He would not be afraid to go alone, if old
Towaskook refused to help him. Yes, alone. He would find his way,
somehow, he and Baree. He had unbounded confidence in Baree. Together
they could fight it out. Within a week or two they would find the Girl.
And then...?
He looked at the picture a long time in the glow of the setting sun.
CHAPTER XVI
It was the week of the Big Festival when David and his half-breed
arrived at Towaskook's village. Towaskook was the "farthest east" of the
totem-worshippers, and each of his forty or fifty people reminded David
of the devil chaser on the canvas of the Snow Fox's tepee. They were
dressed up, as he remarked to the half-breed, "like fiends." On the day
of David's arrival Towaskook himself was disguised in a huge bear head
from which protruded a pair of buffalo horns that had somehow drifted up
there from the western prairies, and it was his special business to
perform various antics about his totem pole for at least six hours
between sunrise and sunset, chanting all the time most dolorous
supplications to the squat monster who sat, grinning, at the top. It was
"the day of good hunting," and Towaskook and his people worked
themselves into exhaustion by the ardour of their prayers that the game
of the mountains might walk right up to their tepee doors to be killed,
thus necessitating the smallest possible physical exertion in its
capture.
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