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A hundred thousan' of good running meat in the herd, an' ten thousan' wolves an' cats a-followin' an' livin' off the stragglers an' the leavin's. We leave the leavin's. The herd's movin' to the east, an' we'll be followin' 'em any day now. We eat our dogs, an' what we don't eat we smoke 'n cure for the spring before the salmon-run gets its sting in.

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 am glad my grandchild is girl; it means big salmon-run next year."

By Thursday the people were dying so rapidly that their corpses could not be handled, and dead bodies lay everywhere. Thursday night the panic outrush for the country began. Imagine, my grandsons, people, thicker than the salmon-run you have seen on the Sacramento river, pouring out of the cities by millions, madly over the country, in vain attempt to escape the ubiquitous death.

She sat, still leaning on her paddle; her eyes, half-closed, rested on the distant outline of the blurred heights across the Inlet. I shall not further attempt her broken English, for this is but the shadow of her story, and without her unique personality the legend is as a flower that lacks both color and fragrance. She called it "The Lost Salmon-run."

'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.

'Suppose the salmon-run is small, we will have no food; suppose there is no man-child, we will have no Great Tyee to show us how to get food from other tribes, and we shall starve. "'Your hearts are black and bloodless, thundered the Great Tyee, turning upon them fiercely, 'and your eyes are blinded.

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.

Now, Madeline, the Mission girl, was an orphan. Her white father had failed to give a bald-faced grizzly the trail one day, and had died quickly. Then her Indian mother, having no man to fill the winter cache, had tried the hazardous experiment of waiting till the salmon-run on fifty pounds of flour and half as many of bacon.

But it was yet winter, and the rains were slanting and the fogs drifting, when the wife of the Great Tyee stood before him and said: "'Before the salmon-run I shall give to you a great gift. Will you honor me most if it is the gift of a boy-child or a girl-child? The Great Tyee loved the woman. He was stern with his people, hard with his tribe; he ruled his council-fires with a will of stone.

"I should like a little of both," she said. "I should like to see your face as well as the face of my father." The day of the auction came. Tana-naw Station was populous. As was their custom, the tribes had gathered to await the salmon-run, and in the meantime spent the time in dancing and frolicking, trading and gossiping.