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Updated: May 24, 2025
Suddenly, and without provocation, the lake seemed to stand up on end and commence throwing things about. The Bull was startled what did it all mean? Gradually something huge and black began to take shape and form from amidst the whirl of many moving things. "A Bear!" gasped Shag. "By the strength of my neck he means to devour A'tim!"
"Thud, thudety-thud, thudety-thudety-thud!" a horseman was hammering down the sloping bank across the ford. As A'tim leaped from the tent the horseman shouted and drove big rowel spurs hard up the flank of his galloping Cayuse. "Just my evil chance!" snarled A'tim as he headed for Shag; "but what is a small piece of Bacon compared with a big Buffalo?"
A'tim knew of many muskegs where a stupid, heavy-footed Bull might be mired; also, there was the poison plant, the Death Flower of the Monkshood. He could persuade the stupid Shag to eat of it, and in an hour the Bull would die puffed up like a Cow's udder; it would not hurt the flesh. Eu-h-h! there were many ways.
"Have you seen him?" Shag asked of A'tim. "He flew away early," answered the Dog-Wolf. "He should have taken all his coat with him," answered Shag, thrusting from his mouth a bunch of grass in which were three brown feathers. "He flew far away," affirmed A'tim sheepishly. "The length of your gullet, Dog-Wolf," declared Shag. "Thou must be wondrous hungry to eat one of our own party a cannibal."
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.
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!
Has it not the beautiful blossom of a good herb? Would Wie-sah-ke-chack, who is wise, put such a tempting coat on a death plant?" Shag looked puzzled. Why should A'tim wish him to eat of a Death Flower; and yet, there was the graze of the Wolf's fang on his thigh that time they came up out of La Biche River. That surely had the full flavor of treachery about it.
All turned into death meat for the Flesh-feeders, Dog or Wolf," snarled A'tim. "Killed for the hide think of that, Shag! 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 assuredly," replied the Bull, "thou leavest nothing but the bones." "Nothing but the bones," concurred A'tim.
"I saw one yesterday," replied A'tim. "Aye, Brother, and he saw you, too." "Else I had eaten him," added the Dog-Wolf. "A Coyote?" asked Shag incredulously; "eat a Coyote? Impossible! No animal ever ate a Coyote!" "No animal was ever so hungry as I was yesterday before Wie-sah-ke led me to the Fat Bacon."
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.
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