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Updated: June 8, 2025
Breed was untroubled by any thought that sudden death lurked in wait for him the first time he should run alone through the sage. While Flatear plied his bloody trade and made the nights fearsome for the coyotes, men found one more method of harrying them by day. The first Breed knew of this danger was one day when he lay with Shady on a high point of ground.
Flatear saw a great yellow wolf rushing down on him and he whirled and bared his teeth. The gray wolf weighed a hundred pounds, Breed slightly over ninety. They circled cautiously for an opening, hind parts tensed and drooping, ears laid flat and lips drawn back to expose the yellow tusks. Flatear sprang first and Breed met the open mouth with his own.
Breed was losing ground and Flatear pressed him hard. The yellow wolf seemed to have but one style of defense and no heart for attack.
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.
Flatear was a veteran warrior and he waited only for an opportunity to attack when he should find Breed alone. Nose and ears kept him apprised of the yellow wolf's whereabouts, but usually there were coyotes running with him and invariably the tracks of the she-fury were mingled with those of her mate.
The scent around the spot further enraged him, and the picture of the great gray beast swam nebulously in his mind. A wolf howl sounded close at hand and stirred still another long-dormant pool of impressions; the whole crystallized into a distinct likeness of Flatear, and Breed was off on the hunt for his ancient enemy.
Flatear slashed savagely downward but the yellow wolf's head was well under him, and even as Flatear's teeth grazed Breed's shoulder his forward sweep was checked in mid-air as powerful jaws closed on a foreleg with a sickening crunch of bones.
Peg now sat down contentedly, his tongue lolling out in a satisfied grin. Breed's tactics changed and he wheeled round his disabled enemy with lightning feints; then his shoulder struck Flatear with a solid smash that crumpled him and he went down with Breed's teeth at his windpipe. His end was of the sort which he himself had handed to so many others, and the new range was safe for coyotes.
It had narrowed down to a feud between the yellow wolf and the gray, an undying hatred, and whenever they next met there would be one of them whose trail the coyotes would never again cross on the range. Then all thought of hunger, all thought of his feud with Flatear, everything but stark horror was suddenly swept from Breed's mind. A horrid, racheting cough sounded from straight ahead.
Flatear reversed his snap so swiftly that it seemed but a double swing of his head, yet the second swing drove his teeth along Breed's neck and laid open a six-inch gash. As Breed struggled to his feet the wolf's fangs sliced at his throat and ripped it open but not deep enough to kill.
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