"The very next night Scrag began to move her cows out toward the hard
land, and when I had marked her trail for five man journeys, I came back
to look for Taku-Wakin. There was a great noise of singing a little back
from the huts at the Dancing-Place, and all the drums going, and the
smoke that drifted along the trails had the smell of a Big Eating. I
stole up in the dark till I could look over the heads of the villagers
squatted about the fire. Opata was making a speech to them. He was
working himself into a rage over the wickedness of Taku-Wakin. He would
strike the earth with his stone-headed spear as he talked, and the tribe
would yelp after him like wolves closing in on a buck. If the Talking
Stick which had led them there was not a liar, let it talk again and
show them the way to their sea. Let it talk! And at last, when they had
screeched themselves hoarse, they were quiet long enough to hear it.

"Little and young, Taku-Wakin looked, standing up with his Stick in his
hand, and the words coming slowly as if he waited for them to reach him
from far off. The Stick was no liar, he said; it was he who had lied to
them; he had let them think that this was his father's Stick. It was a
new stick much more powerful, as he would yet show them. And who was he
to make it talk when it would not? Yet it would talk soon...very
soon...he had heard it whispering... Let them not vex the Stick lest it
speak strange and unthought-of things...

"Oh, but he was well called 'The Wonderful.' I could see the heads of
the tribesmen lifting like wolves taking a new scent, and mothers
tighten their clutch on their children. Also I saw Opata. Him I watched,
for he smelt of mischief. His water-basket was beside him, and as the
people turned from baiting Taku-Wakin to believing him, I saw Opata push
the bottle secretly with his spear-butt. It rolled into the cleared
space toward Taku-Wakin, and the grass ball which stopped its mouth fell