Page:The Yellow Horde.pdf/18

 from the north. Men saw these things and wondered if all of Collins' sweeping prophecies would come to pass. In the face of conditions that had placed a value on the coyote’s pelt and a bounty on his scalp, there was no apparent decrease in the numbers of the yellow horde from year to year.

Collins listened to the coyote clamor and knew that they had come to stay. The concert was suddenly hushed as a long-drawn wolf howl, faint from distance, drifted far out across the range. Collins turned in his blankets and peered through the window at the black bulk of the mountains to the north of him, towering clear and distinct in the brilliant moonlight.

"If you come down out of those hills I'll stretch your pelt," the wolfer stated. "I’ll pinch your toes in a number four."

The wolf whose howl had occasioned this assertion was even then considering the possibilities of which Collins spoke. Men