"It was a great weeding out of the Herd; it was like the sweep of the fire breath that bares the prairie only to make the grass come up stronger and sweeter again. Longingly we waited for our friend, the gentle Chinook, to come up out of the Southwest; but this time it must have got lost in the mountains, for only the South wind, which is always cold, or a blizzard breath from the Northwest blew across the bleak, white-covered Buffalo land.
"One night, just as I thought I must surely die before morning, a sweet moisture came into my nostrils, and I knew that our Wind Brother, the Chinook, had found us at last. The sun smiled at us in the morning and warmed the white cover, and by night we could see the grass; next day the White Storm was all gone. So, Brother Outcast, I too, know what it is to be hungry. Have a strong heart—food will be sent."
"Sent!" snapped A'tim crabbedly; "who will send it? Will my Gray Half-Brothers, who are Wolves, send it—come and lay a dead Caribou at my feet? Will the Train Dogs, of whose kind I am, come and feed me with White Fish—the dried Fish their drivers give them so sparingly?"
"I cannot say, Dog-Wolf; but surely food does not come of one's own thinking. The grass does not grow because of me, but for me. The Animals all say it is our God, Wie-sah-ke-chack, who sends the eating."
"E-u-h-h!" yawned A'tim sulkily, swinging his head in petulant irritation, "I must have meat, no matter where it comes from; I can't starve." There was a covert threat in the Dog-Wolf's voice, but Shag did not notice it—his mind was above that sort of thing.
In the evening, as they entered a little thicket of dogberry bushes growing in low land, a small brown shadow flitted across their path. With a snarl A'tim was after it, crushing through the long, dry, spike-like grass in hot pursuit. Shag waited.
Back and forth, up and down, in and out, double and twist, sometimes near and sometimes far, but always with the "Ghur-r-r!" of the Dog-Wolf's breath coming to Shag's ears, the shadow and its pursuer chased. Suddenly Shag started as a plaintive squeak died away in a harsh growl of exultation.
"He has him," muttered Shag; "this will stay the clamor of his hunger talk, I hope."
The well-blown Dog-Wolf came back carrying a Hare. "Hardly worth the trouble," he said disdainfully, laying the fluffy figure down at Shag's feet. "Now I know of a surety why the Flesh Feeders have fled the Boundaries; it is the Plague Year of Wapoos. This thing that should be fat, and of tender juiciness, is but a skin full of bones; there are even the plague lumps in his throat. There is almost as much poison in this carrion as in a Trapper's bait; but I must eat of it, for I am wondrous hungry."