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