Page:Myths and Legends of British North America.djvu/169

 HUNTING IN THE SNOW MOUNTAINS

Chilcotin

NCE there was a boy who was very bad. He had sung a shaman's song, and the shaman had scolded him.

Now late in the autumn he went out hunting alone. He went up the Chilcotin River, to a place near Siwash Bridge. Here he found three beavers, so he killed them. He skinned them and hid the meat, and went on up into the snow mountains. He came to a great gulch in the mountains, and looking down he saw all kinds of animals—deer, caribou, mountain sheep, and mountain goats. And as he looked down upon them from the top, he wished his brother were there to help him, there were so many. Then he went to a small canon at the head of the gulch and waited.

Soon the boy heard someone calling, away down the valley, and the caribou started to run up through the canon. As they crowded in, the young man shot all the big ones, until they lay in heaps all around him. So he made his camp there and started to cut up the meat.