th the dead!"

As Ellen thought on these things there crept into her mother-heart a
feeling of pity for these simple, trusting people seeking the
protection and guidance of this white man only to have their beliefs
and superstitions laughed at and exploited for the benefit of his
company. She was beginning to feel, dimly, what every reader of the
history of exploration knows, that drunkenness, fraud and trickery are
among the first teachings the white man's civilization brings to the
tribes of a new country.

A tinge of sadness and foreboding darkened her thoughts.

Kayak Bill, who had been drawing contentedly on his corn-cob pipe, rose
suddenly through a low-hung cloud of tobacco smoke, and taking up an
old almanac from the table, began fanning the air clumsily. His slow
drawl with a suspicion of haste in it, broke in on her meditations:

"By hell, Lady," he apologized earnestly, "excuse me for creatin' of
such a blamed smudge!"

Ellen looked up from her knitting.

"Oh, I don't mind a little smoke, Kayak Bill." She smiled at the
concern in the old man's voice. "You see Shane smokes a good deal,
too." She nodded toward the couch where her husband puffed on his pipe
as he plied Kilbuck with questions about the Island of Kon Klayu. "I
was just thinking about the funeral canoes and the Potlatch."

"The beginnin's of the Potlatch will be pulled off tomorrow, Lady, but
tonight--" Kayak stopped fanning and leaned closer to her. Then with
a glance in the direction of the White Chief he lowered his voice.
"Tonight, when the funeral canoes comes in, I'd aim to gather in the
young sprout, Loll, and that little gal sister o' yourn. . . . We're
purty civilized here in Katleean, but--wall, there ain't no tellin'
what an Injine will do after he's taken on a couple o' snorts o' white
mule,--or a squaw-man, either, for that matter. O' course, I make the
stuff myself, and a mighty hard time I have, too, to keep shut o' these
pesky dudes o' revenue officers that's all the time a-devilin' o' me.
But I don't recommend it none a-tall."

Kayak Bill, with his boot-laces snaking along behind him, shuffled over
to his chair once more and settled himself for conversation, which
Ellen had learned meant a monologue. The edge of his sombrero backed
his busy head and kindly face like a soiled grey halo. His low voice,
never rising, never falling, droned on:

"Yas, I don't drink none myself, bein' weaned, as you might say, when