Legends of Vancouver | Page 9

his people be saved from
calamity. Slowly, laboriously the tenth year dawned; day by day it
dragged its long weeks across his waiting heart, for Nature had not yet
given the sign that his long probation was over.
"Then, one hot summer day, the Thunder-bird came crashing through
the mountains about him. Up from the arms of the Pacific rolled the
storm-cloud, and the Thunder-bird, with its eyes of flashing light, beat
its huge vibrating wings on crag and canyon.
"Up-stream, a tall shaft of granite rears its needle-like length. It is
named 'Thunder Rock,' and wise men of the Paleface people say it is
rich in ore--copper, silver, and gold. At the base of this shaft the
Squamish chief crouched when the storm-cloud broke and bellowed

through the ranges, and on its summit the Thunder-bird perched, its
gigantic wings threshing the air into booming sounds, into splitting
terrors, like the crash of a giant cedar hurtling down the mountain-side.
"But when the beating of those black pinions ceased and the echo of
their thunder-waves died down the depths of the canyon, the Squamish
chief arose as a new man. The shadow on his soul had lifted, the fears
of evil were cowed and conquered. In his brain, his blood, his veins, his
sinews, he felt that the poison of melancholy dwelt no more. He had
redeemed his fault of fathering twin children; he had fulfilled the
demands of the law of his tribe.
"As he heard the last beat of the Thunder-bird's wings dying slowly,
faintly, faintly, among the crags, he knew that the bird, too, was dying,
for its soul was leaving its monster black body, and presently that soul
appeared in the sky. He could see it arching overhead, before it took its
long journey to the Happy Hunting Grounds, for the soul of the
Thunder-bird was a radiant half-circle of glorious color spanning from
peak to peak. He lifted his head then, for he knew it was the sign the
ancient medicine-man had told him to wait for--the sign that his long
banishment was ended.
"And all these years, down in the tidewater country, the little
brown-faced twins were asking childwise, 'Where is our father? Why
have we no father, like other boys?' To be met only with the
oft-repeated reply, 'Your father is no more. Your father, the great chief,
is dead.'
"But some strange filial intuition told the boys that their sire would
some day return. Often they voiced this feeling to their mother, but she
would only weep and say that not even the witchcraft of the great
medicine-man could bring him to them. But when they were ten years
old the two children came to their mother, hand within hand. They were
armed with their little hunting-knives, their salmon-spears, their tiny
bows and arrows.
"'We go to find our father,' they said.

"'Oh! useless quest,' wailed the mother.
"'Oh! useless quest,' echoed the tribes-people.
"But the great medicine-man said, 'The heart of a child has invisible
eyes; perhaps the child-eyes see him. The heart of a child has invisible
ears; perhaps the child-ears hear him call. Let them go.' So the little
children went forth into the forest; their young feet flew as though shod
with wings, their young hearts pointed to the north as does the white
man's compass. Day after day they journeyed up-stream, until,
rounding a sudden bend, they beheld a bark lodge with a thin blue curl
of smoke drifting from its roof.
"'It is our father's lodge,' they told each other, for their childish hearts
were unerring in response to the call of kinship. Hand in hand they
approached, and entering the lodge, said the one word, 'Come.'
"The great Squamish chief outstretched his arms towards them, then
towards the laughing river, then towards the mountains.
"'Welcome, my sons!' he said. 'And good-bye, my mountains, my
brothers, my crags, and my canyons!' And with a child clinging to each
hand he faced once more the country of the tidewater."
* * * * *
The legend was ended.
For a long time he sat in silence. He had removed his gaze from the
bend in the river, around which the two children had come and where
the eyes of the recluse had first rested on them after ten years of
solitude.
The chief spoke again: "It was here, on this spot we are sitting, that he
built his lodge: here he dwelt those ten years alone, alone."
I nodded silently. The legend was too beautiful to mar with comments,
and, as the twilight fell, we threaded our way through the underbrush,

past the disused logger's camp, and into the trail that leads citywards.

THE LOST SALMON-RUN
Great had been the "run," and the sockeye season was almost over. For