han the voice of
Tamanous,--silence under the shadow of the great cliff,--silence
deepening down the forest vistas,--silence filling the void up to
the snows of Tacoma. All life and motion seemed paralyzed. At last
Skai-ki, the Blue-Jay, the wise bird, foe to magic, sang cheerily
overhead. Her song seemed to refresh again the honest laws of
nature. The buzz of life stirred everywhere again, and the inspired
miser rose and hastened home to prepare for his work.

"When Tamanous has put a great thought in a man's brain, has
whispered him a great discovery within his power, or hinted at a
great crime, that spiteful demon does not likewise suggest the
means of accomplishment.

"The miser, therefore, must call upon his own skill to devise
proper tools, and upon his own judgment to fix upon the most
fitting time for carrying out his quest. Sending his squaw out to
the kamas prairie, under pretense that now was the season for her
to gather their store of that sickish-sweet esculent root, and that
she might not have her squaw's curiosity aroused by seeing him at
strange work, he began his preparations. He took a pair of enormous
elk-horns, and fashioned from each horn a two-pronged pick or
spade, by removing all the antlers except the two topmost. He
packed a good supply of kippered salmon, and filled his pouch with
kinnikinnick for smoking in his black stone pipe. With his bows and
arrows and his two elk-horn picks wrapped in buckskin hung at his
back, he started just before sunset, as if for a long hunt. His
old, faithful, maltreated, blanketless, vermilionless squaw,
returning with baskets full of kamas, saw him disappearing moodily
down the trail.

"All that night, all the day following, he moved on noiselessly, by
paths he knew. He hastened on, unnoticing outward objects, as one
with controlling purpose hastens. Elk and deer, bounding through
the trees, passed him, but he tarried not. At night he camped just
below the snows of Tacoma. He was weary, and chill night-airs
blowing down from the summit almost froze him. He dared not take
his fire-sticks, and, placing one perpendicular upon a little
hollow on the flat side of the other, twirl the upright stick
rapidly between his palms until the charred spot kindled and
lighted his 'tipsoo,' his