ose falls is a great pile of
white bones. It is the bones of all the men and beasts that were carried
over in the past. Those falls have no voice to warn you above. The water
slip over so smooth and soft you not know there is any falls till you go
over."

"Tell Ahchoogah he cannot scare white men with such tales. Tell him to
bring me the dug-out to the river-shore below here."

Ahchoogah muttered sulkily. Mary translated: "Ahchoogah say got no
dug-out. Man take it up to Swan Lake."

"Very well, then; I'll take two bark-canoes and carry around the
rapids."

He still objected. "If you take our canoes, how we going to hunt and
fish for our families?"

"You offered me the canoes!" cried Stonor wrathfully.

"I forget then that every man got only one canoe."

Stonor stood up in his majesty; Ahchoogah was like a pigmy before him.
"Tell him to go!" cried the policeman. "His mouth is full of lies and
bad talk. Tell him to have the dug-out or the two canoes here by
to-morrow morning or I'll come and take them!"

The Indian now changed his tone, and endeavoured to soften the
policeman's anger, but Stonor turned on his heel and entered the shack.
Ahchoogah went away down-hill with a crestfallen air.

"What do you make of it all?" Clare asked anxiously.

Stonor spoke lightly. "Well, it's clear they don't want us to go down
the river, but what their reasons are I couldn't pretend to say. They
may have some sort of idea that for us to explode the mystery of the
river and the white medicine man whom they regard as their own would be
to lower their prestige as a tribe. It's hard to say. It's almost
impossible to get at their real reasons, and when you do, they generally
seem childish to us. I don't think it's anything we need bother our
heads about."

"I was watching him," said Clare. "He didn't seem to me like a bad man
so much as like a child who's got some wrong idea in his head."

"That's my idea too," said Stonor. "One feels somehow that there's been
a bad influence at work lately. But what influence could reach away out
here? It beats me! Their White Medicine Man ought to have done them
good."

"He couldn't do them otherwise than good--so far as they would listen to
him," she said quickly.

They hastily steered away from this uncomfortable subject.

"Maybe Mary can help us," said Stonor. "Mary, go among your people and
talk to them. Give them good talk. Let them understand that we have no
object but to be their