with the
other boys he went over to the shack to look at the "work of art" as Jack
insisted on calling it. Although the boys had seen totem poles in the city
museums, and one or two on their original ground in the Alaskan villages
that they had visited, there was something familiar about this one. As
they went over the various figures, trying to distinguish them from each
other and speculating on what they were supposed to represent, Pepper, who
had been inspecting the upper part of the work, where lack of color made
the figures less conspicuous, suddenly exclaimed:

"S-s-say, this fellow's family isn't so very old. Here's the ace of clubs,
and that couldn't have got over here before Columbus, and he didn't come
up this far."

"What's that?" said Rand. "Let's look at it." Then, for the first time,
the reason for the familiarity of the design struck him.

"Hey, boys," he cried, excitedly, "don't you see it?"

"What is it?" they cried in chorus, crowding around him.

"There, there, and there. The top of this totem is an exact replica of our
narwhal horn. Here's the mammoth, and here's the pile of tusks."

"Begorra, that's truth," said Gerald. "Looks as though he had copied it
from our ivory. Run and get it, Rand."

The young Scout leader, who had been made custodian of the treasure,
returned to the tent and brought out the relic. It was a short, broken
piece of the twisted horn of the narwhal or white whale, discolored, and
rubbed smooth as if with much handling. It was covered with rude etchings
evidently made with flints or sharp shells. As nearly as could be made
out, the figures represented a mammoth, an extinct creature of the
elephant tribe, a man beside a dogless sledge, a pile of mammoth tusks,
and a high cliff with an opening or cave at the top whose mouth was shaped
like the ace of clubs referred to by Pepper.

With the greatest care the boys went over the lines of the graven ivory
comparing the figures with the carvings of the hieroglyphics which the
"chief" had carved on his totem pole, and found them to be almost
identical, except for a few minor particulars caused by the relief work on
the totem, and less crudity in the carvings.

The Indians at this time of day were engaged at their work of sawing
lumber and in finishing the foundations of the sod house, where a ditch
was being dug, but it being near the hour of noon the man who had
described himself as a "chief" came to the shack to arrange for t