r all these people were kindly and
hospitable even to a boy of eleven. At midnight there was another feast,
this time of clams, and luscious crabs, with much steaming black tea.
Then came the great Squamish chief, saying more welcoming words, and
inviting his guests to begin their tribal dances. Ta-la-pus never forgot
the brilliant sight that he looked on for the next few hours. Scores of
young men and women went through the most graceful figures of beautiful
dances, their shell ornaments jingling merrily in perfect time to each
twist and turn of their bodies. The wild music from the beat of Indian
drums and shell "rattles" arose weirdly, half sadly, drifting up the
mountain heights, until it lost itself in the timber line of giant firs
that crested the summits. The red blaze from the camp fires flitted
and flickered across the supple figures that circled around, in and
out between the three hundred canoes beached on the sands, and the
smoke-tipped tents and log lodges beyond the reach of tide water. Above
it all a million stars shone down from the cloudless heavens of a
perfect British Columbian night. After a while little Ta-la-pus fell
asleep, and when he awoke, dawn was just breaking. Someone had covered
him with a beautiful, white, new blanket, and as his young eyes opened
they looked straight into the kindly face of the great Squamish chief.

"We are all aweary, 'Tenas Tyee' (Little Chief)," he said. "The dancers
are tired, and we shall all sleep until the sun reaches midday, but my
guests cry for one more dance before sunrise. Will you dance for us, oh,
little Ta-la-pus?"

The boy sprang up, every muscle and sinew and nerve on the alert. The
moment of his triumph or failure had come.

"You have made me, even a boy like me, very welcome, O Great Tyee," he
said, standing erect as an arrow, with his slender, dark chin raised
manfully. "I have eaten of your kloshe muck-a-muck (very good food),
and it has made my heart and my feet very skookum (strong). I shall do
my best to dance and please you." The boy was already dressed in the
brilliant buckskin costume his mother had spent so many hours in making,
and his precious wolfskin was flung over his arm. The great Squamish
chief now took him by the hand and led him towards the blazing fires
round which the tired dancers, the old men and women, sat in huge
circles where the chill of dawn could not penetrate.

"One more dance, then we sleep," said the chief to the grea