as he clung to the Bull's hump, "I might find
something to eat--Ghur-r-r! a piece of the Pork Eating, or a
half-picked bone, or a Duck killed by the Fire-stick! Even one of
my own kind, a Dog, would I eat, I'm that famished--Great Bull,
is that not a shack?" he exclaimed suddenly as a square building
loomed on the horizon.

"I think I see it," said the Bull; "but my eyes are no longer
good at a great distance."

As they journeyed toward the object Shag suddenly stopped and
gave a loud bubbling guffaw.

"What are you laughing at, Bull?" demanded A'tim angrily.

"I, who am an Outcast because of my great age, Dog-Wolf, am even
now a great Fool; and so art thou, A'tim, an Outcast and a Fool."

"Your wit is like yourself, Shag, heavy and not too pleasing.
Pray, why am I a Fool!"

"That is no shack," answered the Bull; "it is but a rock;
there's a line of them, like a trail of teepees, for miles,
stretching for the length of many a day's march, running as
straight as the cough of a Fire-stick, all looking like that one.
Wie-sah-ke-chack, who is God of the Animals, put them there for
the Buffalo to brush their hides against--a most wise act."

With a weary sigh A'tim turned his eyes from the deceitful rock,
and watched furtively for the chance of even a small Kill as they
journeyed.

Day by day Shag was eating of the richer grass and becoming of a
great corpulency. Envious thoughts commenced to creep into the
mind of A'tim. Why should he starve and become a skeleton, while
this hulking Bull, to whom he was acting as a friend and guide,
waxed fat in the land that was of his finding? Many times Shag
carried the Dog-Wolf on his back, and at night the heat of his
great body kept A'tim warm.

But the vicious envy that was in the Wolf mind of A'tim started
a line of proper villainy. Let the Bull grow fat. If the worst
came to the worst--if no other meat was to be had--when the
Frogs, and Moles, and such Waterfowl as might be surprised had
failed, and his very life depended on food, would not there be
much eating off the body of this Bull Buffalo? Therefore let him
wax fat. At first A'tim only thought of it just a little--a
flash-light of evil, like the sting of a serpent; but daily it
grew stronger. What was Shag to him? He was not of his kind. If,
when they came to the Northland, to the forests of the Athabasca,
the Wapoos were in the year of plague, and all other animals had
fled the boundaries because of this, and