"I shall believe whatever you tell me, Chief," I answered; "I am only
too ready to believe. You know I come of a superstitious race, and all
my association with the Palefaces has never yet robbed me of my
birthright to believe strange traditions."

"You always understand," he said after a pause.

"It's my heart that understands," I remarked quietly.

He glanced up quickly, and with one of his all too few radiant smiles,
he laughed.

"Yes, skookum tum-tum." Then without further hesitation he told the
tradition, which, although not of ancient happening, is held in great
reverence by his tribe. During its recital he sat with folded arms,
leaning on the table, his head and shoulders bending eagerly towards me
as I sat at the opposite side. It was the only time he ever talked to
me when he did not use emphasising gesticulations, but his hands never
once lifted: his wonderful eyes alone gave expression to what he called
"The Legend of the 'Salt-chuck Oluk'" (sea-serpent).

[Illustration: THE CAPILANO RIVER
Bishop & Christie, Photo.]

"Yes, it was during the first gold craze, and many of our young men
went as guides to the whites far up the Fraser. When they returned
they brought these tales of greed and murder back with them, and our
old people and our women shook their heads and said evil would come of
it. But all our young men, except one, returned as they went--kind to
the poor, kind to those who were foodless, sharing whatever they had
with their tillicums. But one, by name Shak-shak (The Hawk), came back
with hoards of gold nuggets, chickimin,[1] everything; he was rich like
the white men, and, like them, he kept it. He would count his
chickimin, count his nuggets, gloat over them, toss them in his palms.
He rested his head on them as he slept, he packed them about with him
through the day. He loved them better than food, better than his
tillicums, better than his life. The entire tribe arose. They said
Shak-shak had the disease of greed; that to cure it he must give a
great potlatch, divide his riches with the poorer ones, share them with
the old, the sick, the foodless. But he jeered and laughed and told
them No, and went on loving and gloating over his gold.

"Then the Sagalie Tyee spoke out of the sky and said, 'Shak-shak, you
have made of yourself a loathsome thing; you will not listen to the cry
of the hungry, to the call of the old and sick; you will not share your
possessions; you have ma