His wife and five babies were awaiting him. He had been out all night on his prowl for food, and it was now three hours after sunup, the hour when, ordinarily, he would be stretched out on a sunny knoll, taking a nap in the content of a full stomach. A score of yards from the den his nose told him that the family had fed, so he came trotting down the rocky creek-bed, stiffly expectant. The tiny, furry, broad-headed pups were snarling and tugging at the remnants of a meal and, hungry though he was, he paused to watch them with a certain fatherly pride. Then, at a growl from his mate, he slunk forth again on his quest. His wound smarted, but did not cripple him, and hunger was a spur. [Illustration: “_The wolf drove away a couple of buzzards and fell upon this savagely_”] He found what his wife had said he would find, the remains of the offal of a heifer which the outfit had killed the previous day for food. Luckier in her search, the mother coyote had come upon the abandoned camp late the previous night, though it was ten miles from home and she disliked such distant hunting; and, having fed, she had carried a huge strip of the entrails to her babies. The wolf drove away a couple of buzzards and fell upon this savagely; and, having gorged, sat down to lick his cut. In a few minutes he moved painfully on the back trail, for his hurts were stiffening. The family home was a simple affair, such as the original families of human kind might have begun life with. Anything provided with an olfactor could ascertain its propinquity at a distance of forty yards, for it gave off the stinging, musty odor of the wolf tribe. There were also numerous faint trails hard by, some of them blind trails, contrived cunningly to draw the stupid hunter astray. The genuine paths led into a broader, clearly-defined one which ended in a hole about two feet square in the wall of an arroyo, and this entrance was concealed from the casual observer by a scrub-cedar that clung to a precarious foothold and subsisted on nothing. No water had come down this channel in generations and they felt safe on that score. The hallway of the home was little more than a yard long. It led into a den whereto no light penetrated--a hollowed space perhaps two and a half feet high, and large enough for the head of the house to turn around in. There were also some ramifications to it, four smaller cells dug out in the same fashion, and out of one of these another passage led upward. It came out on top of the embankment, twenty feet away; for Scartoe was a cautious rascal and had no intention of letting his domicile become a trap. He desired it to be a haven and, therefore, he had selected a residence with a back door, though most of his tribe contented themselves with an entrance.