Page:The art of story-telling, with nearly half a hundred stories, y Julia Darrow Cowles .. (IA artofstorytellin00cowl).pdf/80

 white mass, like a pile of snow when the sun shines upon it in the early summer. Toward this great white wonder ran a winding path from the very spot where Ithenthiela stood.

"I will follow it," thought he, "and see what I find in that shining wigwam over there."

As he passed along he met an old woman who said to him: "Who are you, and where are you going?"

"I have come from far," said Ithenthiela. "I am the Caribou-Footed. Can you tell me who lives over there in that big white wigwam?"

"Ah," said Capoteka—for that was the old woman's name—"I know you, Ithenthiela! Long have I known that sometime you would come here. But you have done wrong; this is no country for man. In that great wigwam over there lives Itakempka; and he is unhappy because he has lost his great medicine belt. Until he gets it again, no one will be happy in the Sky Country. The belt is at the tepee of the two blind women who live far beyond the wigwam which shines so white, and no one has been able to get it from them. But whoever cap