Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/230

212 rocks. 'See?' I said to the young men. 'Your tamahnawus has chewed up the canoe but he did not like it and he has spewed it into the river.' And the old men laughed, but the young men scowled and said nothing. And farther on, upon a bar of white gravel, the body of the man bumped softly against the pebbles in the current. He, too, had been battered upon the rocks of the rapids and we dragged him from the water and buried him after the manner of the white men." The old chief paused and puffed at his pipe of heavy tobacco:

"Once more I ridiculed the young men, and once more the old men laughed, but the young men replied that the body of the woman we had not found. That the kultus tamahnawus had broken the canoe and killed the man, but the woman he had taken to live with him upon the floor of the river. We continued on toward the lake, searching the banks, for I did not believe the young men. I believed we would find the body of the woman even as we had found the man.

"It was noon when we camped in the scrub but a short distance below the place where the canoe had disappeared. I wanted to visit the spot but the young men would venture no nearer, for the fear