The Outcasts.
by W. A. Fraser.
CHAPTER ONE
A"tim the Outcast was half Wolf, half Huskie Dog. That meant ferocity and bloodthirst on the one side, and knowledge of Man"s ways on the other. Also, that he was an Outcast; for neither side of the house of his ancestry would have aught of him.
A"tim was bred in the far Northland, where the Cree Indians trail the white snow-waste with Train Dogs; and one time A"tim had pressed an unwilling shoulder to a dog-collar. Now he was an outcast vagabond on the southern prairie, close to the Montana border-land.
It was September; and all day A"tim had skulked in the willow cover of Belly River flat-lands, close to the lodges of the Blood Indians.
Nothing to eat had come the way of the Dog-Wolf; only a little knowledge of something that was to happen, for he had heard things,--the voices of the Indians sitting in council had slipped gently down the wind to his sharp Wolf ears.
As he crawled up the river bank close to Belly b.u.t.tes and looked across the plain, he could see the pink flush of eventide, like a fairy veil, draping the cold blue mountains--the Rockies.
"Good-night, warm Brother," he said, blinking at the setting sun; "I wonder if you are going to sleep with an empty stomach, as must A"tim."
The soft-edged shafts of gold-yellow quivered tremblingly behind the blue-gray mountains, as though Sol were laughing at the address of the Outcast. The Dog-Wolf looked furtively over his shoulder at the smoke-wreathed cones of the Blood tepees. The odor of many flesh-pots tickled his nostrils until they quivered in longing desire. Buh-h-h! but he was hungry! All his life he had been hungry; only at long intervals had a gorge of much eating fallen to his lot.
"Good-night, warm Brother," he said again, turning stubbornly from the scent of flesh, and eying the crimson flush where the sun had set; "one more round of your trail and I shall sleep with a full stomach, for to-morrow the Bloods make a big Kill--the Run of many Buffalo."
A"tim, sitting on his haunches, and holding his nose high in air until his throat pipe drew straight and taut, sang: "O-o-o-o-o-h!
for the blood drinking! W-a-u-g-ha! the sweet new meat--hot to the mouth!"
The Indian Dogs caught up the cry of A"tim as it floated over the Belly River and voiced it from a thousand throats.
"The Blackfeet!" screamed Eagle Shoe, rushing from his tepee.
"It"s only a hungry Wolf," he grunted, as he sat in the council again; "let us talk of the Buffalo Run."
That was what the Dog-Wolf had heard lying in the tangle of gray willow, close to the tepee of Eagle Shoe, the Blood Indian; and he would sleep peacefully, his hunger stayed by the morrow"s prospect. As he sat yawning toward the rose sky in the West, a huge, dark form came majestically from a cleft in the b.u.t.tes, and stood outlined, a towering black ma.s.s. A"tim flattened to earth as though he had been shot, looking not more than a tuft of withered bunch-gra.s.s. Then he arose as suddenly, chuckled to himself, and growled nervously: "Oh! but I got a start--it"s only old s.h.a.g, the Outcast Bull. Ha, ha! A"tim to fear a Buffalo!
Good-evening, Brother," he exclaimed; "you quite frightened me--I thought it was that debased Long Knife, Camous."
"Thought me Camous!" bellowed the Bull, snorting indignantly; "he"s but a slayer and a thief. All the Paleface Long Knives are that; killing, killing--stealing, stealing. Why, even among his own kind he is called "Camous"; and you, who were bred in the Man camps, know what that means."
"Of course, of course--ha! most surely it means "a stealer of things." But I meant not to liken you to him, Brother s.h.a.g--it was only my fright; for even in my dreams I am always seeing the terrible Camous. I have cause to remember him, s.h.a.g--it was this way. Did I ever tell you?"
"Never," answered s.h.a.g, heavily.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "LYING ON MY BACK AS THOUGH I WERE DEAD, I HELD MY TAIL STRAIGHT UP."]
