fast that year and it was good to feel the tree tug at its roots and
struggle with me. Farther up, the wind walked on the dry leaves with a
sound like a thousand wapiti trooping down the mountain. Every little
while, for want of something to do, I charged it. Then I carried a pine,
which I had torn up, on my tusks, until the butt struck a boulder which
went down the hill with an avalanche of small stones that set all the
echoes shouting.

"In the midst of it I lifted up my voice and said that I was I, Arrumpa,
walking by myself,--and just then a dart struck me. The men had come up
under cover of the wind on either side so that there was nothing for me
to do but to move forward, which I did, somewhat hurriedly.

"I had not come to my full size then, but I was a good weight for my
years," said Arrumpa modestly,--"a very good weight, and it was my
weight that saved me, for the edge of the ravine that opened suddenly in
front of me crumbled, so that I came down into the bottom of it with a
great mass of rubbish and broken stone, with a twisted knee, and very
much astonished.

"I remember blowing to get the blood and dust out of my eyes,--there was
a dart stuck in my forehead,--and seeing the men come swarming over the
edge of the ravine, which was all walled in on every side, shaking their
spears and singing. That was the way with men; whatever they did they
had to sing about it. 'Ha-ahe-ah!' they sang--

"'Great Chief, you're about to die,
The Gods have said it.'

"So they came capering, but there was blood in my eyes and my knee hurt