The Outcasts Part 5

"Perhaps, perhaps," retorted the Cow-Bird.

"Perhaps what?" snarled A'tim.

"Perhaps you're a Dog, and perhaps you will crack my--neck, you were going to say. Are you leading the Bull to your Wolf Pack, perhaps--Dog?"

"Never mind, Comrades," interrupted s.h.a.g. "We are glad of your company, little Cow-Bird--are we not, A'tim?"

"Yes," answered the Dog-Wolf, licking his chops, and looking treacherously from the corner of his slit eyes at the Bird.

"Where are you going, Great Bull?" asked the Cow-Bird, spreading his deep-brown wings mockingly, as though he would fly down on the Dog-Wolf's head.

"To the Northland."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "STEADY, DOG-WOLF, STEADY," ADMONISHED s.h.a.g, "THIS IS A FRIEND OF MINE."]

"I know," quoth the Bird; "but I stick to the plains; why, I don't know, for there are few Buffalo now. This summer I made a long trip. I started in at Edmonton with a Herd of the Man's Buffalo."

"I've seen them," said s.h.a.g; "great clumsy things without shape or make; as big behind as they are in front; of a verity the shape of their own carts."

"Well," continued the Bird, "there was a matter of a dozen of these creatures tied to a four-wheeled cart, and I followed the Herd through to the place they call Fort Garry. But I got tired of it--day after day the same thing. What I like is to fly about.

Now, I'll travel with you to-day, just for companions.h.i.+p, and to-morrow I shall be off with some new friend."

"Perhaps," mumbled the Wolf.

"Did you speak, Wolf?" perked the Bird.

"I said, 'Good riddance,'" snapped A'tim.

"He, he, he!" laughed the Cow-Bird; "your friend is pleasant company, Great Bull."

That night the two Outcasts and the Cow-Bird camped together, near the Saskatchewan River; the brown body curled up contentedly on s.h.a.g's horn, while the Dog-Wolf slept against his paunch.

In the morning the Cow-Bird was gone.

"Have you seen him?" s.h.a.g asked of A'tim.

"He flew away early," answered the Dog-Wolf.

"He should have taken all his coat with him," answered s.h.a.g, thrusting from his mouth a bunch of gra.s.s in which were three brown feathers.

"He flew far away," affirmed A'tim sheepishly.

"The length of your gullet, Dog-Wolf," declared s.h.a.g. "Thou must be wondrous hungry to eat one of our own party--a cannibal."

A'tim answered nothing as they journeyed down along the steep, heavily wooded river bank, its soft shale sides slid into mighty terraces, but in his heart was a murder thought, as he eyed the great bulk of his Brother Outcast, that he would also eat him.

They pa.s.sed over the broad Saskatchewan, running emerald green between its high, pink-earthed banks, through a long, tortuous ford, taking s.h.a.g to the belly and half way up his ribs. As they topped the north bank and rested after the steep climb, A'tim pointed his nose to a distant flat where nestled the white stockaded fort of the Hudson's Bay Company.

"That's Fort Edmonton," he said bitterly; "and see the cl.u.s.ter of teepees all about, thick as Muskrat lodges in a muskeg. Because of the dwellers within there is no eating to be had here for me.

Cree Indians, and Half-breeds, and Palefaces, all searching the country for something to kill; and when they have slaughtered the Beaver, and Marten, and Foxes, and everyting else that has life, they bring the pelts there and get fire-water, which burns their stomachs and sets their brains on fire. An honest hunter like myself, who only kills to stay the hunger that is bred in him, has no chance; we must sneak and steal, or die."

"But there will be much waste of the Bacon Food there, surely, A'tim. Why do you not replenish the stomach that is but a curse to you, being empty, at the lodges we see?"

"No, friend Bull," answered the Dog-Wolf; "unwittingly enough I nearly caused you disaster the last time I fed at Man's expense.

That time there was but one hunter; here are many, and they would slay you quick enough."

This was all a lie; the Dog-Wolf had no such consideration for his Brother Outcast. At the Fort were fierce-fanged hounds that would run him to earth of a certainty should he venture near; either that, or if caught he would be quickly clapped into a Dog Train, and made to push against a collar. Many a weary day of that he had in his youth; he would rather starve as a vagabond.

Also, would he not perhaps fall heir to the eating that was on the body of the huge Bull?

"No, Brother," he said decisively; "we shall soon come to a land with food for both of us; let us go."

Toward the Athabasca they journeyed. The prairie was almost done with, only patches of it now like fields; poplar and willow and birch growing everywhere; and beyond the Sturgeon River, tiny forests of gnarled, stunted jack-pine, creeping wearily from a soft carpet of silver and emerald moss which lay thick upon the white sand hills. Little red berries, like blood stars, peeped at them from the setting of silk lace moss--wintergreen berries, and grouse berries, and lowbush cranberries, all blus.h.i.+ng a furious red.