"Well, it was this way: Once upon a time, in the low hills they call Cypress, I was stalking a herd of antelope. To tell you the truth, I had been at it for two days. Waugh! but they were wary.
At last I worked within fair eyesight of them, and knowing the stupid desire they have to look close at anything that may be strange to them, I took to myself a clever plan. Lying on my back as though I were dead, I held my tail straight up, and let the wind blow it back and forth. The big-eyed Eaters-of-Gra.s.s asked one another: "What is this new thing? Is it a plant or an animal?"
That is the way they talked, I am sure, for they are like wolf-pups, quite silly. Well, they came closer and closer and closer. E-u-h-h, e-u-h-h! but my mouth watered with the thought of their sweet meat as I lay as one dead. Now, they hadn"t the knowledge to work up wind to me, but came straight for the thing they saw that moved. Would you believe it, just as I was measuring from the corner of my eye the time for a strong rush, who should creep over a hill but Camous! In fright I sprang to my feet, and away went the Goat-faced small-p.r.o.ngs. Then the deviltry of the many-breathed Fire-stick this Camous carries came down upon me as I ran faster than I"d ever gone before. "Click, snap! click, snap!" the quick-breathing Fire-stick coughed; and though I rocked, and jumped sideways and twisted, before I could get away I had one of the breath-stings in my shoulder. E-u-h-h!
but I go lame from it still."
s.h.a.g slipped a cud of sweet gra.s.s up his throat with a gurgling cough and chewed it reflectively, for he was of a slow turn of thought, not at all like the nimble-brained Dog-Wolf. Then he swallowed the cud, blew from his nostrils the sand that had come into them crossing the scant-garbed hills of Belly b.u.t.tes, and said ponderously: "Yes, I know the many-breathed Fire-stick; that"s what makes the Palefaces so terrible. The plain simply reeks with the dead bodies of my people whom they have slain."
"And the bodies all poisoned, too; whur-r, whur-r! All turned into death meat for the Flesh-feeders, Dog or Wolf," snarled A"tim. "Killed for the hide--think of that, s.h.a.g!--or just the tongue taken. If we make a kill it is for the eating--to still the gnawing pain that comes to us, and we waste nothing, leave nothing."
"Most a.s.suredly," replied the Bull, "thou leavest nothing but the bones."
"Nothing but the bones," concurred A"tim. "And as I was saying, these Long Knives put the Flour of Death in the dead Buffalo, and my Wolf Brethren, when they eat, being forced to of their hunger, die like flies at Cold Time."
"And a good thing, too--I mean--" and s.h.a.g coughed apologetically; "I mean, as a Calf I received cause to remember your Wolf Brothers, A"tim; there"s a hollow in my thigh you could bury your paw in, where one of your long-fanged Pack sought to hamstring me. You, A"tim, who are half Wolf, know how it comes that where one of your kind puts his teeth, the flesh, sooner or later, melts away, and leaves but a hole--how is it, A"tim?"
"Foul teeth," growled the Dog-Wolf. "They"re a mean lot, are the Gray Runners; even I, who am half of their kind, bear them no love--have they not outcasted me because of my Dog blood? I am no Wolf, s.h.a.g; I am A"tim, which meaneth "a Dog," in the talk of the Crees."
"Even so, Brother," said s.h.a.g, "how comes it that thou art a half-breed Wolf at all?"
[Ill.u.s.tration: "I AM NO WOLF, s.h.a.g; I AM A"TIM, WHICH MEANETH A DOG IN THE TALK OF THE CREES."]
"That is also of Man"s evil ways, Brother Bull--thinking to change everything that was as it should be before he came. This false mating is of his thought; to get the strength of the Wolf, and the long-fasting of the Wolf, and the toughness of the Wolf, into the kind of his Train-Dogs. And because of all this, I, who am a Dog, am outcasted."
