The Trail Book | Page 6

from the
river to the bedding-ground and there was a thin rim of the moon like a
tusk over the hill's shoulder. I remember the damp smell of the earth
and the good smell of the browse after the sun goes down, and between
them a thin blue mist curling with a stinging smell that made prickles
come along the back of my neck.
"'What is that?' I said, for I walked yet with my mother.
"'It is the smell which Man makes so that other people may know
where he is and keep away from him,' she said, for my mother had
never been friends with Man and she did not know any better.
"Then we came up over the ridge and saw them, about a score, naked
and dancing on the naked front of the hill. They had a fire in their midst
from which the blue smell went up, and as they danced they sang--
"'Hail, moon, young moon! Hail, hail, young moon! Bring me
something that I wish, Hail, moon, hail!'
"--catching up fire-sticks in their hands and tossing them toward the
tusk of the moon. That was how they made the moon grow, by working
fire into it, so my man told me afterwards. But it was not until I began
to walk by myself that he found me.
"I had come up from the lower hills all one day," said the Mastodon.
"There was a feel in the air as if the Great Cold had breathed into it. It
curdled blue as pond water, and under the blueness the forest color
showed like weed under water. I walked by myself and did not care
who heard me. Now and then I tore up a young tree, for my tusks had
grown fast that year and it was good to feel the tree tug at its roots and
struggle with me. Farther up, the wind walked on the dry leaves with a
sound like a thousand wapiti trooping down the mountain. Every little
while, for want of something to do, I charged it. Then I carried a pine,

which I had torn up, on my tusks, until the butt struck a boulder which
went down the hill with an avalanche of small stones that set all the
echoes shouting.
"In the midst of it I lifted up my voice and said that I was I, Arrumpa,
walking by myself,--and just then a dart struck me. The men had come
up under cover of the wind on either side so that there was nothing for
me to do but to move forward, which I did, somewhat hurriedly.
"I had not come to my full size then, but I was a good weight for my
years," said Arrumpa modestly,--"a very good weight, and it was my
weight that saved me, for the edge of the ravine that opened suddenly
in front of me crumbled, so that I came down into the bottom of it with
a great mass of rubbish and broken stone, with a twisted knee, and very
much astonished.
"I remember blowing to get the blood and dust out of my eyes,--there
was a dart stuck in my forehead,--and seeing the men come swarming
over the edge of the ravine, which was all walled in on every side,
shaking their spears and singing. That was the way with men; whatever
they did they had to sing about it. 'Ha-ahe-ah!' they sang--
"'Great Chief, you're about to die, The Gods have said it.'
"So they came capering, but there was blood in my eyes and my knee
hurt me, so when one of them stuck his spear almost up to the haft in
my side, I tossed him. I took him up lightly on my tusks and he lay still
at the far end of the ravine where I had dropped him. That stopped the
shouting; but it broke out again suddenly, for the women had come
down the wild vines on the walls, with their young on their shoulders,
and the wife of the man I had tossed found him. The noise of the
hunters was as nothing to the noise she made at me. Madness overtook
her; she left off howling over her man and seizing her son by the
hand,--he was no more than half-grown, not up to my shoulder,--she
pushed him in front of me. 'Take him! Take my son, Man-Killer!' she
screamed. 'After you have taken the best of the tribe, will you stop at a
youngling?' Then all the others screeched at her like gulls frightened
from their rock, and stopped silent in great fear to see what I would do

about it.
"I did not know what to do, for there was no way I could tell her I was
sorry