192 THE BED MOUNTAIN OF ALASKA. 
won't trouble you any more. He's gone to the Warm 
Country " (an Alaskan's idea of heaven). 
The Fox, being thus reassured, told his " plain, un- 
varnished tale " as follows. We will turn it into English, 
rather than stop to puzzle over his broken sentences and 
Indian idioms. 
''It is true that I have seen the Great Red Mountain. 
It lies there," pointing to the southwest. " It is true that 
the only way to reach the mountain alive is by the map I 
have made for you, a copy of the one on the parchment 
there. It is true that the piece of red rock I showed you 
came from the mountain ; it must be true, for the medi- 
cine-man with the gray beard told me." 
" So you have never visited the mountain yourself ? 
You were lying to me when you told me that ? " 
" Listen, master ! " 
Peeschee's gesture with the outspread palm had some- 
thing of the native dignity that marks his red-skin 
cousins of the lower latitudes. 
"1 have not visited the mountain myself. If I had 
told you that, you would never have gone. When I was 
a very small pappoose, my father was packing goods for 
the great fur company. One day he wandered from the 
trail. After a week of sufering, he came upon an Ay an 
village, where he was kindly received. The medicine- 
man took him into his own hut, and nursed him. He 
was an old man, with a long, gray beard and hooked nose, 
very, very terrible. 
