The Outcasts | Page 4

me forth."
"There will be more sweet grass for your feeding when they are gone, Shag," declared Dog-Wolf.
"Ah, there's plenty of eating, such as it is; though the grass on the prairie looks short and dry and harsh, yet it is sweet in the cud. To you, who are but a Dog-Wolf, the eating comes first in your thought, but with us it is the dread of hunters, who keep us ever on the move."
"I know of a land where it is not this way," asserted A'tim, after a pause; "a beautiful land, with pea-vine knee-deep, and grass the Men call blue-joint, that fair tops my back when I walk through it. As for drink! why, one day in a single tramp I crossed sixteen streams of beautiful running water."
"Are you dreaming, A'tim?" asked Shag, touching the Dog-Wolf's back with the battered point of his stub-horn.
"No, Bull; and there are few hunters in that land, and few of your kind; and shelter of forest against the White Storm; and buttes and coulees everywhere."
"An ideal Range," muttered the Bull; "is it far?"
"Perhaps half a moon--perhaps a whole moon from here to there, just as one's feet stand the trail."
"You make me long for that great feeding," sighed Shag enviously.
"Yes, you'd be better in the Northland, Shag," said the Dog-Wolf, sleepily--"better there. Here you are an Outcast, even as I am."
"Yes, after the big Kill to-morrow," sighed the Bull mournfully, "I shall want to trail somewhere. Across Kootenay River is good feeding-ground, but there the accursed Long Knives are filled with the very devil of destruction, and kill even such as I am, though my hide is not worth the lifting. I, who am an Outcast, and have lost all pride, know this--I am worthless."
The bubbling monotone of the old Bull had put A'tim to sleep. He was giving vent to gasping snores and plaintive whimpers, and his legs were twitching spasmodically; he was dreaming of the chase. Shag turned his massive head and watched the nervous Dog-Wolf with heavy, tired eyes. "He is chasing the reed-legged Antelope now; or, perhaps, even in his sleep, Camous pursues him with the many-breathed Fire-stick. Well, well, by my hump, but we all have our troubles; even this Dog-Wolf, who is not half my age, has lived into the hard winter of life."
Then Shag rested his black-whiskered chin on the soft turf, his tired eyelids, mange-shaved, drooped over the age-blurred eyes, and these two Outcasts, so strangely mated, driven together by adversity, slept in the coulee of Belly Buttes.
[Illustration]

[Illustration]
CHAPTER TWO
A cold, weakling gray-light was touching with ghastly fresco the Belly Buttes when A'tim stretched out his paw and scratched impatiently at Shag's leather side. The Bull came back slowly out of his heavy sleep.
"Gently, Wolf Brother," he cried petulantly; "your claws are wondrous strong, and my side has many sore spots--love scars from my Brother Bulls."
"You'll have worse than Bull scars if you don't wake up," answered A'tim; "can't you hear something?"
Shag tipped his massive head sideways with drowsy inquiry, the heavy lids opening in unwilling laziness. A muffled, palpitating beat was in the sulky morning air; it was like the monotonous thump of a war drum over on the Reserve.
"What is it?" queried the Bull, raising his head with full-aged dignity.
"Eagle Shoe's pinto is pounding the trail; the Run is on," answered A'tim.
Shag heaved his huge body to his knees wearily, struggled to his feet with stiff-limbed action, and shook his gaunt sides.
"You needn't do that," sneered A'tim; "not much grass sticks to your coat now."
"No, it's only force of habit," grunted Shag. "And to think of the time when my beautiful hair was the envy of the whole range; for I was a Silk-Coat, you know--a rare thing in Bulls, to be sure. But I'm not that now; when I look in the lake waters and see only this miserable ruff about my neck, and scant tuft on my tail, I feel sad--feel ashamed. The tongue of the lake tells me all that, Brother, so say no more about it."
"Wait you here, Shag," commanded A'tim; "I will go up on a Butte and see the method of these hunters; my eyes are younger than yours, Herd Leader."
When the Dog-Wolf returned he said: "Eagle Shoe is riding far to the South; let us follow in the river flat and see this Run, for it will be a mighty Kill. O-o-o-h! but I am empty--famished!"
"Always of blood," muttered the Bull to himself--"always of blood and meat eating; Wolf and Dog; Dog-Wolf and Man--always full of the blood thought and the desire for a Kill."
They could hear the thud of pony hoofs on the dry prairie's hollow drum as they traveled, winding in and out the tangle of willow bushes that followed the river. Then the hoof