The Outcasts Part 8

[Ill.u.s.tration: "OH, DON'T MENTION IT!" EXCLAIMED THE WOLF; "NO DOUBT WE SHALL FIND SOMETHING FOR DINNER PRESENTLY."]

"That's good news," answered the Wolf, "for we are wondrous hungry," and he edged closer to the Outcast.

A'tim shrank into a very small parcel on the log. "I, too, have been sick for the need of food. I have starved, actually starved, for a moon; why, I am nothing but skin and bone; the smallest creature, even a weasel, would find it difficult to fill his stomach from my lean ribs. Besides, I have eaten off a plague-stricken Rabbit but a day since, and my blood is on fire--though there's not much of it, to be sure. I'm filled with the accursed plague poison--I believe there's enough of it in my poor, thin body to bring to their death a whole Wolf Pack."

"That's serious!" exclaimed the Gray Wolf; "but you'd die anyway, so it doesn't matter--I mean, never mind about that just now.

Gh-u-r-r-h! what of this great kill?"

"Well, Brother Wolves----"

"Brother _Wolves_?" questioned the other with a sneer-tinge in his gruff voice; "thou art overthick in the shoulder for a Wolf."

"I never saw ears like yours on a Wolf, Newcomer," said one of the youngsters; "they are short and round like those of the Huskie Dog we ate. Is not that so?" he asked, turning to the Leader.

"Yes, indeed; we ate him, I'm ashamed to say--for Dog meat is horrible--but what is one to do when there's naught else in the Boundaries?"

A'tim shuddered; their merciless eyes gleamed with the ferocity of famine. Neither his strength nor his speed, which had so often stood him in good stead, would avail him this time; nothing but his half-breed duplicity--Wolf cunning and Dog wisdom.

"But I _am_ a Wolf," he reiterated; "else why should I seek your company at my Kill?"

"We were easily found," sneered the Wolf; "we did not take much calling, did we? Knowing your desire for our fellows.h.i.+p, we kept you not waiting--E-a-ah, Lone Dog? But where hunts the Pack that carry their tails curled over their backs like Train Dogs?"

"It's because of my nervousness--you startled me," pleaded A'tim; "also my seat is narrow."

"And the big, round feet, Lone Dog? They leave not a Wolf track.

And you're broad in the loin, and heavy in the jowl, and short in the leg--a Dog, a Hermit Dog, by the knowledge that has come to me of age."

"I'm a Wolf from the Southland," maintained A'tim. "We shape different there. Our meat is the flesh of Buffalo, and our Kill is because of strength, and not speed--therefore we are of a strong build. You are of the Northland; swift as the wind, and long running, Great Wolf--you and your beautiful Sons--yet was I eager for your company at this Kill, which has taken me days to arrange."

"Buh-h, buh-ha! his great Kill! and here is the killer slaying fierce, white Wood Grubs--but never mind; what of the Kill, Lone Dog?"

"What say you to a Buffalo--a fat, young Bull?" asked A'tim, heaving a sigh of relief; "would not that be a dinner fit for a great Pack Leader, like yourself?"

"A Buffalo?" queried the Wolf incredulously. "I have heard of such in these forests, but I come from the North, and have never seen them--have we, Sons?"

"Never," they answered, closing in on A'tim.

"Even to-day I trailed one, and was on my way to ask you to the Kill, as is the way of the Wolf kind. I am no Dog, to kill and eat in secret."

"It's truly n.o.ble to feed your friends," declared the Wolf. He snapped viciously at A'tim's throat with fang-lined jaws. The Dog-Wolf jumped back nervously.

"Wait, Brothers," he pleaded; "you do not believe me, I see--let us go together, and if I do not show you this Buffalo, waiting for the Kill, then--"

"Yes, then--" sneered the Wolf; "if you fail to show us this Buffalo, then--" He grinned diabolically in A'tim's face.

"E-e-u-h, I know," exclaimed the Dog-Wolf, stepping down gingerly from the log. "You may keep close; I will show you that I have spoken no lie."

Together, one Wolf on either side of A'tim and one behind, they glided along his back trail till they came to the scene of his caustic farewell to s.h.a.g. Suddenly the Pack Leader stopped, buried his nose in a hoof hole and sniffed with discriminating intentness.

"If-if-if-fh-h! By my scent, 'tis not Mooswa--nor Caribou. What say you, sons? Perhaps it is the Buffalo of which the Lone Dog speaks. Phew-yi, hi! Another trail call. Here are two of these big-footed creatures, be they Buffalo, or what--you spoke of but one, Lone Dog; Wolves do not tackle a Herd."

"Only a silly Cow," answered A'tim. "She will flee at the first blood cry."

