Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/228

210 in canoes as though he feared some man who would come to him over the water. But now, the Indians know that it was no man he feared, but the kultus tamahnawus. For one day, a small party of Indians who were hunting upon a hill saw the canoe of the white man driving rapidly down the lake. In the bow was the woman and the man was in the stern, and both paddled furiously so that the canoe shot forward with great speed. And they turned to pass down the river by which the waters of the lake find their way to the frozen sea. And even as the Indians looked, the canoe, in the time of a lightning flash, was gone. The kultus tamahnawus had reached from the depths and had pulled them beneath the surface of the swift-flowing river. With their own eyes, the young men who hunted had seen this thing. And in great fear they hastened to the village, and would have fled from the Red Tail Lake country. But there the hunting and trapping is good. And there come the caribou in thousands to winter, so that always there is meat in our bellies, and the robes in our lodges are warm.

"I, Sam Spotted Raven, am chief, and that night I called a council. The young men who were fear-