Max Brand

Blood On The Trail Max Brand

GRAY CLOUD had lived only two years, but since his ninth month he had made nearly every week a memorable one. It was in his ninth month that he discovered how neatly his fangs would cut the hamstring of a cow, or even of a full-grown bull. That ended all necessity of hard labor for him. Other wolves had to work hard across the diameter of a hundred-mile range. But Gray Cloud took things easily. Winter or summer, he could always find beef when he wanted it. Since he grew to prefer it perfectly fresh, he had to kill more often, and since he killed more often, he had to lurk closer to the dwellings of man. The terrible scent of steel and gunpowder was seldom out of the far-drawn horizon of his scenting powers, and nearly always there was the trace of man himself in the air.