Chapter THREE

Shag was the first to awaken; the night's banquet caused the morning to come slowly to A'tim.

The pulling cut of Shag's heavy jaws on the crisp grass awoke the Dog-Wolf. He yawned heavily, and eyed the old Bull with sleepy indifference. Ghur-h-h-h! what a plaintive figure the aged Buffalo was, to be sure.

"Good-morning, Brother," whuffed Shag, his mouth full of grass; "where are you going?"

"I _cached_ a piece of the new meat here last night," answered A'tim, as he nosed under an overhanging cut-bank. "Forest thieves!" he ejaculated angrily; "the Gray Stealers of Things have taken it." His _cache_ was as bare as Mother Hubbard's cupboard--not even a bone; there was nothing but the reddened stones where the meat had lain, and a foul odor of Wolf. Impetuously he rushed to the second _cache_; it, too, was void of all meat; the third _cache_ held nothing but the footprints of his gray half-brothers, the Wolf Thieves.

Despair crept into the heart of A'tim; what use to explore the fourth _cache_? The meat would be gone of a certainty. Why had he slept so soundly? Why had he hidden the meat at all? Oh! but he _was_ stupid; as silly as a calf Musk Ox.

And the other meat up at the Pound, such as was left, would be full of Death Powder, put there for the Gray Runners. How he hoped they might eat it all--the thieves! It seemed such unnecessary looting, too, to steal his food when there was so much at the Pound; it was like the persecution that had kept him an Outcast from the Wolf Pack.

"There is nothing meaner in the world than a Wolf," he muttered; "nothing; and already I am hungry again."

At his fourth _cache_ he scratched indifferently. But the long nails of his paw touched something soft and yielding--it was flesh. How had it escaped the Gray Stealers?

"See, Shag," he said, bringing his joint close to the Bull, and laying it down lovingly, "last night I laid in a grub stake, as my old Master would say, that would have landed me in fair condition in the Northland. Those accursed Wolves, of whose kind I am not, being a Dog, have stolen it--all but this piece. It was out of consideration for you, my friend, knowing your dread of the blood smell, that made me _cache_ it a little apart. How I wish I had lain on it--made my bed on its soft, sweet sides. Such meat I have not eaten for many a day."

"I'm sorry," lamented Shag; "it's too bad. Here is nothing but sorrow for every one. See how still and quiet the old Range is; only those slayers of Redmen up by the Pound. Years ago, A'tim, perhaps when you were a Pup, all this prairie that is so beautiful with its short Buffalo grass, was just covered with people of my kind; and Antelope--though they were not of our kind, still we liked to see them--there was no harm in them, being, like ourselves, Grass Feeders; and to the South-West, Dog-Wolf----"

"I am no Wolf," interrupted A'tim, thinking of his stolen meat; "I am a Dog!"

"Well, well, Dog, to the South-West--from here we can even see Chief Mountain where is that land--there were beautiful big-horned Elk, also Grass Feeders, and of a sweet temper."

"I know," ejaculated A'tim, licking at his flesh food; "in the North it was just the same with the Caribou, the whole land alive with them--and Mooswa, too."

"But now, A'tim, since the coming of the Palefaces we are slaughtered by them and by the Redmen. L-o-u-g-h--h-o-o! I shall leave this old Range to-day forever; my heart is sad."

"Come with me, then, Brother," cried A'tim; "together we will go to the land of which I have spoken. It is a long, lone trail for one. I will guard you well, for I know Man's ways; and at night we will rest side by side."

"I will go," said the Bull simply.

"Let us start," cried A'tim, seizing his joint of Buffalo meat, and sweeping the horizon with suspicious eyes.

"Your eating is heavy," said Shag; "I will carry it for you on my horns. L-o-u-g-h--h-u! the blood smells terrible!" he exclaimed as A'tim pulled the buffalo flesh over Shag's forehead.

Then the two Outcasts took up the long trail toward the Northland, where in a woof of sage green and bracken gold was woven a scheme of flesh-colored Castillejia, and wine-tinted moose-weed, and purple pea-flower; where was the golden shimmer of Gaillardia and slender star-leafed sunflower; the pencil stalk of blue-joint, and the tasseled top of luscious pony-grass: a veritable promised land for the old Bull, buffeted of his fellows, and finding the short grass of the Southland stubbornly hard against his worn teeth.

There, too, was Wapoos, the Hare so easily caught in the years of plenty, and A'tim need never feel the pangs of a collapsing stomach. There also were Marten, and Grouse, and Pheasant, and Kit Beaver, and other animals sweet against the tongue. Surely the Dog-Wolf had lingered too long in that barren Southern country, where there was only the rat-faced Gopher, who was but a mouthful; with, perhaps, the chance of a Buffalo Calf caught away from the Herd. Even that chance was gone now, for man was killing them all off. Yes, it was well that they should trail to the Northland, each said to the other.

