January 3, 1014 - 
FOREST AND STREAM 
13 
The Talking Pine 
The Song of D’wampsh, the River 
«u AVE you finished your sleep, wise one?” 
I asked, as my canoe touched the sand, 
and a little ripple tinkled along the 
pebbles, singing a faint lullabye in the voice of 
the Lake of the mountains. 
“Yes,” answered the Talking Pine; “and it 
was a good sleep for in it I remembered things 
that were forgotten but which you will like to 
hear, now that they have come again to my 
mind.” 
“Tell me, wise one, what did you see in your 
sleep ?” 
“I saw many things, wanderer; many things 
of long ago. Know you T’solo, these things are 
not dreams, but tales that were told to me before 
you were born, and so long ago that I had not 
thought of them for many days. You know we 
talked of the ways of the strange men who lived 
before we were born. I will not tell you of the 
doings of these men until next you sit here at 
my feet, for I am minded to tell you the story 
of the crooked river that is always singing over 
there by the lodge of old Che-wat-um. the one 
who stays at home. 
“It is the song of D’wampsh, this way: 
“ ‘In the country called T'set-se-la-litz, which 
is the land of the sundown, there is a great high 
mountain which is called T’komah, the one that 
feeds. That is because all the rivers that come 
from there are white like milk, and the mountain 
is white like the breast of a woman, and round 
like a woman’s breast, too; so the people gave 
it this name, because a woman feeds her children 
from her breast as T’komah feeds the rivers. 
One river is called D’wampsh, the crooked one 
that sings, and it tells tales of the mountains, 
and of the woods, to those who know its speech. 
“Now, Wee-wyekee. the grandmother, is a 
friend of the crooked one who sings and is also 
my friend, and she knows all the songs of 
D’wampsh. 
“ ‘Wee-wyekee told me the song of D’wampsh 
like this: 
“ ‘I am the wild one, the crooked one who 
sings, D’wampsh. My father is the snow, and 
my mother is T’komah. The heart of my father 
is cold, but the heart of my mother is warm, for 
it is the fire and I am born. A-a-ah-na! And I 
am born! 
“‘I sing, I leap, I run; I, D’wampsh the 
crooked one. And I am happy, for I have many 
friends. 
“ ‘I know T’kope Mowitch, the white goat, 
and to him, and his brother, the mountain sheep, I 
have given many drinks. 
“ ‘I know Mowitch, the deer, and Moos-moos, 
the great elk, whose horns are like the branches 
of Ka-ki-i-sil-mah, the talking pine. 
“ ‘I know Yelth, the raven, the maker of the 
fire, and I am always at war with the fire. 
A-he-e-e-e! I am always at war with the fire! 
“ ‘I love the woods, who are wise, and I love 
the ferns, who are small, and who shade my face 
with their fingers. 
“ ‘The rocks play with me, and try to hold me 
back with their big, hard fingers, but they can’t! 
They can’t! Ha! Ha! They can’t! I leap, I 
sing and I am free! I, D’wampsh, the crooked 
one, I sing and I am free! A-he-e-e, Wee- 
wyekee, the grandmother, they can’t stop me, for 
I am going to the council of the great waters 
that is in the Illahee Alki, the land of the bye 
and bye. 
“‘Come with me, Wee-wyekee; come in your 
canim and I will carry you to the Illahee Alki 
and give you the Al-ki-cheek, the shells, to wear 
in your ears and to trim moccasins with, A-he-e 
Al-ki-cheek in plenty! 
“‘Gold, too, if you want it; for I have the 
gold that my mother gives me, the yellow gold 
that squintum, the white man, seeks. 
“‘Yes, I have it plenty, plenty, plenty! But 
I hide it in my sand deep down, he! he! 
“ ‘I bury it deep down and then I roar, and 
foam, and sing, and squintum cannot find it and 
it is well. A-he-e Wee-wyekee, it is well, for the 
white man, squintum, is thirsty to kill when his 
eyes shine with the yellow gold—so I hide it 
and let him hunt, and I sing on. It is well. 
“ ‘I sing to the rushes until they sleep and I 
give them drink for their thirsty stems. 
“ ‘T’zum, the spotted trout, lives in my sha¬ 
dow and waits until his grandmother, the Chinook 
salmon, comes from the sea, the council of 
waters, then he grows fat on eggs, A-he-e-e Wee- 
wyekee; then the cannibal grows fat on eggs. 
“ ‘I know Ena, the beaver, and Kulakula, the 
wild duck; and I know Ena-poo, the muskrat, 
the lazy one that sits in the sun. I know many 
more, Wee-wyekee, and they are all my friends. 
“ ‘Have you not heard the song of the lone¬ 
some one, Wah-wah-hoo, the frog? Wah-wah- 
hoo is my friend, too, and sings at night for his 
wife, Hah-Hah, who is dead. Did you hear the 
story of Wah-wah-hoo and how he came to be 
the frog, Wee-wyekee? 
