on
him and made him a kayak, and helped him to escape. He went down the
river and arrived at home after a long absence.

During the summer other people had built houses near the home of his
aunt and there was a small village instead of the one lone hut. He
walked among the buildings until he found his aunt's house; but when
he entered, he frightened her very much, for at first glance she
thought it was a skeleton, he had been starved and beaten so long.

When his aunt recognized him and had heard his story, she said, "Oh,
you poor boy! What you must have suffered! I am full of rage at those
cruel villagers. I shall find some way to revenge your wrongs!"

She sat thinking a while and then said to him, "Bring me a piece of a
small log."

He brought the piece of wood and she whittled and rubbed it into the
form of an animal with long teeth and long, sharp claws, and painted
it white on the throat and red on the sides. Then they took the image
to the edge of the stream and placed it in the water.

"Go now," she said to it, "and kill everyone you find in the village
where my boy was beaten."

The image did not move.

She took it out of the water and cried over it, letting her tears
fall upon it; and the warm tears brought it to life and made it feel
sorry for her and the boy. She put it back into the water.

"Now, go and kill the bad people who beat my boy," she said.

At this the image floated across the creek and crawled up on the other
side, where it began to grow, soon becoming a large red bear. It
turned and looked at the woman till she called out, "Go, and spare no
one."

The bear went away and came to the village on the big river, the one
to which the boy had gone. There the first one he met was a man going
for water. This one was quickly torn in pieces, and one after another
of the villagers met the same fate; for the bear stayed near the
village until he had destroyed one-half of the people, and the rest
were so terrified that they began moving away.

Then he swam across the Yukon and went over the tundra to the farther
side of another river, killing everyone he met. For he had become so
bloodthirsty that the least sign of life seemed to fill him with fury
until he had destroyed it.

From there he turned back, and one day came to the place on the river
where he had first come to life. Seeing the people on the opposite
side he became furious, tearing the ground with his claws and
growling, and startin