The Outcasts

The full-page subjects from drawings by Arthur Heming. The head- and tail-pieces from drawings by J. S. Gordon


A'tim the Outcast was half Wolf, half Huskie Dog. That meant ferocity and bloodthirst on the one side, and knowledge of Man's ways on the other. Also, that he was an Outcast; for neither side of the house of his ancestry would have aught of him.
A'tim was bred in the far Northland, where the Cree Indians trail the white snow-waste with Train Dogs; and one time A'tim had pressed an unwilling shoulder to a dog-collar. Now he was an outcast vagabond on the southern prairie, close to the Montana border-land.
It was September; and all day A'tim had skulked in the willow cover of Belly River flat-lands, close to the lodges of the Blood Indians.
Nothing to eat had come the way of the Dog-Wolf; only a little knowledge of something that was to happen, for he had heard things,—the voices of the Indians sitting in council had slipped gently down the wind to his sharp Wolf ears.
As he crawled up the river bank close to Belly Buttes and looked across the plain, he could see the pink flush of eventide, like a fairy veil, draping the cold blue mountains—the Rockies.
Good-night, warm Brother, he said, blinking at the setting sun; I wonder if you are going to sleep with an empty stomach, as must A'tim.
The soft-edged shafts of gold-yellow quivered tremblingly behind the blue-gray mountains, as though Sol were laughing at the address of the Outcast. The Dog-Wolf looked furtively over his shoulder at the smoke-wreathed cones of the Blood tepees. The odor of many flesh-pots tickled his nostrils until they quivered in longing desire. Buh-h-h! but he was hungry! All his life he had been hungry; only at long intervals had a gorge of much eating fallen to his lot.