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The fact that the coyotes answered the cry assured Collins that it was the breed-wolf that had howled; that coyote ears had read a note of their own kind in the sound, a note which even his experienced ears could not detect. The yellow wolf tore at the warm meat and waited, waited for his coyote kinsmen to join him at the feast.
His feet made no sound and the wind held right; the breed-wolf was unaware of his approach. Breed saw a sudden flow of light from the cabin and knew that Shady was leaving it to come back to him. He sent forth the rally call to the pack and turned to trot along a cow trail.
And Shady, hampered by her relations with man and so unable to follow Breed's leadership at will, exercised less influence over him than either Peg or Cripp. Breed killed abundantly, the coyotes picking the last morsel of each victim before dawn. Often he killed twice in one night. Word had spread that a breed-wolf had turned up on the range and was running with the coyotes.
Even then, though he did not know it, his pack was gathering to him. The two wise old coyotes who had fed with him the night before knew that wherever they found the big breed-wolf, there they would also find meat. They had started up at his first call and Peg was coming swiftly from the south, Cripp from the west.
He still found their tracks singly or in pairs, where they wandered in all directions through the sage in their hunts for jacks, or padded thick round some spot where they had killed a calf, but he soon discovered that whenever he found a track which the breed-wolf had left the night before he had only to swing out to the right or left to find the trails of many coyotes pointing in the same direction, a general movement of coyotes over a wide front.
Collins noted the yellow fur. "A breed-wolf," he said. "The most cunning devil that ever made a track. He'll never take on a feed of poison bait or plant his foot on a trap pan. He'll come down and I'll ride him out on the first tracking snow."
It was scarcely dark under the trees when he heard the breed-wolf and two coyotes howl together, thirty miles back in the heart of the hills! "There now!" he exclaimed. "I've been telling 'em right along that the coyotes would take to the hills some day. Those breed-wolves they'll teach 'em to live in the hills." When Breed had eaten his fill from the deer he headed back for the low country.