icine man in all the coast
region arose and spoke their resolution:

"'The people of the tribe cannot be allowed to have all things. They
want a boy-child and they want a great salmon run also. They cannot
have both. The Sagalie Tyee has revealed to us, the great men of
magic, that both these things will make the people arrogant and
selfish. They must choose between the two.'

"'Choose, oh! you ignorant tribes-people,' commanded the Great Tyee.
'The wise men of our coast have said that the girl-child who will some
day bear children of her own, will also bring abundance of salmon at
her birth; but the boy-child brings to you but himself.'

"'Let the salmon go," shouted the people, 'but give us a future Great
Tyee. Give us the boy-child.'

"And when the child was born it was a boy.

"'Evil will fall upon you,' wailed the Great Tyee. 'You have despised
a mother-woman. You will suffer evil and starvation and hunger and
poverty, oh! foolish tribes-people. Did you not know how great a
girl-child is?'

"That spring, people from a score of tribes came up to the Fraser for
the salmon run. They came great distances--from the mountains, the
lakes, the far-off dry lands, but not one fish entered the vast rivers
of the Pacific Coast. The people had made their choice. They had
forgotten the honor that a mother-child would have brought them. They
were bereft of their food. They were stricken with poverty. Through
the long winter that followed they endured hunger and starvation.
Since then our tribe has always welcomed girl-children--we want no more
lost runs."

The klootchman lifted her arms from her paddle as she concluded; her
eyes left the irregular outline of the violet mountains. She had come
back to this year of grace--her Legend Land had vanished.

"So," she added, "you see now, maybe, why I glad my grandchild is girl;
it means big salmon run next year."

"It is a beautiful story, klootchman," I said, "and I feel a cruel
delight that your men of magic punished the people for their
ill-choice."

"That because you girl-child yourself," she laughed.

There was the slightest whisper of a step behind me. I turned to find
Maarda almost at my elbow. The rising tide was unbeaching the canoe,
and as Maarda stepped in and the klootchman slipped astern, it drifted
afloat.

"Kla-how-ya," nodded the klootchman as she dipped her paddle-blade in
exquisite silence.

"Kla-how-ya," smiled Maarda.

"Kla-how-ya