; his joints creaked; his food supply was gone; but
he picked kamas bulbs and broke his fast, and the world seemed fresh and
good to him. He looked back at Tacoma and admired the splendor of its
snows and the beauty of its form, and had never a care for the riches in
its crater. The wood was strange to him as he descended, but at sunset he
reached his wigwam, where an aged woman was cooking salmon. Wife and
husband recognized each other, though he had been asleep and she
a-sorrowing for years. In his joy to be at home the miser dug up all his
treasure that he had secreted and gave of his wealth and wisdom to whoso
needed them. Life, love, and nature were enough, he found, and he never
braved the tamanous again.

THE DEVIL AND THE DALLES

In days when volcanoes were playing in the Northwest and the sternly
beautiful valley of the Columbia was a hell of ash and lava, the fiend
men of the land met at intervals on the heated rocks to guzzle and riot
together. It was at one of these meetings in the third summer after
Tacoma had stopped spouting that the devil urged a lesson from the
growing peace and joy of nature, and prayed the fiend men to desist from
killing and eating each other and live in love.

With a howl of rage at such a proposal they set upon him, tossing their
tails in such a threatening manner that he deemed it best to be off, and
as his hoofs clattered over the country his brain was busy in devising an
escape. Nearing the mountain bulwarks of an inland sea, whose breakers'
rhythmic roar he heard above the yells of his pursuers, a hope came into
his head, and new vigor into his tail, though you might have thought the
latter accession was not needed, for his tail was of prodigious length
and strength. He whirled this limb aloft and beat it on the earth. A
chasm opened at the stroke, and the devil skipped across to the safe side
of it.

Safe? No; for the fiend men in advance took the leap and came beside him.
The tormented one could thrash any two of them at once, but he was not
equal to a thousand. He brandished his weapon once more and it fell with
a crash. Earth shook, dust arose in clouds, and a deeper cleft than
before yawned through the valley. Again the fiend men tried to reach him,
and, though the gap was bigger and many fell into it, hundreds made the
jump and overtook him. He must make one more attempt. The tail revolved
for a third time, and with the energy of despair he flailed the ground
wi