For days they plodded over the prairie, cobwebbed into deep ruts by Buffalo trails leading from grassland to water.

It was on the third day that A'tim said to the Buffalo Bull: "I am thirsty, Shag; my throat is hot with the dust. Know you of sweet drinking near--even with your sense of the hidden drinking you can find it, Great Bull, can you not?"

"This hollow trail leads to water, most assuredly," answered Shag, stepping leisurely into a path that was like an old plow furrow in a hay meadow. "Even this shows how many were my people once." The Buffalo sighed. "Within sight are more trails like this than you have toes to your feet, Dog-Wolf--this whole mighty Range from here to the Uplands, which is the home of the White Storm, is so marked with the trails of my people; and now there are only these Water Runs to remind us of them."

Soon they came to a little lake blue with the mirrored sky, its mud banks white as though with driven snow. "The bitter water mark," said Shag, as his heavy hoof sank through the white crust on the dark mud.

"I know," answered A'tim--"alkali, that's what Man calls it."

"Let us rest here this night--close to the drinking," commanded Shag; "to-morrow we will go forward again."

That night A'tim ate the last of the Buffalo meat Shag had packed on his horns for him. The next day they trailed again toward the Northland.

When they came to a river that was to be forded Shag carried the Dog-Wolf on his back; when there was presence of danger, a suspicious horseman, Shag curled up like a boulder, or crouched in a coulee, and if the Man came too near A'tim led him away on a hopeless chase. Daily the Dog-Wolf grew into the heart of Shag, the Buffalo, who listened with eager delight to his tales of the Northland.

A'tim had fared well while the meat lasted; but they were now in a land of much hunger--a land almost devoid of life; and the Dog-Wolf was coming again into the chronic state of his existence--famine.

As they trailed Northward the grass grew richer and softer and more luscious; Shag commenced to put on fat. But daily the Dog-Wolf grew hungrier and thinner. In the vast solitude, walled on every side by the never-ending sky from which the stars peeped at night and the sun smiled by day, there was little for the Dog-Wolf, who was a flesh-eater. Scarce anything but Gophers; not an Antelope, nor a Mule Deer, nor a Black Tail had they seen for days. Once a Kit Fox, the small, gray kind of the prairie, waited tantalizingly with his nozzle flat on the turf, seemingly asleep, until A'tim was within two jumps, then he slipped nonchalantly into his burrow as though he had just been called to dinner. A froth of disappointed rage wreathed the hungry lips of the Dog-Wolf. Surely he was in danger of starvation.

For two days he lived on a single Mole, unearthed quite by chance; then a Gopher, stalked from behind the big legs of Shag, saved him from utter collapse. Of a verity he was living from hand to mouth; such abject poverty he had never known, not even in the Southland by the Blood Reserve.

"Carry me, Brother," he said to the Bull, "for I am weak like a new Pup. If I could but see a Trapper's shack or a camp," he confided to Shag, as he clung to the Bull's hump, "I might find something to eat--Ghur-r-r! a piece of the Pork Eating, or a half-picked bone, or a Duck killed by the Fire-stick! Even one of my own kind, a Dog, would I eat, I'm that famished--Great Bull, is that not a shack?" he exclaimed suddenly as a square building loomed on the horizon.

"I think I see it," said the Bull; "but my eyes are no longer good at a great distance."

As they journeyed toward the object Shag suddenly stopped and gave a loud bubbling guffaw.

"What are you laughing at, Bull?" demanded A'tim angrily.

"I, who am an Outcast because of my great age, Dog-Wolf, am even now a great Fool; and so art thou, A'tim, an Outcast and a Fool."

"Your wit is like yourself, Shag, heavy and not too pleasing. Pray, why am I a Fool!"

"That is no shack," answered the Bull; "it is but a rock; there's a line of them, like a trail of teepees, for miles, stretching for the length of many a day's march, running as straight as the cough of a Fire-stick, all looking like that one. Wie-sah-ke-chack, who is God of the Animals, put them there for the Buffalo to brush their hides against--a most wise act."

With a weary sigh A'tim turned his eyes from the deceitful rock, and watched furtively for the chance of even a small Kill as they journeyed.

Day by day Shag was eating of the richer grass and becoming of a great corpulency. Envious thoughts commenced to creep into the mind of A'tim. Why should he starve and become a skeleton, while this hulking Bull, to whom he was acting as a friend and guide, waxed fat in the land that was of his finding? Many times Shag carried the Dog-Wolf on his back, and at night the heat of his great body kept A'tim warm.

