ssities of Indian life. The third was a stone
elk's head with the antlers in velvet. At the foot of this monument he
dug a hole.

Suddenly a noise behind him caused him to turn. An otter clambered over
the edge of the lake and struck the snow with its tail. Eleven others
followed. Each was twice as big as any otter he had ever seen; their
chief was four times as big. The eleven sat themselves in a circle
around him; the leader climbed upon the stone elk-head.

At first the treasure-seeker was abashed, but he had come to find hiaqua
and he went on digging. At every thirteenth stroke the leader of the
otters tapped the stone elk with his tail, and the eleven followers
tapped the snow with their tails. Once they all gathered closer and
whacked the digger good and hard with their tails, but, though
astonished and badly bruised, he went on working. Presently he broke his
elkhorn pick, but the biggest otter seized another in his teeth and
handed it to him.

Finally his pick struck a flat rock with a hollow sound, and the otters
all drew near and gazed into the hole, breathing excitedly. He lifted
the rock and under it found a cavity filled to the brim with pure-white
hiaqua, every shell large, unbroken and beautiful. All were hung neatly
on strings.

Never was treasure-quest so successful! The otters, recognizing him as
the favorite of Tamanoues, retired to a distance and gazed upon him
respectfully.

"But the miser," writes the narrator, "never dreamed of gratitude, never
thought to hang a string from the buried treasure about the salmon and
camas tamanoues stones, and two strings around the elk's head; no, all
must be his own, all he could carry now, and the rest for the future."

Greedily he loaded himself with the booty and laboriously climbed to the
rim of the bowl prepared for the descent of the mountain. The otters,
puffing in concert, plunged again into the lake, which at once
disappeared under a black cloud.

Straightway a terrible storm arose through which the voice of Tamanoues
screamed tauntingly. Blackness closed around him. The din was horrible.
Terrified, he threw back into the bowl behind him five strings of
hiaqua to propitiate Tamanoues, and there followed a momentary lull,
during which he started homeward. But immediately the storm burst again
with roarings like ten thousand bears.

Nothing could be done but to throw back more hiaqua. Following each
sacrifice came another lull, followed in turn by