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“Messengers were then sent up and down the coast, sent far up the Fraser River, and to the valley lands inland for many leagues, gathering as they journeyed all the men of magic that could be found. Never were so many medicine men in council before. They built fires and danced and chanted for many days. They spoke with the gods of the mountains, with the gods of the sea, then ‘the power’ of decision came to them. They were inspired with a choice to lay before the tribes-people, and the most ancient medicine man in all the coast region arose and spoke their resolution:

“‘The people of the tribe cannot be allowed to have all things. They want a boy-child and they want a great salmon run also. They cannot have both. The Sagalie Tyee has revealed to us, the great men of magic, that both these things will make the people arrogant and selfish. They must choose between the two.’

“‘Choose, oh! you ignorant tribes-people,’ commanded the Great Tyee. ‘The wise men of our coast have said that the girl-child who will some day bear children of her own, will also bring abundance of salmon at her birth; but the boy-child brings to you but himself.’

“‘Let the salmon go,” shouted the people, ‘but give us a future Great Tyee. Give us the boy-child.’

“And when the child was born it was a boy.

“‘Evil will fall upon you,’ wailed the Great Tyee. ‘You have despised a mother-woman. You will suffer evil and starvation and hunger and poverty, oh! foolish tribes-people. Did you not know how great a girl-child is?’

“That spring, people from a score of tribes came up to the Fraser for the salmon run. They came great distances–from the mountains, the lakes, the far-off dry lands, but not one fish entered the vast rivers of the Pacific Coast. The people had made their choice. They had forgotten the honor that a mother-child would have brought them. They were bereft of their food. They were stricken with poverty. Through the long winter that followed they endured hunger and starvation. Since then our tribe has always welcomed girl-children–we want no more lost runs.”

The klootchman lifted her arms from her paddle as she concluded; her eyes left the irregular outline of the violet mountains. She had come back to this year of grace–her Legend Land had vanished.

“So,” she added, “you see now, maybe, why I glad my grandchild is girl; it means big salmon run next year.”

“It is a beautiful story, klootchman,” I said, “and I feel a cruel delight that your men of magic punished the people for their ill-choice.”

“That because you girl-child yourself,” she laughed.

There was the slightest whisper of a step behind me. I turned to find Maarda almost at my elbow. The rising tide was unbeaching the canoe, and as Maarda stepped in and the klootchman slipped astern, it drifted afloat.

“Kla-how-ya,” nodded the klootchman as she dipped her paddle-blade in exquisite silence.

“Kla-how-ya,” smiled Maarda.

“Kla-how-ya, tillicums,” I replied, and watched for many moments as they slipped away into the blurred distance, until the canoe merged into the violet and grey of the farther shore.