But the vicious envy that was in the Wolf mind of A'tim started a line of proper villainy. Let the Bull grow fat. If the worst came to the worst--if no other meat was to be had--when the Frogs, and Moles, and such Waterfowl as might be surprised had failed, and his very life depended on food, would not there be much eating off the body of this Bull Buffalo? Therefore let him wax fat. At first A'tim only thought of it just a little--a flash-light of evil, like the sting of a serpent; but daily it grew stronger. What was Shag to him? He was not of his kind. If, when they came to the Northland, to the forests of the Athabasca, the Wapoos were in the year of plague, and all other animals had fled the boundaries because of this, and there was no food to be had, why should he not feast for days and days off the Buffalo?--that is, if anything happened to Shag. Something might happen to him very easily. A'tim knew of many muskegs where a stupid, heavy-footed Bull might be mired; also, there was the poison plant, the Death Flower of the Monkshood. He could persuade the stupid Shag to eat of it, and in an hour the Bull would die--puffed up like a Cow's udder; it would not hurt the flesh. Eu-h-h! there were many ways. Shag's company was good--he was weary of being alone; it was dreadful to be an Outcast; but rather than starve to death--well, he would eat his friend.

What matter to him the ever-increasing beauty of the landscape, the richer growth that appealed strongly to his companion from the bare Southern plain? The wild rose bushes, red-berried in the autumn of their fruitage, caressed their ankles as they passed; pink and white berries clung to silver-leafed Buffalo willow like rose-tinted snowflakes; hazel and wild cherry and gentle maple swayed in the prairie wind, and sent fluttering leaf-kisses to the parent earth. Great patches of feed-land waved silver gray with a tasseled spread of seeding grasses. Oh! but they were coming into a land of much growth. Shag the Bull lowed in soft content as he rested full-bellied on the black-loamed prairie. All the time A'tim was but thinking of something to kill, something to eat.

That was as they came to Egg Lake.

"Trail slowly, kind Brother," admonished the Dog-Wolf. "It is now the season of many Ducks here, even at Egg Lake; perchance in the reed grass yonder, by the willows, I may stalk a Wavey, or even a Goose." Ghur-r-r! but he was hungry!

A'tim stole on in front; flat to the grass his belly, and low his head. As silently as floating foam on still water he passed into the thicket of reed grass, his fierce eyes fixed on four Mallard that gabbled and dove their supple heads to the mud bottom for wild rice. Only a little farther and A'tim would be upon them. Shag was watching solicitously the stalk of his friend.

Suddenly, and without provocation, the lake seemed to stand up on end and commence throwing things about. The Bull was startled--what did it all mean? Gradually something huge and black began to take shape and form from amidst the whirl of many moving things.

"A Bear!" gasped Shag. "By the strength of my neck he means to devour A'tim!"

With a rushing charge Shag was upon the fighters--only just in time, for Muskwa had A'tim in his long-clawed grasp, and in another instant would have crushed his Dog ribs. And in the succession of surprises one came to Muskwa with vivid suddenness, for he was lifted on a pair of strong horns, like a Cub, and thrown with great speed far out into the thin waters of the lake.

"Thanks, Great Bull," panted the frightened Dog-Wolf, creeping painfully from the thick sedge grass. "He also was after the ducks, I think; I walked right on top of him, I was that busy with my hunt."

"If I had not been in such a blundering hurry," lamented Shag, "I might have saved him for your eating; but he's gone now."

And so they journeyed till they came to Battle River. There A'tim caught three frogs among the blossom-topped leeks; they were no more than three small oysters to a hungry man.

"The water is deep and the banks steep," grunted Shag, looking dubiously at the stream.

"Lower down is a ford," answered A'tim; "we will cross there." For when Shag swam in deep water the Dog-Wolf found it difficult to keep on his back.

"A teepee!" exclaimed A'tim, as they came close to the crossing.

"Let us go back and swim the river," pleaded Shag; "there will be hunters within the lodge."

"No, wait you here," commanded A'tim; "there will surely be food in the teepee, and I mean to have it."

"Be careful," warned Shag; "this is a land of scarcity, and the hunters may bring us evil."

But already A'tim was skulking toward a small canvas tent, gleaming white beside the blue waters of Battle River. The Bull lay down to conceal his great bulk, and watched apprehensively the foray of his pillaging comrade. A'tim circled until he was down wind from the teepee.

"The Man is not in his burrow," he muttered, sniffing the air that floated from the tent to his sensitive nostrils; "but I smell the brown Pork Meat they eat."

