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Updated: May 24, 2025
"The bitter water mark," said Shag, as his heavy hoof sank through the white crust on the dark mud. "I know," answered A'tim "alkali, that's what Man calls it." "Let us rest here this night close to the drinking," commanded Shag; "to-morrow we will go forward again." That night A'tim ate the last of the Buffalo meat Shag had packed on his horns for him.
Eagerly the ponies, bred to the Hunt, stretched their limbs of steel-like toughness, and raced for the brown cloud that fled as a broken regiment. Surely it was wondrous sport, as A'tim thought; surely it was unholy slaughter, as the Outcast Bull muttered. Now the galloping brutes were well between the brush walls of the ever-narrowing stockade.
"It is now the season of many Ducks here, even at Egg Lake; perchance in the reed grass yonder, by the willows, I may stalk a Wavey, or even a Goose." Ghur-r-r! but he was hungry! A'tim stole on in front; flat to the grass his belly, and low his head.
They could hear the thud of pony hoofs on the dry prairie's hollow drum as they traveled, winding in and out the tangle of willow bushes that followed the river. Then the hoof beats died away, and A'tim said: "Now he has circled to the West that means something; let us go up and see." They stole up the old river bank to the brow of the uplands.
A large dead cottonwood, rotted to the heart till its flesh was like red earth mould, lay across his path like an unburied Redskin. "Should be Grub Worms here," muttered A'tim, sniffing at the moss shroud which clothed the tree corpse. In famine haste he tore with strong claws at the crumbling mass.
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."
"The Bull! the Bull!" yelped A'tim, crouching to steal under the giant head, and lay him by the flank. 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.
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-shielded and moss-bedded, he followed the trail of old Shag and his Cow mate.
They were now well within the treacherous muskeg lands which border the Athabasca; and that very night, while Shag slumbered in the deep sleep of a full age, A'tim, whose lean stomach tugged at his eyelids and kept them open, stole off into the forest, and searched by the strong light of the moon for a bog that would mire his comrade to death.
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.
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