"Well, we"ll soon all be gone," sighed the Bull, plaintively; "when I was a Smooth Horn, and in the full glory of my strength--"
"Thou must have been of a great strength, s.h.a.g, for thou art the biggest Bull from Belly b.u.t.tes to Old Man River--Waugh! Waugh!
that I can swear to."
"In those days," continued s.h.a.g, taking a swinging lick at his scraggy hide with his rough tongue, "in those days, when I was a Smooth Horn, I led a Herd that caused the sweet-gra.s.s plain to tremble like water when we galloped over it. We were as locusts--that many; and when crossing a coulee I"ve turned with pride on the opposite bank--I always went first--and, looking back, saw the whole hollow just a waving ma.s.s of life. Such life, too, Lone Dog; silk-coated Cows with Calf at knee; and Bulls there were full many--because I tolerated them, of course--and all strong and fat, and troubled by nothing but, perchance, in the Cold Time a few days of the White Storm which covered our food. But that did not matter much; we just drifted head on to the harsh-edged blizzard, and lived on the thick fat of our kidneys."
"But the Redmen--the hairless-faced ones," interrupted Dog-Wolf; "they killed many a Buffalo in the old days."
"We could spare them," replied s.h.a.g; "their Deathshafts of wood slew but a few. Like yourself, A"tim, they killed only when they were hungry. It"s the many-breathed Fire-stick of the Paleface that has destroyed us, A"tim; but like you, Brother, I, who am but an Outcast because of my great age, and because my horns have become stubs, care not overmuch. Why should I lament over my own people who have driven me forth--made of me an Outcast?"
"There is to be a big Run to-morrow--a mighty Kill," said A"tim, growing tired of the old Bull"s reminiscent wail.
"Where?" queried the other.
"At Stone Hill Corral. Eagle Shoe says they will kill five hundred head."
"I know," sighed s.h.a.g--"at the Pound; I know that death-trap.
Half a Herd I lost there once through the conceit of a young Bull hardly out of the Spike Horn age. Well I know the Pound--even the old Indian of deep cunning who made it, Chief Poundmaker--that"s how he came by his name, A"tim. But, as I was saying, when I tried to turn the Herd, knowing what was meant, this Calf Bull led a part of them straight into the very trap. Served him right, too; but the Cows! Ah, me! My poor people! Slaughtered, every one of them; and so it will be again to-morrow--eh, A"tim? It"s the big Herd down in the good feeding they"re after, I suppose."
"Yes," answered A"tim; "to-morrow the whole Blood tribe, and Camous the Paleface, who is but a squaw man, living in their lodges, will make the Run."
"I wish I could stampede the Buffalo to save them," sighed s.h.a.g; "but my sides are sore from the insulting prods of the Spike Horns. Not a Bull in the whole Herd, from Smooth Horns, who are wise, down to Spike Horns, who are fools because of their youth, but thinks it fair sport to drive at me if I go near. Surely I am an Outcast--which seems to me a strange thing. When we come to the knowledge age, having gained wisdom, we are driven forth."
"No; you"d only get into trouble," declared A"tim decisively.
"We, who are Brothers because of our condition, will watch this Run from afar. To-morrow, for once in my life, I shall have a full stomach."
"I am going back to the b.u.t.tes to sleep," declared s.h.a.g.
"I will go also," said A"tim; "while you rest, I, who sleep with one eye open, after the manner of my Wolf Brothers, will watch."
In a little valley driven into the b.u.t.tes" side, where the gra.s.s grew long because of deep snow in winter time, the big Buffalo stopped, prospected the ground with his nose, flipped a sharp stone from the couch with nimble lip, and knelt down gingerly, for rheumatism had crept into his old bones; then with a tired grunt of relaxation he rolled on his side, and blew a great breath of sweet content through his nostrils.
"A good bed," quoth A"tim. "I will share it with you, Brother; close against your stomach for warmth."