"Euh-h! the very thing!" he exclaimed joyously, as his foot sank deep in soft slime. "Yes, indeed, the very spot. Now must I cover up its black mud so that the blurred eyes of old Shag will see only a fair trail, not over ankle-deep."
For an hour he labored with rare villainy, carrying bunches of moss to cover up the black ooze, that was not more than twenty feet broad; even small willow wands and coarse rush grass he placed under the moss, so that he himself, light-footed as a cat, might cross ahead of the unsuspicious Bull, and lure him to his death. "There," he said finally, as he sat on his haunches and rested for a minute, looking like a ghoul in the ghostly moonlight, "I think that's a trick worthy of my Wolf cunning." Then he hastened back to the other Outcast.
Shag was awake and heard the Dog-Wolf creep to his side. "Where have you been, A'tim?" he asked sleepily.
"I heard a strange noise in the forest, and thought perhaps some evil Hunter had followed your big trail; fearing for your safety, Brother, I went to see what it was."
"And?" queried Shag.
"It was nothing—nothing but a Lynx or some prowling animal." Shag was already snoring heavily again, and the Dog-Wolf, tired by his exertion, also soon slumbered.
Next morning A'tim was in rare good humor. "We shall only have another day or two of this weary tramp," he said, "for the air is full of the perfume of living things; also things that are dead, for yonder, high in the air, float three Birds of the Vulture kind. I shall be in the land of much eating to-day or to-morrow, I know."
"I am glad of that," answered Shag heartily; "I am tired of this long tramp—my bones ache from it."
Talking almost incessantly to distract the other's attention, A'tim led the way straight for his muskeg trap.