The pulling cut of Shag's heavy jaws on the crisp grass awoke the Dog-Wolf. He yawned heavily, and eyed the old Bull with sleepy indifference. Ghur-h-h-h! what a plaintive figure the aged Buffalo was, to be sure.
"Good-morning, Brother," whuffed Shag, his mouth full of grass; "where are you going?"
"I cached a piece of the new meat here last night," answered A'tim, as he nosed under an overhanging cut-bank. "Forest thieves!" he ejaculated angrily; "the Gray Stealers of Things have taken it." His cache was as bare as Mother Hubbard's cupboard—not even a bone; there was nothing but the reddened stones where the meat had lain, and a foul odor of Wolf. Impetuously he rushed to the second cache; it, too, was void of all meat; the third cache held nothing but the footprints of his gray half-brothers, the Wolf Thieves.
Despair crept into the heart of A'tim; what use to explore the fourth cache? The meat would be gone of a certainty. Why had he slept so soundly? Why had he hidden the meat at all? Oh! but he was stupid; as silly as a calf Musk Ox.
And the other meat up at the Pound, such as was left, would be full of Death Powder, put there for the Gray Runners. How he hoped they might eat it all—the thieves! It seemed such unnecessary looting, too, to steal his food when there was so much at the Pound; it was like the persecution that had kept him an Outcast from the Wolf Pack.
"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, Shag," 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 Shag; "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 grass, 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, Grass Feeders; and to the South-West, Dog-Wolf——"
"I am no Wolf," interrupted A'tim, thinking of his stolen meat; "I am a Dog!"