e said: "The stream rises above the banks; come
with me, chief, or all will drown. I am master, and I speak. Ye are hungry
because ye are idle. Ye call the world yours, yet ye will not stoop to
gather from the earth the fruits of the earth. Ye sit idle in the summer,
and women and children die round you when winter comes. Because the game
is gone, ye say. Must the world stand still because a handful of Crees
need a hunting-ground? Must the makers of cities and the wonders of the
earth, who fill the land with plenty--must they stand far off, because the
Crees and their chief would wander over a million acres, for each man a
million, when by a hundred--ay, by ten--each white man would live in
plenty and make the land rejoice? See! Here is the truth. When the Great
Spirit draws the game away so that the hunting is poor, ye sit down and
fill your hearts with murder, and in the blackness of your thoughts kill
my brother. Idle and shiftless and evil ye are, while the earth cries out
to give you of its plenty, a great harvest from a little seed, if ye will
but dig and plant, and plough and sow and reap, and lend your backs to
toil. Now hear and heed. The end is come. For this once ye shall be
fed--by the blood of my heart, ye shall be fed! And another year ye shall
labor, and get the fruits of your labor, and not stand waiting, as it
were, till a fish shall pass the spear or a stag water at your door, that
ye may slay and eat. The end is come, ye idle men. O chief, hearken! One
of your braves would have slain me, even as you slew my brother--he one,
and you a thousand. Speak to your people as I have spoken, and then come
and answer for the deed done by your hand. And this I say that right shall
be done between men and men. Speak."

Jim had made his great effort, and not without avail. Arrowhead rose
slowly, the cloud gone out of his face, and spoke to his people, bidding
them wait in peace until food came, and appointing his son chief in his
stead until his return.

"The white man speaks truth, and I will go," he said. "I shall return," he
continued, "if it be written so upon the leaves of the Tree of Life; and
if it be not so written, I shall fade like a mist, and the tepees will
know me not again. The days of my youth are spent, and my step no longer
springs from the ground. I shuffle among the grass and the fallen leaves,
and my eyes scarce know the stag from the doe. The white man is master--if
he wills it we shall die; if