Page:Gray Eagle (1927).pdf/152

 The white hunter nodded; then, frowning slightly, lowered his eyes. The Raven, addressing himself to Twining, spoke gravely in his own tongue.

"Corane will lead you to Koe Ishto's cave," he said.

While Conerton, the interpreter, was whispering to Sir Alexander the meaning of the words, the Indian wheeled his horse and rode slowly forward along the trail.

A Cherokee woman, pounding corn beside the shallow rock-strewn river which flowed through the Raven's village, glanced up at the huge humped mountain towering above the Indian town.

"See," she said to the little naked girl squatting beside her, "the Thunder God sleeps. He has drawn his robe over him so that the noonday sun will not shine on his face."

A fleecy cloud hid the upper half of Unaka Kanoos. Only the heavily wooded lower slopes of the mountain were visible, their deep, lustrous green appearing almost black in contrast with the brilliant whiteness of the cloud-curtain veiling the rocky crest. Three miles to the eastward, on a ridge across the valley, Corane the Raven noted with troubled eyes the blanket of dense vapor hiding the summit and half the bulk of Unaka. To him also this meant