ails of my people; and now there
are only these Water Runs to remind us of them."

Soon they came to a little lake blue with the mirrored sky, its
mud banks white as though with driven snow. "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. The next day they trailed again toward the
Northland.

When they came to a river that was to be forded Shag carried the
Dog-Wolf on his back; when there was presence of danger, a
suspicious horseman, Shag curled up like a boulder, or crouched
in a coulee, and if the Man came too near A'tim led him away on a
hopeless chase. Daily the Dog-Wolf grew into the heart of Shag,
the Buffalo, who listened with eager delight to his tales of the
Northland.

A'tim had fared well while the meat lasted; but they were now in
a land of much hunger--a land almost devoid of life; and the
Dog-Wolf was coming again into the chronic state of his
existence--famine.

As they trailed Northward the grass grew richer and softer and
more luscious; Shag commenced to put on fat. But daily the
Dog-Wolf grew hungrier and thinner. In the vast solitude, walled
on every side by the never-ending sky from which the stars peeped
at night and the sun smiled by day, there was little for the
Dog-Wolf, who was a flesh-eater. Scarce anything but Gophers; not
an Antelope, nor a Mule Deer, nor a Black Tail had they seen for
days. Once a Kit Fox, the small, gray kind of the prairie, waited
tantalizingly with his nozzle flat on the turf, seemingly asleep,
until A'tim was within two jumps, then he slipped nonchalantly
into his burrow as though he had just been called to dinner. A
froth of disappointed rage wreathed the hungry lips of the
Dog-Wolf. Surely he was in danger of starvation.

For two days he lived on a single Mole, unearthed quite by
chance; then a Gopher, stalked from behind the big legs of Shag,
saved him from utter collapse. Of a verity he was living from
hand to mouth; such abject poverty he had never known, not even
in the Southland by the Blood Reserve.

"Carry me, Brother," he said to the Bull, "for I am weak like a
new Pup. If I could but see a Trapper's shack or a camp," he
confided to Shag,