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Shag's Hill, the nearest of the ledge to the house, is a low, narrow cone, with a sharp rim against the sky; the moon had sunk half behind it, lighting the surface of drifted snow which faced them. Across this there suddenly fell a long, uncertain shadow, which belonged neither to bush nor tree: it might be the flicker of a cloud; or a man, passing across the top of the hill, would make it.
At eleven o'clock the horses arrived, four besides Shag's, and the rest of the outfit. The onlookers regarded Shag with the mournful interest due to the undertaker at a funeral. Shag felt it and acted accordingly.
Shag was the first to awaken; the night's banquet caused the morning to come slowly to A'tim. The pulling cut of Shag's heavy jaws on the crisp grass awoke the Dog-Wolf. He yawned heavily, and eyed the old Bull with sleepy indifference. Ghur-h-h-h! what a plaintive figure the aged Buffalo was, to be sure. "Good-morning, Brother," whuffed Shag, his mouth full of grass; "where are you going?"
"And it's the worst tangle you ever got me into!" went on Shag's master. "There's no head or tail to it." "Den it ain't laik a fish; am it?" asked Shag, with the freedom of long years of faithful service. "No, it isn't worse luck!" stormed the colonel. "I never saw such a case. The diamond cross mystery was nothing like it."
Though it is generally easy to look down upon the Shags on their nests, and to get a good view at a short distance of the eggs and the young, it is, as a rule, by no means easy to get at them without a rope; in a few places, however, their nests are more accessible, and a hard climb on the rocks, perhaps with a burning sun making them almost too hot to hold, will bring you within reach of a Shag's nest; but I would not advise any one who tries it to put on his "go-to-meeting clothes," as the deposit of guano on the rocks will spoil anything; and only let him smell his hands after his exploit they do smell so nice!
In the battle many things might come to pass, his Dog wisdom said; the Wolves might be killed, or prodded full of a sufficiency of fight; the Buffalo might stampede, being new to Shag's leadership; or, when the combat was heavy, he could steal away if he saw it going against them. Also his desire for revenge on Shag was a potent factor.
You're disgracing the college," said Shorty at the door. "We won't stand for it, Hal; this is no North-West Indian school. We won't have it, I tell you!" "Shag's going to read that address!" said Hal, sitting up with an odd drawn but determined look around his mouth. "Well, he isn't!" blurted Shorty. "There's a big meeting in the classroom, and there's a row on the biggest row you ever saw."
"Do you mean to say," Locke, gripping Shag's shoulders in vice-like fingers, "that all this time we have been ragging you and running on you, that you knew Hal's mother was a half Indian and you never said a word?" "Why should I?" asked Shag, raising his eyebrows. "Boys," said Locke, facing the room like a man, "we've been well, just cads.
He could hear his own name, then Shag's, then Shorty's, and sometimes Locke's. "I've evidently kicked up a hornets' nest," he smiled weakly to himself, too tired and ill to care whether the hornets stung or not. Presently Locke returned. "I tell you, Hal, it won't do; that Indian isn't a fit representative of this college." "The masters won't do a thing; you've got to appoint someone else.
Then followed a narration of two occasions when Shag's father had saved Sir George's life, once from drowning in the Assiniboine and once from freezing to death on the plains.
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