not
hasty, nor was she unmindful that men give the law and women ever
obey."

"As I say, I was very sick," Lone Chief went on. "And when my father,
the Otter, brought the girl Kasaan before me, I said rather should
they make me ready for burial than for marriage. Whereat the face of
my father went black with anger, and he said that I should be served
according to my wish, and that I who was yet alive should be made
ready for death as one already dead--"

"Which be not the way of our people, O White Man," spoke up Mutsak.
"For know that these things that were done to Lone Chief it was our
custom to do only to dead men. But the Otter was very angry."

"Ay," said Lone Chief. "My father, the Otter, was a man short of
speech and swift of deed. And he commanded the people to gather before
the lodge wherein I lay. And when they were gathered, he commanded
them to mourn for his son who was dead--"

"And before the lodge they sang the
death-song--_O-o-o-o-o-o-a-haa-ha-a-ich-klu-kuk-ich-klu-kuk_," wailed
Mutsak, in so excellent an imitation that all the tendrils of my spine
crawled and curved in sympathy.

"And inside the lodge," continued Lone Chief, "my mother blackened her
face with soot, and flung ashes upon her head, and mourned for me as
one already dead; for so had my father commanded. So Okiakuta, my
mother, mourned with much noise, and beat her breasts and tore her
hair; and likewise Hooniak, my sister, and Seenatah, my mother's
sister; and the noise they made caused a great ache in my head, and I
felt that I would surely and immediately die.

"And the elders of the tribe gathered about me where I lay and
discussed the journey my soul must take. One spoke of the thick and
endless forests where lost souls wandered crying, and where I, too,
might chance to wander and never see the end. And another spoke of
the big rivers, rapid with bad water, where evil spirits shrieked and
lifted up their formless arms to drag one down by the hair. For these
rivers, all said together, a canoe must be provided me. And yet
another spoke of the storms, such as no live man ever saw, when the
stars rained down out of the sky, and the earth gaped wide in many
cracks, and all the rivers in the heart of the earth rushed out and
in. Whereupon they that sat by me flung up their arms and wailed
loudly; and those outside heard, and wailed more loudly. And as to
them I was as dead, so was I to my own mind dead. I did not know when,
or how, y