Howkawanda had never had good use of his shoulder since the fire bit it,
and even a buck's quarter weights a man too much in loose snow. So he
took a bough of fir, thick-set with little twigs, and tied the kill on
that. This he would drag behind him, and it rode lightly over the
surface of the drifts. When the going was bad, Younger Brother would try
to tug a little over his shoulder, so at last Howkawanda made a harness
for him to pull straight ahead. Hours when they would lie storm-bound
under the cedars, he whittled at the bough and platted the twigs
together till it rode easily.

"In the moon of Tender Leaves, the people of the Buffalo Country, when
they came up the hills for the spring kill, met a very curious
procession coming down. They saw a man with no clothes but a few tatters
of deerskin, all scarred down one side of his body, and following at his
back a coyote who dragged a curiously plaited platform, by means of two
poles harnessed across his shoulders. It was the first travoise. The men
of the Buffalo Country put their hands over their mouths, for they had
never seen anything like it."

The Coyote waited for the deep "huh-huh" of approval which circled the
attentive audience at the end of the story.

"Fire and a dog!" said the Blackfoot, adding a little pinch
of sweet-grass to his smoke as a sign of thankfulness,--
"Friend-on-the-Hearth and Friend-at-the-Back! Man may go far with them."

Moke-icha turned her long flanks to the sun. "Now I thought the tale
began with a mention of a Talking Skin--"

"Oh, that!" The Coyote recalled himself. "After he had been a year in