Cautiously, stealthily, burying his brown-gray body in the river grass, he stole to the very tent pegs of the canvas shelter; there he listened, as still and silent as the river stones. There was no sound within; no living thing even drew breath beyond the cotton wall--he could have heard that.

In through the flap he slipped. Yes, his scouting had been perfect. A pair of blankets, an iron fry-pan, and--ah! there was the rich brown meat, its white edge gleaming a welcome. With a famished snarl A'tim fastened his lean jaws upon it, and sprang for the door. He was none too quick. "Thud, thudety-thud, thudety-thudety-thud!" a horseman was hammering down the sloping bank across the ford.

As A'tim leaped from the tent the horseman shouted and drove big rowel spurs hard up the flank of his galloping Cayuse.

"Just my evil chance!" snarled A'tim as he headed for Shag; "but what is a small piece of Bacon compared with a big Buffalo?" For into his quick Wolf brain came the safety thought that should the pursuing hunter sight Shag he would follow, and let the bacon go.

As the Man galloped he unslung a gun, and fired at the fleeing Dog-Wolf. A little sputter of dust drove into the nostrils of A'tim as a trade ball spat in his face and buried itself in front of him. There was no second shot; only the "thudety-thud" of the Pony's hoofs. The pursuer was armed with a muzzle-loading trade musket.

The shot startled Shag. Now he could see them rushing his way; soon they would be upon him. With a bellow of frightened rage at the stupidity of A'tim, he stuck his scraggy tail out with its tip curled over his back, and broke into a solemn gallop.

In an instant the hunter swerved from his course and raced for the Bull, loading his gun as the Cayuse swung along under a free rein. Shag chuckled softly as he spread his great quarters, and hung his nose closer to earth.

"It's a down trail for miles," he muttered, "and I, who in my prime have outrun the fastest Buffalo Horses of the Bloods and Blackfeet, can surely show that lean-flanked Pack Animal a long trail. Mou-o-o-h! but already I feel in my veins the strength of this rich feeding." And the huge form slipped down the gentle grade of sloping plain like an express train. Once the hunter threw the butt of his musket to shoulder and fired; but half the powder charge had spilled in the restless loading, and the trade ball wandered aimlessly yards wide of the fleeing Bull. Shag grunted and kinked his tail derisively as the spirit of old times threw its glamor over him. It was years since he had been thought worthy of the chase; surely he was becoming of some account in the Buffalo world again.

A'tim, sitting on his haunches, watched the departing cavalcade, and industriously absorbed much of the fat pork. "I can carry it better in my stomach," he reasoned philosophically. "But who would have thought old Shag had it in him?" he muttered in admiration.

As he gazed, the extent of territory between Shag and his pursuer widened perceptibly. The overworked Pony was tired; no doubt his rider had trailed for many a league with him, and he was in no condition for the fierce gallop of a Buffalo Run.

A'tim finished the bacon with undoubted relish, then struck out across the boundless field of grass. "I must not lose sight of Shag," he thought; "there will not always be bacon for the stealing when I am on the edge of starvation."

At last the Pony was pulled to a walk, turned about, and headed for the teepee that nestled on the river bank. The rider was indulging in much injudicious vituperation of all the animal kingdom, including his own well-blown Cayuse, whose trembling flanks vouched for the energy with which he had tried to overhaul the galloping Bull.

A'tim circled wide, and, when he considered it safe, fell into Shag's trail and followed on. Soon he overtook his comrade. "Well done, my big Bull!" he exclaimed; "that was a rare turn you did me."

"It was," answered Shag shortly; "hardly of my own choosing, though; you thrust it upon me. I suppose you were bringing me the bacon, kind Brother?"

"I knew you could do it," flattered A'tim. "You have the full speed of a Spike Horn, and the great wisdom of your own age."

Shag said nothing; he was angry at the selfish heartlessness of the other Outcast. It seemed hardly a fair recognition of the service he had rendered the Dog-Wolf when he prodded the Bear from his throat.

"Come, let us be moving," he said; "we must find another crossing."

"Oh! but I feel years younger," cried A'tim joyfully, as they headed again for Battle River. "Euh-euh-euh-euh! Yap-yap-yap!" he laughed; "this eating has put the joyousness of a Pup into my heart."

That night they crossed the river at another ford, and slept in a bluff of slim-bodied white poplars, for they were on the edge of the North timber lands.

"This is good cover," muttered A'tim, as he raked the yellow heart-shaped leaves of the poplar together for a bed.

"It's new to me," muttered Shag; "and it will also give cover to one's enemies; one must be very cautious in the Northland, I think."

Then the two Outcasts slept together on the border of the North fairyland to which the Dog-Wolf was leading Shag the Bull.