here up the river
was the mother of the gold, where all this came from. They asked my
father if he knew where it was.

"Now, my father had found where there was plenty of the yellow metal.
But he, too, was shrewd, and, seeing that the white men prized it so
highly, he thought he would go back and get the gold, and sell it to the
white men for iron and shot and powder and blankets.

"The white men guessed that he knew where the mother of gold was, and
asked him. But he refused to tell them, and went away.

"The white men followed us for days. One evening I was with my mother,
and heard my father tell her where the yellow metal was on the opposite
side of the river, pointing to a great sycamore tree that grew on the
river bank. 'Beneath that tree lies much of the yellow metal,' he said
to her, and I saw the tree, and knew what he said was true.

"That night the white men came to our camp and had a long talk with my
father, trying to make him tell where the mother gold was, and, when he
would not, suddenly they fell upon the camp, and, after killing some of
the young men, drove my father and the others away. At the first shot my
mother ran away into the woods with me."

"That was horrible," interjected Stella.

"As my mother ran, she was shot in the back, but she kept on running
until she was out of sight before she fell.

"Then the white men went away, and I lay there with my mother until she
breathed no more and was cold.

"I cried for a long time because it was dark and cold, and I could hear
the wild animals in the woods all about me.

"This frightened me, and I began to call 'Ai-i-e!' which is the Indian
way of lamentation, and I cried louder all the time to keep the wild
animals from me."

"And did no one hear you?"

"Yes. In the night I heard a noise in the wood, and it was the noise of
a man walking, an Indian man, for it was soft, made by moccasins. Then I
cried louder, and soon my father came and picked both me and my mother
up in his arms and carried us away into the woods, where he buried my
mother, and went away into the North again.

"But as I grew up, I thought often about the mother gold and the place
where it was hidden by the Great Spirit, for so I had heard my father
say. Once when I spoke of it to my father he told me never to speak of
it to him again, for it was cursed, having taken away from him his son,
who was killed by the white men, and my mother.

"So never did I talk of it. But w