uld read in the books in a thousand years. His eyes were acrawl
with the secrets of life. They were just squirming and wriggling there.
The trouble is I almost got them, and then I didn't. I'm no wiser than
I was before, but I was near them." He paused and then added, "I can't
tell you, but that dog's eyes were just spilling over with cues to
what life is, and evolution, and star-dust, and cosmic sap, and all the
rest--everything."

"Boiled down into simple American, you got a hunch," Shorty insisted.

Smoke finished tossing the dried salmon, one to each dog, and shook his
head.

"I tell you yes," Shorty argued. "Smoke, it's a sure hunch. Something's
goin' to happen before the day is out. You'll see. And them dried
fish'll have a bearin'."

"You've got to show me," said Smoke.

"No, I ain't. The day'll take care of itself an' show you. Now listen to
what I'm tellin' you. I got a hunch myself out of your hunch. I'll bet
eleven ounces against three ornery toothpicks I'm right. When I get a
hunch I ain't a-scared to ride it."

"You bet the toothpicks, and I'll bet the ounces," Smoke returned.

"Nope. That'd be plain robbery. I win. I know a hunch when it tickles
me. Before the day's out somethin' 'll happen, an' them fish'll have a
meanin'."

"Hell," said Smoke, dismissing the discussion contemptuously.

"An' it'll be hell," Shorty came back. "An' I'll take three more
toothpicks with you on them same odds that it'll be sure-enough hell."

"Done," said Smoke.

"I win," Shorty exulted. "Chicken-feather toothpicks for mine."

An hour later they cleared the divide, dipped down past the Bald Buttes
through a sharp elbow-canyon, and took the steep open slope that dropped
into Porcupine Creek. Shorty, in the lead, stopped abruptly, and Smoke
whoaed the dogs. Beneath them, coming up, was a procession of humans,
scattered and draggled, a quarter of a mile long.

"They move like it was a funeral," Shorty noted.

"They've no dogs," said Smoke.

"Yep; there's a couple of men pullin' on a sled."

"See that fellow fall down? There's something the matter, Shorty, and
there must be two hundred of them."

"Look at 'em stagger as if they was soused. There goes another."

"It's a whole tribe. There are children there."

"Smoke, I win," Shorty proclaimed. "A hunch is a hunch, an' you can't
beat it. There she comes. Look at her!--surgin' up like a lot of
corpses."

The mass of Indians, at sight of the two men, had rais