S IN STRIPS FROM
OFF THE TREES]

The daughters of the Village Island chief took with them food to last
for three whole suns. They started early, for many miles of paddling
lay between them and the Toquaht shore. At length they reached the
beach, and hiding their canoe beneath a giant spruce, they followed
where a little trail beckoned them on and up the mountain side. For
hours they climbed, wending their way through lonely, silent woods,
the twittering wren the only life they saw or heard. At times they
lost the trail, as it was overgrown with fern and berry bush. But
once the leading klootsmah stopped and signed to her companions to
keep still. Halting, they waited while she pointed to the root fangs
of a cedar tree, where well within the hollow butt a western timber
wolf had made her lair. Gone was the mother, perhaps in quest of deer
with which to feed her four young pups who calmly slept within that
sheltered cave, awaiting her return.

The Indians are a superstitious race, and one of the old fetishes was
this: that if by chance they could secure the young of a wolf from
which to take some precious inner part, to rub upon the outer side of
their canoes, it gave great luck in whaling, and thus it came to pass
that when the klootsmuk found the she wolf's lair, they formed the
plan of taking to their brother the four wolf pups, in order that he
might become the chief of all whale hunters. Cautiously they placed
them in the baskets on their backs and then retraced their steps. In
time they reached the beach, and entered their canoe, when just as
they pushed off, with giant springs and angry howl leapt the great
mother wolf from the woods, but the klootsmuk were safe with their
strange prizes, and soon their canoe cut gleefully through the waves,
while their songs were wafted landward by the western breeze.

Upon an isle not far from home they hid the young wolf pups. This
done, they squatted on the shore, and thought how best they might
inform their brother of their lucky find. They were puzzled as to how
this might be managed without awakening jealousies among the other
members of the tribe, and they were fearful to face their father's
wrath who surely would expect their craft well laden with the cedar
bark. They reasoned long and then decided on a stratagem. One of the
three would cut her foot with a mussel shell, and mark her tunic with
the blood, and tell the story, that when they landed on the Toquaht
shore an