The Outcasts | Page 2

it was that debased Long Knife, Camous."
"Thought me Camous!" bellowed the Bull, snorting indignantly; "he's but a slayer and a thief. All the Paleface Long Knives are that; killing, killing--stealing, stealing. Why, even among his own kind he is called 'Camous'; and you, who were bred in the Man camps, know what that means."
"Of course, of course--ha! most surely it means 'a stealer of things.' But I meant not to liken you to him, Brother Shag--it was only my fright; for even in my dreams I am always seeing the terrible Camous. I have cause to remember him, Shag--it was this way. Did I ever tell you?"
"Never," answered Shag, heavily.
[Illustration: "LYING ON MY BACK AS THOUGH I WERE DEAD, I HELD MY TAIL STRAIGHT UP."]
"Well, it was this way: Once upon a time, in the low hills they call Cypress, I was stalking a herd of antelope. To tell you the truth, I had been at it for two days. Waugh! but they were wary. At last I worked within fair eyesight of them, and knowing the stupid desire they have to look close at anything that may be strange to them, I took to myself a clever plan. Lying on my back as though I were dead, I held my tail straight up, and let the wind blow it back and forth. The big-eyed Eaters-of-Grass asked one another: 'What is this new thing? Is it a plant or an animal?' That is the way they talked, I am sure, for they are like wolf-pups, quite silly. Well, they came closer and closer and closer. E-u-h-h, e-u-h-h! but my mouth watered with the thought of their sweet meat as I lay as one dead. Now, they hadn't the knowledge to work up wind to me, but came straight for the thing they saw that moved. Would you believe it, just as I was measuring from the corner of my eye the time for a strong rush, who should creep over a hill but Camous! In fright I sprang to my feet, and away went the Goat-faced small-prongs. Then the deviltry of the many-breathed Fire-stick this Camous carries came down upon me as I ran faster than I'd ever gone before. 'Click, snap! click, snap!' the quick-breathing Fire-stick coughed; and though I rocked, and jumped sideways and twisted, before I could get away I had one of the breath-stings in my shoulder. E-u-h-h! but I go lame from it still."
Shag slipped a cud of sweet grass up his throat with a gurgling cough and chewed it reflectively, for he was of a slow turn of thought, not at all like the nimble-brained Dog-Wolf. Then he swallowed the cud, blew from his nostrils the sand that had come into them crossing the scant-garbed hills of Belly Buttes, and said ponderously: "Yes, I know the many-breathed Fire-stick; that's what makes the Palefaces so terrible. The plain simply reeks with the dead bodies of my people whom they have slain."
"And the bodies all poisoned, too; whur-r, whur-r! All turned into death meat for the Flesh-feeders, Dog or Wolf," snarled A'tim. "Killed for the hide--think of that, Shag!--or just the tongue taken. If we make a kill it is for the eating--to still the gnawing pain that comes to us, and we waste nothing, leave nothing."
"Most assuredly," replied the Bull, "thou leavest nothing but the bones."
"Nothing but the bones," concurred A'tim. "And as I was saying, these Long Knives put the Flour of Death in the dead Buffalo, and my Wolf Brethren, when they eat, being forced to of their hunger, die like flies at Cold Time."
"And a good thing, too--I mean--" and Shag coughed apologetically; "I mean, as a Calf I received cause to remember your Wolf Brothers, A'tim; there's a hollow in my thigh you could bury your paw in, where one of your long-fanged Pack sought to hamstring me. You, A'tim, who are half Wolf, know how it comes that where one of your kind puts his teeth, the flesh, sooner or later, melts away, and leaves but a hole--how is it, A'tim?"
"Foul teeth," growled the Dog-Wolf. "They're a mean lot, are the Gray Runners; even I, who am half of their kind, bear them no love--have they not outcasted me because of my Dog blood? I am no Wolf, Shag; I am A'tim, which meaneth 'a Dog,' in the talk of the Crees."
"Even so, Brother," said Shag, "how comes it that thou art a half-breed Wolf at all?"
[Illustration: "I AM NO WOLF, SHAG; I AM A'TIM, WHICH MEANETH A DOG IN THE TALK OF THE CREES."]
"That is also of Man's evil ways, Brother Bull--thinking to change everything that was as it should be before he came. This false mating is of his thought; to get the strength of the Wolf, and