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Sometimes when the silver coins were very, very scarce, when her shoulders ached with the cold, and her lips longed for tea and her mouth for bread, when the smoked salmon revolted her, and her thin garments grew thinner, she would go out and stand gazing at the Totem Pole, and think of the great pile of coin that the last "collector" had offered for it a pile of coin that would fill all her needs until Tenas was old enough to help her, to take his father's place at the hunting, the fishing, and above all, in the logging camps up the coast.
Every evening Tenas would roll himself in his blanket bed, while he chatted about the migrating birds, and longed for the time when he would be a great hunter, able to shoot the game as they flitted southward with their large families in September. "Then, Hoolool, we will have something better to eat than the smoked salmon," he would say.
"The Tenas Tyee then stripped himself and, with no clothing save a buckskin belt into which he thrust his hunting-knife, he flung his lithe young body into the sea. But at the end of four days he did not return.
The doctor came and went between her home and the village, but always with that solemn headshake, that spoke so much more forcibly than words. "She shall not die!" declared Maarda. "The Tenas Klootchman needs her, she shall not die!" But the woman grew feebler daily, her eyes grew brighter, her cheeks burned with deeper scarlet. "We must fight for it now," said the doctor.
He shall get the first gifts of our great Potlatch. The crowd was delighted. They approved the boy and rejoiced to see the real Potlatch was begun. When the blankets were piled up beside him they reached to the top of Ta-la-pus' head. Then the chief put ten dollars in the boy's hand with the simple words, "I am glad to give it. You won it well, my Tenas Tyee."
Simon acknowledged the compliment characteristically. He produced a pipe and examined the empty bowl with interest. "Halo smokin', me!" he observed gravely. Sandy nodded and handed him a large plug. The Indian filled his pipe and put the tobacco in his pocket. "You my tillikum," he announced. "When you tenas boy I like you, you like me.
I'm getting compliments from everybody to-night. I'm really flattered. I want to hear some more." "Better not," he advised apprehensively. "But I want to." "Ya-as," Simon drawled again. "Hyas kloshe tenas klootchman ah-ha. What name you callum?" "Missee Clyde Bullaby," Feng replied, making a manful attempt at Clyde's surname, which was quite beyond his lingual attainments. "Clyde!"
See berry dance if you stay long enough, perhaps a potlatch; do many things," said the Indian. One of the Indian paddlers said something to Kalitan, and he laughed a little, and Ted asked, curiously: "What did he say?" "Said Kalitan Tenas learned to talk as much as a Boston boy," said Kalitan, laughing heartily, and Ted laughed, too.
Yet how terribly she really needed their money she alone knew. To be sure, she had her own firewood in the forest that crept almost to her door, and in good seasons the salmon fishing was a great help. She caught and smoked and dried this precious food, stowing it away for use through the long winter months; but life was a continual struggle, and Tenas was yet too young to help her in the battle.
"That's what we say it means, we Squamish, that greed is evil and not clean, like the salt-chuck oluk. That it must be stamped out amongst our people, killed by cleanliness and generosity. The boy that overcame the serpent was both these things." "What became of this splendid boy?" I asked. "The Tenas Tyee?
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