Part 3 (1/2)
”'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?
When I was still strapped in my basket my father set me on a bear that he had killed and prayed that the bear's cunning and strength should pa.s.s into me. Taku-Wakin's people thought that the heart of Long-Hand might have gone into the Mastodon.”
”Why not?” agreed Arrumpa gravely. ”I remember that Taku would call me Father at times, and--if he was very fond of me--Grandfather. But all he wanted at that tune was to keep Opata from being elected in his father's place, and Opata, who understood this perfectly, was very angry.
”'It is the custom,' he said, 'when a chief sleeps in the High Places,'--he meant the hilltops where they left their dead on poles or tied to the tree branches,--'that we elect another to his place in the Council.'
”'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. For he was a man who finished what he had begun, and it may be that he is long-handed enough to reach back from the place where he has gone. And this is a Sign to me, that he has taken his cut stick, which had the secret of his plan, with him.'
”Taku-Wakin fiddled with the arrows, laying them straight, hardly daring to look up at Opata, for if the chief had his father's cut stick, now would be the time that he would show it. Out of the tail of his eye he could see that the rest of the Council were startled. That was the way with men. Me they would trap, and take the skin of Saber-Tooth to wrap their cubs in, but at the hint of a Sign, or an old custom slighted, they would grow suddenly afraid. Then Taku looked up and saw Opata stroking his face with his hand to hide what he was thinking. He was no fool, and he saw that if the election was pressed, Taku-Wakin, boy as he was, would sit in his father's place because of the five arrows.
Taku-Wakin stood up and stretched out his hand to the Council.
”'Is it agreed, O Chiefs, that you keep my father's place until there is a Sign?'--and a deep _Hu-huh_ ran all about the circle. It was sign enough for them that the son of Long-Hand played unhurt with arrows that had been given to the G.o.ds. Taku stretched his hand to Opata, 'Is it agreed, O Chief?'
”'So long as the tribe comes to no harm,' said Opata, making the best of a bad business. 'It shall be kept until Long-Hand or his Talking Rod comes back to us.'
”'And,' said Taku-Wakin to me, 'whether Opata or I first sits in it, depends on which one of us can first produce a Sign.'”
[Ill.u.s.tration: TAKU AND ARRUMPA.]
IV
THE SECOND PART OF THE MASTODON STORY CONCERNING THE TRAIL TO THE SEA AND THE TALKING STICK OF TAKU-WAKIN
”It was the Talking Stick of his father that Taku-Wakin wanted,” said Arrumpa. ”He still thought Opata might have it, for every now and then Taku would catch him coming back with marsh mud on his moccasins. That was how I began to understand that the Great Plan was really a plan to find a way _through_ the marsh to the sea on the other side of it.
”'Opata has the Stick,' said Taku, 'but it will not talk to him; therefore he goes, as my father did, when the waters are low and the hummocks of hard ground stand up, to find a safe way for the tribe to follow. But my father had worked as far as the Gra.s.s Flats and beyond them, to a place of islands.'
”'Squidgy Islands,' I told him. 'The Gra.s.s-Eaters go there to drop their calves every season.' Taku kicked me behind the ears.
”'Said I not you were a beast of a bad heart!' he scolded. But how should I know he would care to hear about a lot of silly Mammoths.
'Also,' he said, 'you are my Medicine. You shall find me the trail of the Talking Stick, and I, Taku, son of Long-Hand, shall lead the people.'
”'In six moons,' I told him, 'the Gra.s.s-Eaters go to the Islands to calve--'
”'In which time,' said Taku, 'the chiefs will have quarreled six times, and Opata will have eaten me. Drive them, Arrumpa, drive them!'
”Umph, uh-ump!” chuckled the old beast reminiscently. ”We drove; we drove. What else was there to do? Taku-Wakin was my man. Besides, it was great fun. One-Tusk helped me. He was one of our bachelor herd who had lost a tusk in his first fight, which turned out greatly to his advantage. He would come sidling up to a refractory young cow with his eyes twinkling, and before anybody suspected he could give such a prod with his one tusk as sent her squealing.... But that came afterward. The Mammoth herd that fed on our edge of the Great Swamp was led by a wrinkled old cow, wise beyond belief. Scrag we called her. She would take the herd in to the bedding-ground by the river, to a landing-point on the opposite side, never twice the same, and drift noiselessly through the canebrake, choosing blowy hours when the swish of cane over woolly backs was like the run of the wind. Days when the marsh would be full of tapirs wallowing and wild pig rootling and fighting, there might be hundreds feeding within sound of you and not a hint of it except the occasional _toot-toot_ of some silly cow calling for Scrag, or a young bull blowing water.
”They bedded at the Gra.s.s Flats, but until Scrag herself had a mind to take the trail to the Squidgy Islands, there was n.o.body but Saber-Tooth could persuade her.
”'Then Saber-Tooth shall help us,' said my man.
”Not for nothing was he called Taku-Wakin, which means 'The Wonderful.'
He brought a tiger cub's skin of his father's killing, dried stiff and sewed up with small stones inside it. At one end there was a thong with a loop in it, and it smelled of tiger. I could see the tip of One-Tusk's trunk go up with a start every time he winded it. There was a curled moon high up in the air like a feather, and a moon-white tusk glinting here and there, where the herds drifted across the flats. There was no trouble about our going among them so long as Scrag did not wind us.
_They_ claimed to be kin to us, and they cared nothing for Man even when they smelled him. We came sidling up to a nervous young cow, and Taku dropped from my neck long enough to slip the thong over a hind foot as she lifted it. The thong was wet at first and scarcely touched her.