ve
in the kitchen. On the spotlessly white pine floor were spread soft,
grey lynx skins, one or two raccoon skins with their fluffy, ringed
tails, and a couple of red fox pelts. On these sprawled the four boys
in various and intricate attitudes. In the corner back of the stove
lounged Peter Ottertail, on a single brown buffalo robe. With a bit of
sharp-edged flint he scraped tiny curls of shavings from a half-formed
ashwood arrow, which, from time to time, he lifted even with one eye to
look along its glimmering length toward the light, to see that it was
straight and flawless, his soft, even voice warbling out the strangely
beautiful Indian tradition of

THE SHADOW TRAIL

"You young palefaces that are within my heart know well what a path
through the forest is, or what a track across the valley means, but
the Indian calls these footways 'a trail,' and some trails are hard to
follow. They hide themselves in the wilderness, bury themselves in the
swamps and swales, and sometimes a man or a buffalo must beat his own
trail where never footstep has fallen before. The Shadow Trail is not of
these, and at some time every man must walk it. I was a very small, very
young brave when I first heard of it. My grandsire used to tell me, just
as I tell you now, of the wonder country through which it led, of the
wise and knowing animals that had their lairs and dens beside it, of the
royal birds that had their nests and eyries above it, of the white stars
that hovered along its windings, of the small, whispering creatures of
the night that made music with their cobweb wings. These things all talk
with a man as he takes the Shadow Trail; and the oftener they speak and
sing to him, the higher climbs the trail; and, if he listens long enough
to their voices, he will find the trail has lifted its curving way aloft
until it creeps along the summit of the mountains, not at their base.
It is here that the stars come close, and the singing is hushed in the
great, white silence of the heights; but only he who listens to the wise
animals and the eagles and the gauzy-winged insects will ever climb so
high. This is the Shadow Trail the wild geese take on their April flight
to the north, as, honking through the rain-warm nights, they interweave
their wings with the calling wind. They leave no footprints to show
whither they go, for the northing bird is wise.

"This is the Shadow Trail that countless buffaloes thundered through
when, hunted by t