hand lifted, palm outward, and straight as an arrow out of every throat,
the "Hey a-hey a-huh!" of the Indian salutation.

"Backbone of the World!" cried the Blackfoot. "Did you come over that,
Little Brother?"

"Not I, but my father's father's first father. By the Crooked Horn,"--he
indicated a peak like a buffalo horn, and a sag in the crest below it.

"Then that," said Bighorn, dropping with one bound from his aerial
lookout, "should be _my_ story, for my people made that trail, and it
was long before any other trod in it."

"It was of that first treading that the Skin talked," agreed the Coyote.
He looked about the company for permission to begin, and then addressed
himself to Arrumpa. "You spoke, Chief Two-Tails, of the 'tame wolves' of
Taku-Wakin; _were_ they wolves, or--"

"Very like you, Wolfling, now that I think of it," agreed the Mastodon,
"and they were not tame exactly; they ran at the heels of the hunters
for what they could pick up, and sometimes they drove up game for him."

"Why should a coyote, who is the least of all wolves, hunt for himself
when he can find a man to follow?" said the Blackfoot, who sat smoking a
great calumet out of the west corridor. "Man is the wolf's Medicine. In
him he hears the voice of the Great Mystery, and becomes a dog, which is
great gain to him."

Pleased as if his master had patted him, without any further
introduction the Coyote began his story.