the People of the Great Cold came down along the ice-rim and cut them
off from it. My father had a plan to get to the sea, and a Talking Stick
which he was teaching me to understand, but I cannot find it in any of
the places where he used to hide it. If I had the Stick I think they
would make me chief in my father's place. But if Opata is made chief,
then I must give it to him if I find it, and Opata will have all the
glory. If I had but a Sign to keep them from making Opata chief...' So
he drummed on my head with his heels while I leaned against the Arch
Rock--oh, yes, I can sleep very comfortably, standing--and the moon slid
down the hill until it shone clear under the rock and touched the
feathered butts of the arrows. Then Taku woke me.

"'Up, put me up, Arrumpa! For now I have thought of a Sign that even the
Five Chiefs will have respect for.'

"So I put him up until his foot caught in the cleft of the rock and he
pried out five of the arrows.

"'Arrows of the Five Chiefs,' he said,--'that the chiefs gave to the
gods to keep, and the gods have given to me again!'

"That was the way always with Taku-Wakin, he kept all the god customs of
the people, but he never doubted, when he had found what he wanted to
do, that the gods would be on his side. He showed me how every arrow was
a little different from the others in the way the blood drain was cut or
the shaft feathered.

"'No fear,' he said. 'Every man will know his own when I come to the
Council.'