that were older than the great mound at Cahokia."

"Oh," cried both the children at once, "Mound-Builders!"--and they
stared at him with interest.

He was probably not any taller than the other Indians, but seemed so on
account of his feather headdress which was built up in front with a
curious cut-out copper ornament. They thought they recognized the broad
banner stone of greenish slate which he carried, the handle of which was
tasseled with turkey beards and tiny tails of ermine. He returned the
children's stare in the friendliest possible fashion, twirling his
banner stone as a policeman does his night stick.

"Were you? Mound-Builders, you know?" questioned Oliver.

"You could call us that. We called ourselves Tallegewi, and our trails
were old before the buffalo had crossed east of the Missi-Sippu, the
Father of all Rivers. Then the country was full of the horned people,
thick as flies in the Moon of Stopped Waters." As he spoke, he pointed
to the moose and wapiti trooping down the shallow hills to the
watering-places. They moved with a dancing motion, and the multitude of
their horns was like a forest walking, a young forest in the spring
before the leaves are out and there is a clicking of antlered bough on
bough. "They would come in twenty abreast to the licks where we lay in
wait for them," said the Tallega. "They were the true trail-makers."

"Then you must have forgotten what I had to do with it," said a voice
that seemed to come from high up in the air, so that they all looked up
suddenly and would have been frightened at the huge bulk, if the voice
coming from it in a squeaky whisper had not made it seem ridiculous. It