Famine-braved, the Wolves fought and snapped, and snarled the Kill cry. Crazed beyond cowardice by the smell of their own blood, the Cows fenced and thrust, and stood one against the other—the sharp horns ripped like skinning-knives.
"Ee-e-yah! if I could but do it!" snarled the great Wolf. Ah! he had her—by the nose! Down to her knees, dragged by the Wolf, came the Cow that had turned Shag from the Death Flower.
"Yah, yah, yah!" snarled the Wolf joyously through his set teeth, as the Cow bellowed loud in her agony of terror.
Then something like the falling of a great forest was heard, and the Buffalo Bull descended upon the Big Wolf and blotted him out from the light of the world. It was not a question of horns at all; it was simply a great weight like an avalanche of rock crushing him into the herbed plain. His grim jaws relaxed their hold; from ears and nostrils flowed his mighty strength in a red stream.
Even as Shag charged the Wolf, A'tim had reached for the Cow's flank! Ah! here was his chance. The Bull's fat throat beckoned to him from within easy reach. Wah, for his revenge! E-e-uh, for the throat grip—the throat-cutting hold!
Eagerly, wide-jawed he sprang at the Brother Outcast—and missed.
The carnage had sent Shag's life back a score of years; the battle heat warmed his old blood until it coursed with the fire of fighting youth; he was a young Bull again, full of the glorious supple strength that had been his as chief gladiator of all the prairie arena: that was why A'tim fell short as he reached for the death hold.
With a deft twist Shag had the Dog-Wolf pinned to the earth between the worn old horns.
"Now, traitor," he grunted.
"Spare me," pleaded A'tim; "I, who am not of your kind, slept by your side, and guided you to this land where you have a Herd. I was forced to this by the Wolves—they threatened to eat me. Spare me, Great Bull; I came to warn you, but the Wolves followed fast."