BEK-WUK, THE ARROW 95 



act quickly to do his part in the Plan, and that 

 day I met the Red Brothers. 



" As I lay there by the river, looking up at the 

 bare trees, so gray that I thought them made of 

 rock like myself, and at the ice that still lodged 

 in dark cliff crevices, I heard a sound that I soon 

 learned was the voice of man. A dark object 

 shot by me down the river, but swiftly as it went 

 I saw the strange shapes in it and that they no- 

 ticed me. 



" The Red Brothers had been fishing for Trout 

 and Pickerel at the head-waters far above and, as 

 the canoe was guided into still water, the women 

 came out from their lodges behind the wood 

 fringe, pulled the craft ashore, and loading the 

 fishes upon flat trays of braided rushes, carried 

 them toward the village of wigwams. All this I 

 did not then understand, but learned after ; yet it 

 saves time to tell it as it was, not as it seemed to 

 me but newly escaped from a granite prison." 



" Why didn't the Red Brothers carry their own 

 fishes home ? I don't think they were polite." 



" It was their custom, even as the male and 

 female bird both help in the nest building, or as 

 the She- wolf, Fox, or Wild Cat toils most to feed 

 her ravenous young. 



" Two words held the rule of the Red Brothers 7 



