urce that was
least expected, for on approaching this enormous obelisk, with strength
well-nigh exhausted, he saw a silken cord hanging from a notch at its
top. Hastily knotting the end about his waist, that it might not fall
within reach of his pursuers, he climbed up, setting his feet into
roughnesses of the stone, and advancing, hand over hand, until he had
reached the summit, where he stayed, drinking dew and feeding on eagles'
eggs, until his enemies went away, for they could not reach him with
their arrows, defended as he was by points of rock. The foemen having
gone, he safely descended by the cord and reached his home. This help had
come from a friendly spider who saw his plight from her perch at the top
of the spire, and, weaving a web of extra thickness, she made one end
fast to a jag of rock while the other fell within his grasp--for she,
like all other of the brute tribe, liked the gentle cave-dwellers better
than the remorseless hunters. Hence the name of the Spider Tower.

THE LOST TRAIL

The canon of Oak Creek is choked by a mass of rock, shaped like a
keystone, and wedged into the jaws of the defile. An elderly Ute tells
this story of it. Acantow, one of the chiefs of his tribe, usually placed
his lodge beside the spring that bubbled from a thicket of wild roses in
the place where Rosita, Colorado, stands to-day. He left his
wife--Manetabee (Rosebud)--in the lodge while he went across the
mountains to attend a council, and was gone four sleeps. On his return he
found neither wife nor lodge, but footprints and hoofprints in the ground
showed to his keen eye that it was the Arapahoes who had been there.

Getting on their trail he rode over it furiously, and at night had
reached Oak Canon, along which he travelled until he saw the gleam of a
small fire ahead. A squall was coming up, and the noise of it might have
enabled him to gallop fairly into the group that he saw huddled about the
glow; but it is not in the nature of an Indian to do that, and, tying his
horse, he crawled forward.

There were fifteen of the Arapahoes, and they were gambling to decide the
ownership of Manetabee, who sat bound beneath a willow near them. So
engrossed were the savages in the contest that the snake-like approach of
Acantow was unnoticed until he had cut the thongs that bound Manetabee's
wrists and ankles--she did not cry out, for she had expected rescue--and
both had imperceptibly slid away from them. Then, with a