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“Then you must have forgotten what I had to do with it,” said a voice that seemed to come from high up in the air, so that they all looked up suddenly and would have been frightened at the huge bulk, if the voice coming from it in a squeaky whisper had not made it seem ridiculous. It was the Mastodon, who had strolled in from the pre-historic room, though it was a wonder to the children how so large a beast could move so silently.

“Hey,” said a Lenni-Lenape, who had sat comfortably smoking all this time, “I’ve heard of you–there was an old Telling of my father’s–though I hardly think I believed it. What are you doing here?”

“I’ve a perfect right to come,” said the Mastodon, shuffling embarrassedly from foot to foot. “I was the first of my kind to have a man belonging to me, and it was I that showed him the trail to the sea.”

“Oh, please, would you tell us about it?” said Dorcas.

The Mastodon rocked to and fro on his huge feet, embarrassedly.

“If–if it would please the company–“

Everybody looked at the Buffalo Chief, for, after all, it was he who began the party. The old bull pawed dust and blew steam from his nostrils, which was a perfectly safe thing to do in case the story didn’t turn out to his liking.

“Tell, tell,” he agreed, in a voice like a man shouting down twenty rain barrels at once.

And looking about slyly with his little twinkling eyes at the attentive circle, the Mastodon began.

[THE END]

NOTE:

THE BUFFALO COUNTRY

Licks are places where deer and buffaloes went to lick the salt they needed out of the ground. They were once salt springs or lakes long dried up.

Wallows were mudholes where the buffaloes covered themselves with mud as a protection from mosquitoes and flies. They would lie down and work themselves into the muddy water up to their eyes. Crossing the Great Plains, you can still see round green places that were wallows in the days of the buffalo.

The Pawnees are a roving tribe, in the region of the Platte and Kansas Rivers. If they were just setting out on their journey when the children heard them they would sing:–

“Dark against the sky, yonder distant line
Runs before us.
Trees we see, long the line of trees
Bending, swaying in the wind.

“Bright with flashing light, yonder distant line
Runs before us.
Swiftly runs, swift the river runs,
Winding, flowing through the land.”

But if they happened to be crossing the river at the time they would be singing to Kawas, their eagle god, to help them. They had a song for coming up on the other side, and one for the mesas, with long, flat-sounding lines, and a climbing song for the mountains.

You will find all these songs and some others in a book by Miss Fletcher in the public library.