MOUNT RAINIER 



to fix upon the most fitting time for carrying out his 

 quest. Sending his squaw out to the kamas prairie, 

 under pretence that now was the season for her to 

 gather their winter store of that sickish-sweet esculent 

 root, and that she might not have her squaw's curiosity 

 aroused by seeing him at strange work, he began his 

 preparations. He took a pair of enormous elk-horns, 

 and fashioned from each horn a two-pronged pick or 

 spade, by removing all the antlers except the two top- 

 most. He packed a good supply of kippered salmon, 

 and filled his pouch with kinni kinnick for smoking 

 in his black stone pipe. With his bow and arrows 

 and his two elk-horn picks wrapped in buckskin hung 

 at his back, he started just before sunset, as if for a 

 long hunt. His old, faithful, maltreated, blanketless, 

 vermilionless squaw, returning with baskets full of 

 kamas, saw him disappearing moodily down the trail. 

 "All that night, all the day following, he moved 

 on noiselessly by paths he knew. He hastened on, 

 unnoticing outward objects, as one with a controlling 

 purpose hastens. Elk and deer, bounding through 

 the trees, passed him, but he tarried not. At night 

 he camped just below the snows of Tacoma. He was 

 weary, weary, and chill night-airs blowing down from 

 the summit almost froze him. He dared not take his 

 fire-sticks, and, placing one perpendicular upon a 

 little hollow on the flat side of the other, twirl the up- 

 right stick rapidly between his palms until the charred 

 spot kindled and lighted his 'tipsoo/ his dry, tindery 

 wool of inner bark. A fire, gleaming high upon the 

 mountain-side, might be a beacon to draw thither 

 any night-wandering savage to watch in ambush, 

 and learn the path toward the mines of hiaqua. So 

 he drowsed chilly and fireless, awakened often by dread 

 sounds of crashing and rumbling among the chasms 

 of Tacoma. He desponded bitterly, almost ready to 

 abandon his quest, almost doubting whether he had 

 in truth received a revelation, whether his interview 



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