ry of his role and walked toward the trading-post. The white
members of his audience followed him.

After the departure of their foreign visitors the natives assumed an
alertness strangely at variance with their usual stolid demeanor.
Kilbuck, with his white guests, watched them from his living-room
windows.

Blanket after blanket was spread over the boxes of ashes in the grave.
Bolt after bolt of bright calico was torn into streamers and flung into
the open space. Cooking utensils and food came next; then trinkets of
every kind that might cheer the souls of the departed on their journey
over the Spirit Trail. At the very last, Swimming Wolf, who had
heretofore taken little part in the ceremonies, stepped forward with a
tiny phonograph, a rare possession since it was the only one in the
Village. The Indian carefully wound it up and lowered it into the
hole. There was a craning of masked heads, . . . a period of grunting
approval, . . . and then faintly from below came a whirring, a
sputtering and a high, cracked voice of announcement. The White
Chief's face wore its sardonic smile as the gravel was being shoveled
into the grave for the little tin phonograph was bravely playing:
_There'll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight_.

CHAPTER VII

THE POTLATCH DANCE

Evening found the Boreland family, attended by Kayak Bill, taking the
beach trail to the Village. It was well past nine o'clock and the
twilight had merged into the soft, luminous duskiness that would
continue until the sun came up at two-thirty in the morning.

In the gloom a hundred blanket-covered canoes lined the crescent beach
that sloped gently upward to a strip of gravel before the row of Indian
houses. The totems of the Thunder-bird and the Bear stood out high
against the sky. Before the Potlatch-house an Indian dog, small,
coyote-like, yelped shrilly as he tugged at the rope which fastened him
to a stake. The air throbbed to the incessant beat of drums and the
muffled chant that rose and fell inside the meeting-place.

The Potlatch-house, older than the oldest Indian at Katleean, had been
built before ever a white man had set foot on the beach of the Village.
The low building, over sixty feet square, was made of huge, hand-hewed
yellow cedar planks standing vertically. The gable ends faced the bay
and all across the triangular space above the eves was painted the
startling conventionalized head of a wolf. The ears rose weirdly fr