squushy reeds with no strength in them--did I say that all the
Grass-Eaters were pot-bellied? Also I had to reason with One-Tusk, who
had not loved a man, and found that the Swamp bored him. By this time,
too, Scrag knew what we were after; she covered her trail and crossed it
as many times as a rabbit. Then, just as we thought we had it, the wolf
water came and gnawed the trail in two.

"Taku-Wakin would come to me by the Black Lagoon and tell me how Opata
worked to make himself chief of the nine villages. He had his own and
Taku-Wakin's, for Taku had never dared to ask it back again, and the
chief of the Turtle clan was Opata's man.

"'He tells the people that my Stick will not talk to me any more. But
how can it talk, Arrumpa, when you have nothing to tell it?'

"'Patience,' I said. 'If we press the cows too hard they will break back
the way they have come, and that will be worse than waiting.'

"'And if I do not get them forward soon,' said Taku-Wakin, 'the people
will break back, and my father will be proved a fool. I am too little
for this thing, Grandfather,' he would say, leaning against my trunk,
and I would take him up and comfort him.

"As for Opata, I used to see him sometimes, dancing alone to increase
his magic power,--I speak but as the people of Taku-Wakin spoke,--and
once at the edge of the lagoon, catching snakes. Opata had made a noose
of hair at the end of a peeled switch, and he would snare them as they
darted like streaks through the water. I saw him cast away some that he
caught, and others he dropped into a wicker basket, one with a narrow
neck such as women used for water. How was I to guess what he wanted