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Apunkewis, who had the two villages under Black Rock and was a friend of Long-Hand, told him that there would be a Sign. "'There will, said Taku-Wakin, 'but I shall bring it. He knew that Opata meant mischief, but he could not guess what. All the way to Opata's his thought went round and round like a fire-stick in the hearth-hole. When he heard the drums he flared up like a spark in the tinder.
Taku-Wakin watched sidewise; he saw the snake writhing on the ground and the unstopped water-bottle with the ground dry under it. I think he suspected. I saw a little ripple go over his naked body as if a thought had struck him. He stepped aside once, and as Opata came at him, threatening and accusing, he changed his place again, ever so slightly.
Now that he was gone there would be nothing but quarrels and petty jealousies. 'They will hunt the same grounds twice over, said Taku-Wakin; 'they will kill one another when they should be killing their enemies, and in the end the Great Cold will get them. "Every year the Great Cold crept nearer.
About halfway we found the tiger-skin tramped into the mire, but as soon as we struck the Islands I turned back, for I was in need of good oak browse, and I wished to find out what had become of Taku-Wakin. It was not until one evening when I had come well up into the hills for a taste of fir, that I saw him, black against the sun with the tribe behind him.
We ate for a quarter of the moon's course before we went back around the hard land to see what had become of Taku-Wakin. We fed as far as there was any browse between the sea and the marsh, and at last we saw them come, across the salt pastures. They were sleek as otters with the black slime of the sloughs, and there was not a garment left on them which had not become water-soaked and useless.
By this time, too, Scrag knew what we were after; she covered her trail and crossed it as many times as a rabbit. Then, just as we thought we had it, the wolf water came and gnawed the trail in two. "Taku-Wakin would come to me by the Black Lagoon and tell me how Opata worked to make himself chief of the nine villages.
"'Also it is a custom, said Taku-Wakin, 'to bring the token of his great exploit into Council and quicken the heart by hearing of it. You have heard, O Chiefs," he said, "that my people had a plan for the good of the people, and it has come to me in my heart that that plan was stronger in him than death.
"'Short life to him, I said. 'In three nights or four, the Grass-Eaters will be moving. "'And my people are fast in the mud, said Taku-Wakin. 'I am a mud-head myself to think a crooked rod could save them. He took it from his girdle warped by the wet and the warmth of his body.
"'Game or Council, said Taku-Wakin, 'I sit in my father's place until I have a Sign from him whom he will have to sit there." "But I don't understand " began Oliver, looking about the circle of listening Indians. "His father was dead, wasn't he?" "What is 'dead'?" said the Lenni-Lenape; "Indians do not know. Our friends go out of their bodies; where? Into another or into a beast?
It came like a strong arm and pressed the people west and south so that the tribes bore hard on one another. "'Since old time, said Taku-Wakin, 'my people have been sea people. But the People of the Great Cold came down along the ice-rim and cut them off from it.
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