took
from us in trade. Also, what of presents and great promises, ten of
our young hunters did he take with him on a journey which fared no
man knew where. It is said they died in the snow of the Ice Mountains
where man has never been, or in the Hills of Silence which are beyond
the edge of the earth. Be that as it may, dogs and young hunters were
seen never again by the Whitefish people.

"And more white men came with the years, and ever, with pay and
presents, they led the young men away with them. And sometimes the
young men came back with strange tales of dangers and toils in the
lands beyond the Pellys, and sometimes they did not come back. And we
said: 'If they be unafraid of life, these white men, it is because
they have many lives; but we be few by the Whitefish, and the young
men shall go away no more.' But the young men did go away; and the
young women went also; and we were very wroth.

"It be true, we ate flour, and salt pork, and drank tea which was a
great delight; only, when we could not get tea, it was very bad and we
became short of speech and quick of anger. So we grew to hunger for
the things the white men brought in trade. Trade! trade! all the time
was it trade! One winter we sold our meat for clocks that would not
go, and watches with broken guts, and files worn smooth, and pistols
without cartridges and worthless. And then came famine, and we were
without meat, and two score died ere the break of spring.

"'Now are we grown weak,' we said; 'and the Pellys will fall upon us,
and our bounds be overthrown.' But as it fared with us, so had it
fared with the Pellys, and they were too weak to come against us.

"My father, Otsbaok, a strong man, was now old and very wise. And he
spoke to the chief, saying: 'Behold, our dogs be worthless. No longer
are they thick-furred and strong, and they die in the frost and
harness. Let us go into the village and kill them, saving only the
wolf ones, and these let us tie out in the night that they may mate
with the wild wolves of the forest. Thus shall we have dogs warm and
strong again.'

"And his word was harkened to, and we Whitefish became known for our
dogs, which were the best in the land. But known we were not for
ourselves. The best of our young men and women had gone away with the
white men to wander on trail and river to far places. And the young
women came back old and broken, as Noda had come, or they came not at
all. And the young men came back to s