“ ‘Ask Ka-ki-i-sil-mah, the talking pine, to tell 
you, for Kla-klack-hah, the woman who talks, 
told him at the story fire when he was still young, 
and it is a good story. 
“ ‘Now, grandmother, 1 must hurry on for I 
hear the song of Skamson, the thunderbird, and 
soon the rain will come and I must dance then, 
and carry it to the sea, so klook-wah, Wee-wye¬ 
kee, until another time.’ ” 
So ended the story of D’wampsh, the crooked 
one, as the talking pine spoke it. 
“Klook-wah, wise one, I will come again and 
then will you tell me of the doings of the magic 
men ?” 
“A-he-e, T’solo, I will tell you of Wah-wah- 
hoo, the frog, and why he sings so mournfully, 
when you come again, for it is a good story, 
though one of disappointed hopes. Now, wan¬ 
derer, klatawa, for I hear the song of the thun¬ 
der bird, and soon the rain will fall and I will 
sing the rain song.” 
When I got into the canoe the wind was 
hurrying the little waves along, and before I 
reached my lodge I was worn with the work of 
paddling, for the lake of the mountains fought 
me all the way to my lodge. 
The Secrets of The Woods 
By S. N. McADOO 
’Tis not that I love to kill and be 
I.ike a butcher, red with blood; 
What the law allows is enough for me, 
Nay, more, ’twere enough to watch and see 
The secrets of the wood. 
But I’d kill when the larder lacked in fare, 
And I’d “whack” the rattler’s head, 
And follow the puma to her lair, 
And sheath my knife in the grizzly bear; 
. . . I mean, were the grizzly dead. 
The High-Power Rifle Question 
Bennington, Vt., Dec. 20 .—Editor Forest and 
Stream— Please permit me to call the attention of 
your readers to the suggestion of Mr. Peter Flint 
in this week’s issue of Forest and Stream that 
statutes be enacted in our Eastern States pro¬ 
hibiting the use of high-power rifles in hunting 
deer. Undoubtedly such weapons are required to 
successfully capture the big game of our Western 
States and Canada, but are they needed in pro¬ 
curing deer in our eastern forests? Also let me 
add some testimony to that given by Mr. Flint. 
During our late open season for deer here in 
Vermont a mysterious and pathetic incident oc¬ 
curred in this county in the small town of Peru. 
John Wait, a well-to-do farmer of that place, 
drove out one day to his wood-lot, only a short 
distance from his home, to get some fuel for 
family use. He was gone but a very short time 
when his aged father, who resided with him, saw 
his son’s horses returning driverless with the 
wood rack on his wagon less than half filled. This 
immediately caused apprehension for Mr. Wait’s 
safety and the alarm was given. The father and 
some neighbors went to the wood-lot and soon 
discovered Mr. Wait’s dead body lying beside his 
wood pile with a bullet hole through his head. 
Experts at once pronounced the death-wound as 
having been made by a small calibre bullet from 
a high-power rifle. 
And what a pathetic scene it was to see those 
two faithful and intelligent horses returning 
home and giving the alarm! Will our advanced 
scientists still continue to inform us that horses, 
dogs and other intelligent lower animals do not 
have the power of reason? I for one shall never 
believe them for I have seen too many acts by 
such animals that convince me to the contrary. 
Why did those horses return at once? They 
were neither hungry nor cold, and had only been 
out a short time. Was it instinct that told them 
*of their master’s misfortune and what to do 
under the circumstances? 
Now, if you will bear in mind that there was 
a number of people in that immediate vicinity 
during the time Mr. Wait was at work and not 
one of them heard a gun shot anywhere in that 
neighborhood, you will readily appreciate the dan¬ 
ger of these high-power rifles being fired from 
a distance. Last year we had a case in this state 
of a man being shot in his home from a stray 
bullet from a high-power rifle and not a sound 
of rifle firing was heard in that section. 
What is the need of these high-power rifles 
in our heavily wooded forests for deer hunting? 
It is an absurd notion that deer cannot be cap¬ 
tured without such rifles. The statutes of both 
Massachusetts and New Hampshire provide that 
deer may be taken with shotgun only, and yet the 
number of such animals taken annually in those 
states is very large. Besides, the ammunition 
manufacturers now turn out a loaded ball-shell 
for shotguns which, at short range, is decidedly 
more deadly than any bullet from any rifle now 
on the market; also, this load is very accurate in 
a full-choke 12 gauge shotgun at 50 to 75 yards, 
as I know from personal experience. In the for¬ 
ests of our Eastern States one scarcely ever gets 
a shot at a deer beyond such distances. A .38-40 
or .44-40 calibre rifle is as good a deer rifle as 
anyone can possibly desire in this part of the 
country. 
It seems plain that some action will have to 
be taken soon by sensible sportsmen to mitigate 
the horrors and fatalities of the annual open sea¬ 
son for deer, or otherwise that great majority 
of our citizens who are not members of the deer¬ 
hunting fraternity will step in and put an end to 
such sport altogether. In this emergency, then, it 
is advisable that sportsmen should take the initi¬ 
ative and thus forestall such action. 
Henry Chase. 
