spring," answered the
other hunter, "that his children may drink it pure and undefiled. The
running water is for the beasts which scour the plains. Ausaqua is a
chief of the Shos-shones; he drinks at the head water."

"The Shos-shones is but a tribe of the Comanches," returned the other:
"Wacomish leads the whole nation. Why does a Shos-shone dare to drink
above him?"

"When the Manitou made his children, whether Shos-shone or Comanche,
Arapaho, Cheyenne, or Pawnee, he gave them buffalo to eat, and the pure
water of the fountain to quench their thirst. He said not to one, 'Drink
here,' and to another, 'Drink there'; but gave the crystal spring to
all, that all might drink."

Wacomish almost burst with rage as the other spoke; but his coward heart
prevented him from provoking an encounter with the calm Shos-shone. The
latter, made thirsty by the words he had spoken--for the Indian is ever
sparing of his tongue--again stooped down to the spring to drink, when
the subtle warrior of the Comanches suddenly threw himself upon the
kneeling hunter and, forcing his head into the bubbling water, held him
down with all his strength until his victim no longer struggled; his
stiffened limbs relaxed, and he fell forward over the spring, drowned.

Mechanically the Comanche dragged the body a few paces from the water,
and, as soon as the head of the dead Indian was withdrawn, the spring
was suddenly and strangely disturbed. Bubbles sprang up from the bottom,
and, rising to the surface, escaped in hissing gas. A thin vapour
arose, and, gradually dissolving, displayed to the eyes of the trembling
murderer the figure of an aged Indian, whose long, snowy hair and
venerable beard, blown aside from his breast, discovered the well-known
totem of the great Wankanaga, the father of the Comanche and Shos-shone
nation.

Stretching out a war-club toward the Comanche, the figure thus addressed
him:--

"Accursed murderer! While the blood of the brave Shos-shone cries to
the Great Spirit for vengeance, may the water of thy tribe be rank
and bitter in their throats!" Thus saying, and swinging his ponderous
war-club round his head, he dashed out the brains of the Comanche, who
fell headlong into the spring, which from that day to this remains rank
and nauseous, so that not even when half dead with thirst, can one drink
from it.

The good Wankanaga, however, to perpetuate the memory of the Shos-shone
warrior, who was renowned in his tribe for