The Outcasts Part 3

"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, s.h.a.g," 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 s.h.a.g; "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 gra.s.s, 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, Gra.s.s 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 Gra.s.s Feeders, and of a sweet temper."

"I know," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 s.h.a.g; "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 s.h.a.g'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 s.h.i.+mmer of Gaillardia and slender star-leafed sunflower; the pencil stalk of blue-joint, and the ta.s.seled top of luscious pony-gra.s.s: a veritable promised land for the old Bull, buffeted of his fellows, and finding the short gra.s.s 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 gra.s.sland to water.

It was on the third day that A'tim said to the Buffalo Bull: "I am thirsty, s.h.a.g; 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 a.s.suredly," answered s.h.a.g, 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 s.h.a.g, 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 s.h.a.g; "to-morrow we will go forward again."

That night A'tim ate the last of the Buffalo meat s.h.a.g 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 s.h.a.g carried the Dog-Wolf on his back; when there was presence of danger, a suspicious horseman, s.h.a.g 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 s.h.a.g, 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 gra.s.s grew richer and softer and more luscious; s.h.a.g 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 s.h.a.g, 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 s.h.a.g, 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 s.h.a.g 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, s.h.a.g, 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 G.o.d 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 s.h.a.g was eating of the richer gra.s.s 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 s.h.a.g 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 s.h.a.g 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 s.h.a.g. 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 s.h.a.g 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. s.h.a.g'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 pa.s.sed; 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 ta.s.seled spread of seeding gra.s.ses. Oh! but they were coming into a land of much growth. s.h.a.g 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s his belly, and low his head. As silently as floating foam on still water he pa.s.sed into the thicket of reed gra.s.s, 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.

s.h.a.g 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 s.h.a.g. "By the strength of my neck he means to devour A'tim!"

With a rus.h.i.+ng charge s.h.a.g 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 gra.s.s. "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 s.h.a.g, "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 s.h.a.g, looking dubiously at the stream.

"Lower down is a ford," answered A'tim; "we will cross there."

For when s.h.a.g 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.