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TOLD BY THE COYOTE

“Concerning that Talking Stick of Taku-Wa-kin’s,”–said the Coyote, as the company settled back after Arrumpa’s story,–“there is a Telling of my people … not of a Rod, but a Skin, a hide of thy people, Great Chief,”–he bowed to the Bull Buffalo,–“that talked of Tamal-Pyweack and a Dead Man’s Journey–” The little beast stood with lifted paw and nose delicately pointed toward the Bighorn’s country as it lifted from the prairie, drawing the earth after it in great folds, high crest beyond high crest flung against the sun; light and color like the inside of a shell playing in its snow-filled hollows.

Up sprang every Plainsman, painted shield dropped to the shoulder, right hand lifted, palm outward, and straight as an arrow out of every throat, the “Hey a-hey a-huh!” of the Indian salutation.

“Backbone of the World!” cried the Blackfoot. “Did you come over that, Little Brother?”

“Not I, but my father’s father’s first father. By the Crooked Horn,”–he indicated a peak like a buffalo horn, and a sag in the crest below it.

“Then that,” said Bighorn, dropping with one bound from his aerial lookout, “should be my story, for my people made that trail, and it was long before any other trod in it.”

“It was of that first treading that the Skin talked,” agreed the Coyote. He looked about the company for permission to begin, and then addressed himself to Arrumpa. “You spoke, Chief Two-Tails, of the ‘tame wolves’ of Taku-Wakin; were they wolves, or–“

“Very like you, Wolfling, now that I think of it,” agreed the Mastodon, “and they were not tame exactly; they ran at the heels of the hunters for what they could pick up, and sometimes they drove up game for him.”

“Why should a coyote, who is the least of all wolves, hunt for himself when he can find a man to follow?” said the Blackfoot, who sat smoking a great calumet out of the west corridor. “Man is the wolf’s Medicine. In him he hears the voice of the Great Mystery, and becomes a dog, which is great gain to him.”

Pleased as if his master had patted him, without any further introduction the Coyote began his story.

“Thus and so thought the First Father of all the Dogs in the year when he was called Friend-at-the-Back, and Pathfinder. That was the time of the Great Hunger, nearly two years after he joined the man pack at Hidden-under-the-Mountain and was still known by his lair name of Younger Brother. He followed a youth who was the quickest afoot and the readiest laugher. He would skulk about the camp at Hidden-under-the-Mountain watching until the hunters went out. Sometimes How-kawanda–that was the young man he followed–would give a coyote cry of warning, and sometimes Younger Brother would trot off in the direction where he knew the game to be, looking back and pointing until the young men caught the idea; after which, when they had killed, the hunters would laugh and throw him pieces of liver.

“The Country of Dry Washes lies between the Cinoave on the south and the People of the Bow who possessed the Salmon Rivers, a great gray land cut across by deep gullies where the wild waters come down from the Wall-of-Shining-Rocks and worry the bone-white boulders. The People of the Dry Washes live meanly, and are meanly spoken of by the People of the Coast who drove them inland from the sea borders. After the Rains, when the quick grass sprang up, vast herds of deer and pronghorn come down from the mountains; and when there were no rains the people ate lizards and roots. In the moon of the Frost-Touching-Mildly clouds came up from the south with a great trampling of thunder, and flung out over the Dry Washes as a man flings his blanket over a maiden. But if the Rains were scant for two or three seasons, then there was Hunger, and the dust devils took the mesas for their dancing-places.