with them? But the man smelled of mischief. It lay in the thick air like
the smell of the lagoons; by night you could hear it throbbing with the
drums that scared away the wandering lights from the nine villages.

"Scrag was beginning to get the cows together again; but by that time
the people had made up their minds to stay where they were. They built
themselves huts on platforms above the water and caught turtles in
the bayous.

"'Opata has called a Council,' Taku told me, 'to say that I must make my
Stick talk, or they will know me for a deceiver, a maker of short life
for them.'

"'Short life to him,' I said. 'In three nights or four, the Grass-Eaters
will be moving.'

"'And my people are fast in the mud,' said Taku-Wakin. 'I am a mud-head
myself to think a crooked rod could save them.' He took it from his
girdle warped by the wet and the warmth of his body. 'My heart is sick,
Arrumpa, and Opata makes them a better chief than I, for I have only
tried to find them their sea again. But Opata understands them. This is
a foolish tale that will never be finished.'

"He loosed the stick from his hand over the black water like a boy
skipping stones, but--this is a marvel--it turned as it flew and came
back to Taku-Wakin so that he had to take it in his hand or it would
have struck him. He stood looking at it astonished, while the moon came
up and made dart-shaped ripples of light behind the swimming snakes in
the black water. For he saw that if the Stick would not leave him,
neither could he forsake--Is this also known to you?" For he saw the