nap' was medicine-man for
fifteen years. Besides considerable skill in healing herbs, he used his
prerogatives cunningly. It is permitted the medicine-man to decline the
case when the patient has had treatment from any other, say the white
doctor, whom many of the younger generation consult. Or, if before
having seen the patient, he can definitely refer his disorder to some
supernatural cause wholly out of the medicine-man's jurisdiction, say to
the spite of an evil spirit going about in the form of a coyote, and
states the case convincingly, he may avoid the penalty. But this must
not be pushed too far. All else failing, he can hide. Winnenap' did this
the time of the measles epidemic. Returning from his yearly herb
gathering, he heard of it at Black Rock, and turning aside, he was not
to be found, nor did he return to his own place until the disease had
spent itself, and half the children of the campoodie were in their
shallow graves with beads sprinkled over them.

It is possible the tale of Winnenap''s patients had not been strictly
kept. There had not been a medicine-man killed in the valley for twelve
years, and for that the perpetrators had been severely punished by the
whites. The winter of the Big Snow an epidemic of pneumonia carried off
the Indians with scarcely a warning; from the lake northward to the lava
flats they died in the sweat-houses, and under the hands of the
medicine-men. Even the drugs of the white physician had no power. After
two weeks of this plague the Paiutes drew to council to consider the
remissness of their medicine-men. They were sore with grief and afraid
for themselves; as a result of the council, one in every campoodie was
sentenced to the ancient penalty. But schooling and native shrewdness
had raised up in the younger men an unfaith in old usages, so judgment
halted between sentence and execution. At Three Pines the government
teacher brought out influential whites to threaten and cajole the
stubborn tribes. At Tunawai the conservatives sent into Nevada for that
pacific old humbug, Johnson Sides, most notable of Paiute orators, to
harangue his people. Citizens of the towns turned out with food and
comforts, and so after a season the trouble passed.

But here at Maverick there was no school, no oratory, and no
alleviation. One third of the campoodie died, and the rest killed the
medicine-men. Winnenap expected it, and for days walked and sat a little
apart from his family that he m