"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 blushing a furious red.
"I could sleep here forever," muttered Shag, 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.
Shag 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 Shag 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 grass. 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 grass 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.