"That is no shack," answered the Bull; "it is but a rock; there's a line of them, like a trail of teepees, for miles, stretching for the length of many a day's march, running as straight as the cough of a Fire-stick, all looking like that one. Wie-sah-ke-chack, who is God of the Animals, put them there for the Buffalo to brush their hides against—a most wise act."
With a weary sigh A'tim turned his eyes from the deceitful rock, and watched furtively for the chance of even a small Kill as they journeyed.
Day by day Shag was eating of the richer grass and becoming of a great corpulency. Envious thoughts commenced to creep into the mind of A'tim. Why should he starve and become a skeleton, while this hulking Bull, to whom he was acting as a friend and guide, waxed fat in the land that was of his finding? Many times Shag carried the Dog-Wolf on his back, and at night the heat of his great body kept A'tim warm.
But the vicious envy that was in the Wolf mind of A'tim started a line of proper villainy. Let the Bull grow fat. If the worst came to the worst—if no other meat was to be had—when the Frogs, and Moles, and such Waterfowl as might be surprised had failed, and his very life depended on food, would not there be much eating off the body of this Bull Buffalo? Therefore let him wax fat. At first A'tim only thought of it just a little—a flash-light of evil, like the sting of a serpent; but daily it grew stronger. What was Shag to him? He was not of his kind. If, when they came to the Northland, to the forests of the Athabasca, the Wapoos were in the year of plague, and all other animals had fled the boundaries because of this, and there was no food to be had, why should he not feast for days and days off the Buffalo?—that is, if anything happened to Shag. Something might happen to him very easily. A'tim knew of many muskegs where a stupid, heavy-footed Bull might be mired; also, there was the poison plant, the Death Flower of the Monkshood. He could persuade the stupid Shag to eat of it, and in an hour the Bull would die—puffed up like a Cow's udder; it would not hurt the flesh. Eu-h-h! there were many ways. Shag's company was good—he was weary of being alone; it was dreadful to be an Outcast; but rather than starve to death—well, he would eat his friend.
What matter to him the ever-increasing beauty of the landscape, the richer growth that appealed strongly to his companion from the bare Southern plain? The wild rose bushes, red-berried in the autumn of their fruitage, caressed their ankles as they passed; pink and white berries clung to silver-leafed Buffalo willow like rose-tinted snowflakes; hazel and wild cherry and gentle maple swayed in the prairie wind, and sent fluttering leaf-kisses to the parent earth. Great patches of feed-land waved silver gray with a tasseled spread of seeding grasses. Oh! but they were coming into a land of much growth. Shag the Bull lowed in soft content as he rested full-bellied on the black-loamed prairie. All the time A'tim was but thinking of something to kill, something to eat.
That was as they came to Egg Lake.
"Trail slowly, kind Brother," admonished the Dog-Wolf. "It is now the season of many Ducks here, even at Egg Lake; perchance in the reed grass yonder, by the willows, I may stalk a Wavey, or even a Goose." Ghur-r-r! but he was hungry!
A'tim stole on in front; flat to the grass his belly, and low his head. As silently as floating foam on still water he passed into the thicket of reed grass, his fierce eyes fixed on four Mallard that gabbled and dove their supple heads to the mud bottom for wild rice. Only a little farther and A'tim would be upon them. Shag was watching solicitously the stalk of his friend.
Suddenly, and without provocation, the lake seemed to stand up on end and commence throwing things about. The Bull was startled—what did it all mean? Gradually something huge and black began to take shape and form from amidst the whirl of many moving things.