The big Wolf softened a trifle. Surely here was prospect of a mighty Kill. There would be much flesh feeding and blood drinking till they were gorged. And the Lone Dog would keep. When the Buffalo were eaten, then--He look grimly at A'tim's attenuated form. "Not much to tempt one after the sweet meat of a Gra.s.s Feeder," he muttered disconsolately. "How shall we make the Kill, Lone Dog?" he asked.

"When we have trailed them down watch till they feed apart and stampede the Cow with a fierce rush full of much cry; then all on the Bull--two in front, to put them at bay, and two behind with sharp teeth for the hamstring. That will lay him helpless as a new Calf."

"Thou art a Leader of Sorts, Lone Dog; but why not the Cow first?

It's an easier task, and better eating."

"Ah, my Brothers, I see you have never run the Kings of the Prairie. While you were busy with the Cow, what think you the Bull would be doing--brus.h.i.+ng his mane with a wet tongue? His strong horns, stronger than Wolf tusks, would be ripping your ribs, and the weight of his huge forehead would be breaking your backs--flat as a fallen leaf he would crush you. No, no; by my knowledge of these things, first the Bull--after, the Cow will be easy."

All this logic, sound though it seemed, was born of A'tim's desire for revenge upon old s.h.a.g for refusing to be murdered.

"Well, it is your Run and your Kill, and to the Trailer the say of the Kill is our Law," answered the Wolf; "lead us to the eating, and make haste lest we get too hungry."

But A'tim had started ere the Wolf had finished his implied threat. Nose to ground, and tail almost as straight as a true Wolf's, he raced through the ghost forms of silent poplars, sheared by the autumn winds of their gold-leaf mantle. Over wooded upland, and through lowland cradling the treacherous muskeg, spruce-s.h.i.+elded and moss-bedded, he followed the trail of old s.h.a.g and his Cow mate. Ever at his flank, one on either side, sped the young Wolves, and, lapping their quarters, loped in easy stride their giant Sire. In the Dog-Wolf's heart were revenge and the prospect of much eating, and the diplomacy that was to save his life.

"This strange Run is surely from the hand of Wie-sah-ke-chack,"

muttered the Pack Leader; "and of the end I have no knowledge, but, by the memory of my long fast, there will be food at the end of it for me and the Pups."

Through a black cemetery of fire-killed trees, the charred limbs cracking harshly under their eager feet, they swept. Suddenly the trail kinked sharply to the right, and the Dog-Wolf, swift-rus.h.i.+ng, overshot it. "E-u-h! at fault," he muttered. "Some trick of the fool Cow's." Back and forth, back and forth like Setters the four Killers scurried.

"H-o-o-oh! here away!" cried A'tim, picking it up; and on again galloped the Gray Hunters.

At Towatano Creek the trail went into the air; at least it was no longer of the earth. Straight to the south bank it had led, but on the north there was nothing; nothing but the hoot of a frightened Arctic Owl that swirled off into the forest because of their impetuous blood cry.

"They are not wet to their death," cried the Wolf, "for here is little water."

It was as though the Bisons had crawled into a cave, only there was no burrow in sight--nothing. A'tim was confused.

"Surely thou art a Dog," cried the Wolf disdainfully; "they have gone up the water, or they have gone down the water. This is no young Bull we follow, for he has the wisdom which comes with age; that, or this Cow has the duplicity of a Mother guarding her Calf."

"I will search up, and do you seek down," said A'tim.

"Not so," replied the Wolf; "we will stay here together while my Pups pick up the trail, be it up or down."

Very close to A'tim the huge Wolf sat while his two Sons searched the opposite bank for the coming out of s.h.a.g. Soon a "Hi, yi--he, he, he-voh-ooh!" came floating dismally up the tortuous stretch of winding stream. "Come; they have found it," said the Wolf.

On again, faster and faster, flitted the Gray Shadows in the waning of the day. All vain had been the precautions of the Cow; the twisting and doubling, and walking in the water to kill the scent--all in vain. Nothing would turn these blood-thirsters from the trail.

"Hurry a little," panted the Wolf from behind. "Gallop, Lone Dog; gallop, brave Pups; the scent grows strong, and we need light for our work."

A'tim stretched his thin limbs in eager chase; at his shoulder now raced the Wolf Pups; the blood fever crept stronger and stronger into the hot hearts of the Gray Runners. Short yelps of hungry exultation broke from their dry throats; it was like the tolling of a death bell; first one and then the other, "Oo-oo-ooh-ooh!" The dry leaves scurried under their feet, swirled up by the wind from their rus.h.i.+ng bodies. Poplar bluff, and jack-pine knoll, and spruce thicket, and open patch of rosebush-matted plain flitted by like the tide of a landscape through which an express speeds.

Why had this silly Cow and effete old Bull traveled so far? A'tim wondered. Would they never overtake them?

Suddenly a vibrating bellow echoed through the forest and halted the Wolf Runners.