Mount Rainier, a Record of Exploration. Various
again screamed, 'Ha, ha, ha, hiaqua!' and it seemed as if tamanoüs hands, or the paws of the demon otters, clutched at the miser's right-handful and tore at his shoulder and waist belts.
"So, while darkness and tempest still buffeted the hapless old man, and thrust him away from his path, and while the roaring was wickeder than the roars of tens and tens of tens of bears when ahungered they pounce upon a plain of kamas, gradually wounded and terrified he flung away string after string of hiaqua, gaining never any notice of such sacrifice, except an instant's lull of the cyclone and a puff from the invisible otters.
"The last string he clung to long, and before he threw it to be caught and whirled after its fellows, he tore off a single bunch of fifty shells. But upon this, too, the storm laid its clutches. In the final desperate struggle the old man was wounded so sternly that when he had given up his last relic of the mighty treasure, when he had thrown into the formless chaos, instinct with Tamanoüs, his last propitiatory offering, he sank and became insensible.
"It seemed a long slumber to him, but at last he awoke. The jagged moon was just paling overhead, and he heard Skai-ki, the Blue-Jay, foe to magic, singing welcome to sunrise. It was the very spot whence he started at morning.
"He was hungry, and felt for his bag of kamas and pouch of smokeleaves. There, indeed, by his side were the elk-sinew strings of the bag, and the black stone pipe-bowl—but no bag, no kamas, no kinni kinnik. The whole spot was thick with kamas plants, strangely out of place on the mountain-side, and overhead grew a large arbutus-tree, with glistening leaves, ripe for smoking. The old man found his hardwood fire-sticks safe under the herbage, and soon twirled a light, and, nurturing it in dry grass, kindled a cheery fire. He plucked up kamas, set it to roast, and laid a store of the arbutus-leaves to dry on a flat stone.
"After he had made a hearty breakfast of the chestnut-like kamas-bulbs, and, smoking the thoughtful pipe, was reflecting on the events of yesterday, he became aware of an odd change in his condition. He was not bruised and wounded from head to foot, as he expected, but very stiff only, and as he stirred, his joints creaked like the creak of a lazy paddle upon the rim of a canoe. Skai-ki, the Blue-Jay, was singularly familiar with him, hopping from her perch in the arbutus, and alighting on his head. As he put his hand to dislodge her, he touched his scratching-stick of bone, and attempted to pass it, as usual, through his hair. The hair was matted and interlaced into a network reaching fully two ells down his back. 'Tamanoüs,' thought the old man.
"Chiefly he was conscious of a mental change. He was calm and content. Hiaqua and wealth seemed to have lost their charms for him. Tacoma, shining like gold and silver and precious stones of gayest lustre, seemed a benign comrade and friend. All the outer world was cheerful and satisfying. He thought he had never awakened to a fresher morning. He was a young man again, except for that unusual stiffness and unmelodious creaking joints. He felt no apprehension of any presence of a deputy tamanoüs, sent by Tamanoüs to do malignities upon him in the lonely wood. Great Nature had a kindly aspect, and made its divinity perceived only by the sweet notes of birds and the hum of forest life, and by a joy that clothed his being. And now he found in his heart a sympathy for man, and a longing to meet his old acquaintances down by the shores of Whulge.
"He rose, and started on the downward way, smiling, and sometimes laughing heartily at the strange croaking, moaning, cracking, and rasping of his joints. But soon motion set the lubricating valves at work, and the sockets grew slippery again. He marched rapidly, hastening out of loneliness into society. The world of wood, glade, and stream seemed to him strangely altered. Old colossal trees, firs behind which he had hidden when on the hunt, cedars under whose drooping shade he had lurked, were down, and lay athwart his path, transformed into immense mossy mounds, like barrows of giants, over which he must clamber warily, lest he sink and be half stifled in the dust of rotten wood. Had Tamanoüs been widely at work in that eventful night?—or had the spiritual change the old man felt affected his views of the outer world?
"Travelling downward, he advanced rapidly, and just before sunset came to the prairies where his lodge should be. Everything had seemed to him so totally altered, that he tarried a moment in the edge of the woods to take an observation before approaching his home. There was a lodge, indeed, in the old spot, but a newer and far handsomer one than he had left on the fourth evening before.
"A very decrepit old squaw, ablaze with vermilion and decked with countless strings of hiaqua and costly beads, was seated on the ground near the door, tending a kettle of salmon, whose blue and fragrant steam mingled pleasantly with the golden haze of sunset. She resembled his own squaw in countenance, as an ancient smoked salmon is like a newly-dried salmon. If she was indeed his spouse, she was many years older than when he saw her last, and much better dressed than the respectable lady had ever been during his miserly days.
"He drew near quietly. The bedizened dame was crooning a chant, very dolorous—like this:
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