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THE OUTCASTS

[Illustration: SHAG CARRIED THE DOG-WOLF ON HIS BACK.]




THE
OUTCASTS

BY W. A. FRASER

ILLUSTRATED BY ARTHUR HEMING

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK ----- MDCCCCI




_Copyright, 1901, by_
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED




Illustrations

_The full-page subjects from drawings by Arthur Heming. The
head- and tail-pieces from drawings by J. S. Gordon_

                                                             FACING

Shag carried the Dog-wolf on his back                         Title

"Lying on my back as though I were dead, I
held my tail straight up"                                         6

"I am no Wolf, Shag; I am A'tim, which
meaneth a Dog in the talk of the Crees"                          10

One after another they hurtled into the
slaughter-pen of the Blood Indians' corral                       36

Muskwa had A'tim in his long-clawed grasp                        66

"Steady, Dog-Wolf, steady," admonished
Shag, "this is a friend of mine"                                 78

"Oh, don't mention it!" exclaimed the Wolf;
"no doubt we shall find something for
dinner, presently"                                              114

"Thou art a traitor, and a great liar," said
the Bull                                                        136




THE OUTCASTS




[Illustration]

THE OUTCASTS

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 Buttes 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 buttes, and
stood outlined, a towering black mass. A'tim flattened to earth
as though he had been shot, looking not more than a tuft of
withered bunch-grass. Then he arose as suddenly, chuckled to
himself, and growled nervously: "Oh! but I got a start--it's only
old Shag, 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 Shag--it
was only my fright; for even in my dreams I am always seeing the
terrible Camous. I have cause to remember him, Shag--it was this
way. Did I ever tell you?"

"Never," answered Shag, heavily.

[Illustration: "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-Grass 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-prongs. 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."

Shag slipped a cud of sweet grass 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 Buttes, 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, 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. "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 Shag 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, Shag; I am A'tim, which meaneth 'a Dog,' in the talk of the
Crees."

"Even so, Brother," said Shag, "how comes it that thou art a
half-breed Wolf at all?"

[Illustration: "I AM NO WOLF, SHAG; 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, Shag, for thou art the
biggest Bull from Belly Buttes to Old Man River--Waugh! Waugh!
that I can swear to."

"In those days," continued Shag, 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-grass 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 mass 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 Shag; "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 Shag--"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 Shag;
"but my sides are sore from the insulting <DW8>s 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 Buttes to sleep," declared Shag.

"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 Buttes' side, where the grass
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."

He took the three turns that had come to him of his Dog
heritage, and curled up contentedly against the great paunch of
the scarred Bull.

"I can't sleep for thinking of the big Kill," murmured Shag. "My
poor Brothers and Sisters, also some of my own children, are in
that Herd, though they, too, have disowned and driven me forth."

"There will be more sweet grass for your feeding when they are
gone, Shag," declared Dog-Wolf.

"Ah, there's plenty of eating, such as it is; though the grass on
the prairie looks short and dry and harsh, yet it is sweet in the
cud. To you, who are but a Dog-Wolf, the eating comes first in
your thought, but with us it is the dread of hunters, who keep us
ever on the move."

"I know of a land where it is not this way," asserted A'tim,
after a pause; "a beautiful land, with pea-vine knee-deep, and
grass the Men call blue-joint, that fair tops my back when I walk
through it. As for drink! why, one day in a single tramp I
crossed sixteen streams of beautiful running water."

"Are you dreaming, A'tim?" asked Shag, touching the Dog-Wolf's
back with the battered point of his stub-horn.

"No, Bull; and there are few hunters in that land, and few of
your kind; and shelter of forest against the White Storm; and
buttes and coulees everywhere."

"An ideal Range," muttered the Bull; "is it far?"

"Perhaps half a moon--perhaps a whole moon from here to there,
just as one's feet stand the trail."

"You make me long for that great feeding," sighed Shag enviously.

"Yes, you'd be better in the Northland, Shag," said the Dog-Wolf,
sleepily--"better there. Here you are an Outcast, even as I am."

"Yes, after the big Kill to-morrow," sighed the Bull mournfully,
"I shall want to trail somewhere. Across Kootenay River is good
feeding-ground, but there the accursed Long Knives are filled
with the very devil of destruction, and kill even such as I am,
though my hide is not worth the lifting. I, who am an Outcast,
and have lost all pride, know this--I am worthless."

The bubbling monotone of the old Bull had