As they trailed Northward the grass grew richer and softer and more luscious; Shag commenced to put on fat. But daily the Dog-Wolf grew hungrier and thinner. In the vast solitude, walled on every side by the never-ending sky from which the stars peeped at night and the sun smiled by day, there was little for the Dog-Wolf, who was a flesh-eater. Scarce anything but Gophers; not an Antelope, nor a Mule Deer, nor a Black Tail had they seen for days. Once a Kit Fox, the small, gray kind of the prairie, waited tantalizingly with his nozzle flat on the turf, seemingly asleep, until A'tim was within two jumps, then he slipped nonchalantly into his burrow as though he had just been called to dinner. A froth of disappointed rage wreathed the hungry lips of the Dog-Wolf. Surely he was in danger of starvation.
For two days he lived on a single Mole, unearthed quite by chance; then a Gopher, stalked from behind the big legs of Shag, saved him from utter collapse. Of a verity he was living from hand to mouth; such abject poverty he had never known, not even in the Southland by the Blood Reserve.
"Carry me, Brother," he said to the Bull, "for I am weak like a new Pup. If I could but see a Trapper's shack or a camp," he confided to Shag, as he clung to the Bull's hump, "I might find something to eat—Ghur-r-r! a piece of the Pork Eating, or a half-picked bone, or a Duck killed by the Fire-stick! Even one of my own kind, a Dog, would I eat, I'm that famished—Great Bull, is that not a shack?" he exclaimed suddenly as a square building loomed on the horizon.
"I think I see it," said the Bull; "but my eyes are no longer good at a great distance."
As they journeyed toward the object Shag suddenly stopped and gave a loud bubbling guffaw.
"What are you laughing at, Bull?" demanded A'tim angrily.
"I, who am an Outcast because of my great age, Dog-Wolf, am even now a great Fool; and so art thou, A'tim, an Outcast and a Fool."
"Your wit is like yourself, Shag, heavy and not too pleasing. Pray, why am I a Fool!"