A wild, fresh odor decided him to attempt it. At his feet he snuffed hoof tracks, small, pointed, with musky dew claws--a deer of some kind, Blaze decided. He did not know that they were antelope, for the smell was new to him, but at once the old hunting ardor surged up in his soul, overriding weariness and physical pain. He attempted a valiant bark, which sounded somehow hoarse and dry in his throat; then he plunged down the steep declivity after the horses. Around him rose high rim rock, red and purple and black. These two lava gaps were the only places where the crater could be entered at all. They all had gone down here; that was reassuring. Here, too, were Ruler’s tracks, that four-footed companion whom Blaze secretly envied for his marvelous nose and openly despised for his absurd caution in attacking bear and lion. Here also was the smell of Indian, where Niltci had jumped off and led his mustang down by the bridle. And here Master and the other Young Master had dismounted and climbed down, side by side, their horses following most unwillingly as their sliding tracks showed. On the crater floor the party had separated and there had been gallopings about in every direction. Blaze followed the white mustang, for she bore Master, his beloved. Soon he came upon a long smoky cartridge from the old .35 meat gun, and the mustang’s tracks veered sharply over to the right. The smell of fresh blood came to Blaze’s nose and he wabbled slowly out to the center of that vast volcanic pit following the scent. A pile of entrails, shank bones, blood dried up by the thirsty sands--that was all, for him, of the antelope that had been shot here! Blaze lay down, completely tuckered out. Without at least a drink of life-giving water he could not go a step further. The assembling and galloping tracks that led off up to that other gap told which way they had gone out. He could _never_ make that ascent, now! Instinct told him to wait until sundown, for it was hot and sultry down here now and there was not a breath of air. He lay down, panting, consumed with thirst. When he tried, later, to rise again he found that his wound had stiffened and the whole top of his shoulders seemed one raw, immovable lump. He looked about him piteously, then raised his muzzle to the sky in a howl of dismay. Silence, of the brooding desert; and then an answer--the wild howl of a coyote! Blaze’s quick eye singled him out sitting up there in the gap, watching him wolf-like. His answering howl had not been of sympathy or anything like that, but to call other coyotes to help him prepare for this feast of dog flesh! The danger stiffened Blaze up and strengthened his moral fiber. A savage challenge rumbled in his throat as he rose stiffly to his feet and faced the coyote menacingly. Then a whine of pain came from him. He could not fight, now; but he would not howl again for help, at any rate! That signal was too well understood by these wild dogs that _had_ no master!