"I could sleep here forever," muttered s.h.a.g, as he rolled in luxurious content on this forest rug.

"I can't sleep because of my hunger pains," snarled A'tim. "You who are well fed care not how I fare." A'tim was petulantly unreasonable.

s.h.a.g looked at the Dog-Wolf wonderingly. "I'm sorry for you, for your hunger, Dog Brother. Did I not call lovingly to a Moose Calf but to-day, thinking to entice him your way?"

"Yes, and frightened the big-nosed, spindle-legged suckling with your gruff voice, so that what should have been an easy stalk turned out a long chase for nothing."

"Well, well," responded s.h.a.g soothingly, "no doubt you will soon have food--this can't go on forever, this barrenness of the woods; I'm sorry for you, for once I had nothing to eat for days and days. That was ten seasons of the Calf-gathering since--I remember it well. The White Storm came in the early Cold Time, and buried the whole Range to the depth of my belly. We Buffalo did nothing but drift, drift, drift--like locusts, or dust before the wind. We always go head-on to a storm, for our heads are warm clothed with much hair, but when it lasts for days and days we grow weary, and just drift looking for food, for gra.s.s. I remember, at Pot Hole, which is a deep coulee, and has always been a great shelter to us in such times, on one side was some gra.s.s still bare of the White Storm; but the Buffalo were so many they ate it as locusts might--quicker than I tell it. As I have said, Dog-Wolf, I lived for a month off the fat that was in my loins about the kidneys, for I had never a bite to eat. Then the fat, aye, even the red meat, commenced to melt from my hump and my neck, even to my legs, and I grew weak--so weak I could hardly crawl. Many of us died; first the Cow Mothers, giving up their lives for the Calves, A'tim; then the old people; we who were in the middle of life (for I was a Smooth Horn then, Brother, and Leader of the Herd) lived through this terrible time.

"It was a great weeding out of the Herd; it was like the sweep of the fire breath that bares the prairie only to make the gra.s.s come up stronger and sweeter again. Longingly we waited for our friend, the gentle Chinook, to come up out of the Southwest; but this time it must have got lost in the mountains, for only the South wind, which is always cold, or a blizzard breath from the Northwest blew across the bleak, white-covered Buffalo land.

"One night, just as I thought I must surely die before morning, a sweet moisture came into my nostrils, and I knew that our Wind Brother, the Chinook, had found us at last. The sun smiled at us in the morning and warmed the white cover, and by night we could see the gra.s.s; next day the White Storm was all gone. So, Brother Outcast, I too, know what it is to be hungry. Have a strong heart--food will be sent."

"Sent!" snapped A'tim crabbedly; "who will send it? Will my Gray Half-Brothers, who are Wolves, send it--come and lay a dead Caribou at my feet? Will the Train Dogs, of whose kind I am, come and feed me with White Fish--the dried Fish their drivers give them so sparingly?"

"I cannot say, Dog-Wolf; but surely food does not come of one's own thinking. The gra.s.s does not grow because of me, but for me.

The Animals all say it is our G.o.d, Wie-sah-ke-chack, who sends the eating."

"E-u-h-h!" yawned A'tim sulkily, swinging his head in petulant irritation, "I must have meat, no matter where it comes from; I can't starve." There was a covert threat in the Dog-Wolf's voice, but s.h.a.g did not notice it--his mind was above that sort of thing.

In the evening, as they entered a little thicket of dogberry bushes growing in low land, a small brown shadow flitted across their path. With a snarl A'tim was after it, crus.h.i.+ng through the long, dry, spike-like gra.s.s in hot pursuit. s.h.a.g waited.

Back and forth, up and down, in and out, double and twist, sometimes near and sometimes far, but always with the "Ghur-r-r!"

of the Dog-Wolf's breath coming to s.h.a.g's ears, the shadow and its pursuer chased. Suddenly s.h.a.g started as a plaintive squeak died away in a harsh growl of exultation.

"He has him," muttered s.h.a.g; "this will stay the clamor of his hunger talk, I hope."

The well-blown Dog-Wolf came back carrying a Hare. "Hardly worth the trouble," he said disdainfully, laying the fluffy figure down at s.h.a.g's feet. "Now I know of a surety why the Flesh Feeders have fled the Boundaries; it is the Plague Year of Wapoos. This thing that should be fat, and of tender juiciness, is but a skin full of bones; there are even the plague lumps in his throat.

There is almost as much poison in this carrion as in a Trapper's bait; but I must eat of it, for I am wondrous hungry."

"I, also, have eaten bad food in my time," said s.h.a.g; "great pains in the stomach I've had from it. Some seasons the White Storm would come early in the Cold Time, and cover the gra.s.s not yet fully ripened into seed. It would hold warm because of this, and grow again, and become green; then the white cover would go, and the gra.s.s would freeze and become sour to the tongue.

Mou-u-ah! but all through the Cold Time I would have great pains.

How far do we go now, A'tim, till we rest in the Northland?"

"Till there is food for both of us."