The Trail Book | Page 9

cliff, and
every man going out to the hunt threw a dart at it, as an omen. If it
stuck, the omen was good, but if the point of the dart broke against the
face of the cliff and fell back, the hunter returned to his hut, and if he
hunted at all that day, he went out in another direction. We could see
the shafts of the darts fast in the cleft, bristling in the moonlight.
"'Wait here, under the Arch,' said Taku-Wakin, 'till I see if the arrow of
my thought finds a cleft to stick into.'
"So we waited, watching the white, webby moons of the spiders, wet in
the grass, and the man huts sleeping on the hill, and felt the Dawn's
breath pricking the skin of our shoulders. The huts were mere heaps of
brush like rats' nests.
"'Shall I walk on the huts for a sign, Little Chief?' said I.
"'Not that, Old Hilltop,' he laughed; 'there are people under the huts,
and what good is a Sign without people?'
"Then he told me how his father had become great by thinking, not for
his own clan alone, but for all the people--it was because of the long
reach of his power that they called him Long-Hand. Now that he was

gone there would be nothing but quarrels and petty jealousies. 'They
will hunt the same grounds twice over,' said Taku-Wakin; 'they will kill
one another when they should be killing their enemies, and in the end
the Great Cold will get them.'
"Every year the Great Cold crept nearer. It came like a strong arm and
pressed the people west and south so that the tribes bore hard on one
another.
"'Since old time,' said Taku-Wakin, 'my people have been sea people.
But the People of the Great Cold came down along the ice-rim and cut
them off from it. My father had a plan to get to the sea, and a Talking
Stick which he was teaching me to understand, but I cannot find it in
any of the places where he used to hide it. If I had the Stick I think they
would make me chief in my father's place. But if Opata is made chief,
then I must give it to him if I find it, and Opata will have all the glory.
If I had but a Sign to keep them from making Opata chief...' So he
drummed on my head with his heels while I leaned against the Arch
Rock--oh, yes, I can sleep very comfortably, standing--and the moon
slid down the hill until it shone clear under the rock and touched the
feathered butts of the arrows. Then Taku woke me.
"'Up, put me up, Arrumpa! For now I have thought of a Sign that even
the Five Chiefs will have respect for.'
"So I put him up until his foot caught in the cleft of the rock and he
pried out five of the arrows.
"'Arrows of the Five Chiefs,' he said,--'that the chiefs gave to the gods
to keep, and the gods have given to me again!'
"That was the way always with Taku-Wakin, he kept all the god
customs of the people, but he never doubted, when he had found what
he wanted to do, that the gods would be on his side. He showed me
how every arrow was a little different from the others in the way the
blood drain was cut or the shaft feathered.
"'No fear,' he said. 'Every man will know his own when I come to the

Council.'
"He hugged the arrows to his breast and laughed over them, so I
hugged him with my trunk, and we agreed that once in every full moon
I was to come to Burnt Woods, and wait until he called me with
something that he took from his girdle and twirled on a thong. I do not
know what it was called, but it had a voice like young thunder.
"Like this?" The Mound-Builder cut the air with an oddly shaped bit of
wood swung on an arm's-length of string, once lightly, like a covey of
quail rising, and then loud like a wind in the full-branched forest.
"Just such another. Thrice he swung it so that I might not mistake the
sound, and that was the last I saw of him, hugging his five arrows, with
the moon gone pale like a meal-cake, and the tame wolves that skulk
between the huts for scraps, slinking off as he spoke to them."
"And did they--the Five Chiefs, I mean--have respect for his arrows?"
Dorcas Jane wondered.
"So he told me. They came from all the nine villages and sat in a
council ring, each with the elders of his village behind him,