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Updated: June 26, 2025
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.
"Did you speak, Wolf?" perked the Bird. "I said, 'Good riddance," snapped A'tim. "He, he, he!" laughed the Cow-Bird; "your friend is pleasant company, Great Bull." That night the two Outcasts and the Cow-Bird camped together, near the Saskatchewan River; the brown body curled up contentedly on Shag's horn, while the Dog-Wolf slept against his paunch. In the morning the Cow-Bird was gone.
"Never mind, boys," moaned Professor Warwick; "don't quarrel with this tragedy before us. Look, Shag's simply leaping ahead. There goes Hal again that's the second time he's gone under! Oh, my boy! my poor Hal!" and the little old man rushed wildly up to the servants' quarters for the cook and the pantry-boy and ropes anything, everything that would hold out a hope of rescue.
The well-blown Dog-Wolf came back carrying a Hare. "Hardly worth the trouble," he said disdainfully, laying the fluffy figure down at Shag's feet. "Now I know of a surety why the Flesh Feeders have fled the Boundaries; it is the Plague Year of Wapoos. This thing that should be fat, and of tender juiciness, is but a skin full of bones; there are even the plague lumps in his throat.
Judge Dolan he rides on my train a lot and he's always askin' what I got new in detective stuff." "Um, yep! Well, dat may be all right fo' Judge Dolan," went on Shag, slowly recovering from his fit of chuckling, "but mah marster don't want none of dat kind of readin'." "Why?" asked the boy. Shag's answer was given in a peculiar manner.
But Shorty stood resolute. "I tell you I can't swim that far and back, and I ain't going to try it only to get drowned," he snarled; but even as he spoke there flashed past him a lithe, tan-colored body in skintight silken underwear; there followed a splash, and Shag's clean, dark face rose to the surface as he struck out towards the unfortunates. The Professor was beside himself with horror.
Back and forth, up and down, in and out, double and twist, sometimes near and sometimes far, but always with the "Ghur-r-r!" of the Dog-Wolf's breath coming to Shag's ears, the shadow and its pursuer chased. Suddenly Shag started as a plaintive squeak died away in a harsh growl of exultation. "He has him," muttered Shag; "this will stay the clamor of his hunger talk, I hope."
"Your eating is heavy," said Shag; "I will carry it for you on my horns. L-o-u-g-h h-u! the blood smells terrible!" he exclaimed as A'tim pulled the buffalo flesh over Shag's forehead.
Dozens of voices shouted, "Shag's the man for us! Hurrah for Shag!" and dozens replied, "Who will join the anti-Indians? Who will vote for a white man to represent white men? This ain't an Indian school get out with the Indians!" Then Shorty took the floor. "Boys," he yelled, "we won't stand for it.
The recreation interval was all too short for the boys to have their talk out, and when the "good-nights" came Hal wrung Shag's hand with a sincerity and heartiness that brought a responsive thrill into the fingers of the lonely boy who was spending his first night fifteen hundred miles away from home.
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