a thick, black mist began to rise threateningly. Terrible are the storms
in the mountains--and Tamanous was in this one. Instantly the fierce
whirlwind overtook the miser. He was thrown down and flung over icy
banks, but he clung to his precious burden. Utter night was around him,
and in every crash and thunder of the gale was a growing undertone which
he well knew to be the voice of Tamanous. Floating upon this undertone
were sharper tamanous voices, shouting and screaming, always sneeringly,
'Ha, ha, hiaqua!--ha, ha, ha!' Whenever the miser attempted to continue
his descent the whirlwind caught him and tossed him hither and thither,
flinging him into a pinching crevice, burying him to the eyes in a snow
drift, throwing him on jagged boulders, or lacerating him on sharp lava
jaws. But he held fast to his hiaqua. The blackness grew ever deeper and
more crowded with perdition; the din more impish, demoniac, and devilish;
the laughter more appalling; and the miser more and more exhausted with
vain buffeting. He at last thought to propitiate exasperated Tamanous,
and threw away a string of hiaqua. But the storm was renewed blacker,
louder, crueler than before. String by string he parted with his
treasure, until at the last, sorely wounded, terrified, and weak, with a
despairing cry, he cast from him the last vestige of wealth, and sank
down insensible.

[Illustration: ROOSTER ROCK, COLUMBIA RIVER, ORE. On the Union Pacific
Ry.]

"It seemed a long slumber to him, but at last he woke. He was upon the
very spot whence he started at morning. He felt hungry, and made a
hearty breakfast of the chestnut-like bulbs of the kamas root, and took
a smoke. Reflecting on the events of yesterday, he became aware of an
odd change in his condition. He was not bruised and wounded, as he
expected, but very stiff only, and his joints creaked like the creak of