's, and within hailing distance so that each might apprise the others of his whereabouts at night. When the pups were old enough to shift for themselves Breed had crossed the Canadian line and was two hundred miles north of it along the great divide that marks the boundary between British Columbia and Alberta.
All along this route clear from the Yellowstone there had been coyote country to the east of him. The prairie wolves had long since populated the valleys of the Musselshell, and, farther north, the Marias River and the Breast. There were coyotes east of him now, running the prairies of Alberta and Saskatchewan, but he had at last arrived at a point west of the extreme northern limits of the coyote range. All over the continent to the south and east of him pioneering coyotes were pushing on into new lands: they had penetrated the hill country of Pennsylvania to the east, and south almost to Panama; but it had fallen to the lot of the yellow wolf to lead the way for the horde that was invading the northwest hills.
During the first storm of the early fall Breed pulled down a yearling mountain sheep on a high plateau. A motley crew answered the meat call. Breed, the yellow hybrid, Shady, the half-blood renegade, and four pairs of coyotes born in Sand Coulee Basin; the dog coyote with his timber-wolf mate and several of Breed's and Shady's conglomerate pups; all were there to feed. And when the bones were picked Breed led his nondescript band on into the unmapped wilds of the British Columbia hills.
CHAPTER XI
Wolfing was no longer profitable in the foothills and Collins pulled up stakes and left. He loaded his belongings on his pack horses and journeyed far to the north. Later he sold his horses and traveled by canoe, and after a roundabout course he preëmpted an old cabin between the Laird Fork of the Mackenzie and the head of Peace River. The climate was moist and the underbrush growth was often so dense as to force him to hack out a trail in spots as he laid out his trap line. The side hills were matted tangles and the valleys shaking bogs, and Collins had little love for his new surroundings. There were no cheery sounds at night, only the howls of wolves. In midwinter of his first season in the north he was roused out of a sound sleep, certain that somewhere close at hand a coyote had howled. During the brief gray light of the following day Collins stopped and gazed long at a small, wolf-like track in the snow.