XVII
THE HUNTING OF PAU-PUK-KEEWIS
WHEN Hiawatha heard of the mischief that Pau-Puk-Keewis had worked among the gulls he was very angry indeed; but when he discovered the wrecked wigwam and the dead body of the raven, and heard how Pau-Puk-Keewis had despoiled Iagoo and his friends of their robes and pipes and wampum, he swore that he would kill Pau-Puk-Keewis with his own hand.
"The world is not so wide but I will find him!" cried out Hiawatha; "the way is not so rough but I will reach him with my anger!" and with several hunters Hiawatha set out upon the trail of Pau-Puk-Keewis.
They followed it to the crags where he had killed the gulls, but by that time Pau-Puk-Keewis was far away among the lowlands, and turning back he saw his pursuers on the mountain and waved his arms to mock them.
Hiawatha shouted at him from the mountain top: "The world is not so rough and wide but I shall catch you, Pau-Puk-Keewis. Hide where you will, but I shall find you out," and Pau-Puk-Keewis sped forward like an antelope for Hiawatha's words had made him suddenly afraid.
He rushed through the forest until he came to a little stream that had overflowed its banks, and there he saw a dam made by the beavers. Pau-Puk-Keewis stood on the dam and called, and the King of Beavers, Ahmeek, rose to the surface of the water to find out who the stranger might be.
"Ahmeek, my friend," said Pau-Puk-Keewis, "the water is very cool and pleasant. Let me dive in and stay with you awhile! Change me into a beaver like yourself, so that I may rest with you in your lodge beneath the water."
"Wait awhile," said Ahmeek, looking at him cautiously. "I must ask the other beavers," and he sank beneath the water like a stone.
Pau-Puk-Keewis thought he could hear Hiawatha and the hunters crashing through the forest, and he waded out upon the dam, calling to the beavers until one head after another popped up out of the water, and all the beavers in the pond were looking at him.
"Your dwelling is very pleasant, my friends," said Pau-Puk-Keewis in an entreating voice; "cannot you change me also into a beaver?"
"Yes," said Ahmeek, "let yourself slide down into the water and you shall become as we are."
Pau-Puk-Keewis slid down into the water and his deer-skin shirt and moccasins and leggings became black and shiny. His fringes drew together into a clump, and became a broad black tail; his teeth became sharp, and long whiskers sprouted out from his cheeks. He was changed into a beaver.
"Make me large," he said, as he swam about the pond; "make me ten times larger than the other beavers," and Ahmeek said: "Yes, when you enter our lodge beneath the water you shall be ten times as large as any one of us."
They sank down through the water, and Pau-Puk-Keewis saw great stores of food upon the bottom. They entered the lodge and came up inside of it above the surface of the water, and the lodge was divided into large rooms, with ledges on which the beavers slept. There they made Pau-Puk-Keewis ten times larger than any other beaver, and they said to him: "Thenceforth you shall rule over all the rest of us and be our king."
But Pau-Puk-Keewis had not been sitting long upon the throne of the beavers, when he heard the voice of the beaver watchman call out from among the water-lilies: "Hiawatha, Hiawatha!" There was a shout and a noise of rending branches, and the water sucked out of the beavers' lodge and left it high and dry; their dam was broken. The hunters jumped on the roof of the lodge and broke a great hole in it, through which the sunlight streamed as the beavers scuttled away through their doorway to seek safety in deeper water. But Pau-Puk-Keewis was so big, and so puffed up with heavy feeding and the pride of being a king, that he could not crawl through the doorway with the others, but was helpless before the hunters.
Hiawatha looked through the roof and cried: "Ah, Pau-Puk-Keewis, I know you in spite of your disguise. I said that you could not escape me," and Hiawatha and his hunters beat Pau-Puk-Keewis with their heavy clubs until the beaver's skull was broken into pieces.
Six tall hunters bore the body of the beaver homeward, and it was so heavy that they had to carry it slung from poles and branches that rested on their shoulders. But within the dead body Pau-Puk-Keewis still lived, and thought and felt exactly as a man; and at last, with great effort he gathered himself together, left the beaver's body and, assuming once more his own form, he vanished in the forest.
Hiawatha saw the figure as it stole away amid the shadows of the pine-trees, and with a shout he leaped to his feet and gave chase with all his hunters, who followed the flying Pau-Puk-Keewis as the rain follows the wind. The hunted man, all breathless and worn out, came to a large lake in the middle of the forest, and there he saw the wild geese that we call the brant, swimming and diving among the water-lilies and enjoying themselves upon the water.
"O my brothers," called Pau-Puk-Keewis, "change me to a brant with shining feathers and two strong wings to carry me wherever I will go, and make me ten times larger than any of you!"
At once they changed him into a huge brant, ten times larger than the others, and with loud cries and a clamor of wings they rose in the air and flew high up into the sunlight. As they flew they said to Pau-Puk-Keewis: "Take care that you do not look downward as you fly, or something strange and terrible will happen to you."
But suddenly they heard a sound of shouting far beneath them, and Pau-Puk-Keewis, who recognized the voice of Iagoo and the tones of Hiawatha, forgot the warning about looking downward, and drew in his long black neck to gaze upon the distant village. The swift wind that was blowing behind him caught his mighty tail-feathers, tipped him over, and Pau-Puk-Keewis, struggling in vain to get his balance, fell through the clear air like a heavy stone. He heard the shouting of the people grow louder and louder; he saw the brant become little specks in the air above him, and plunging downward the great goose struck the ground with a heavy, sullen thud and lay there dead.
But Pau-Puk-Keewis still lived in the crushed body of the giant bird, and he swiftly took his own form again and rushed along the shore of the Big-Sea-Water, with Hiawatha close upon his heels. And Hiawatha shouted at him as they ran: "The world is not so rough and wide but I shall catch you, Pau-Puk-Keewis. Hide where you will, but I shall reach you with my anger!" and he was so close to Pau-Puk-Keewis that he shot out his right hand to seize him by the shoulder. Pau-Puk-Keewis spun around in a circle, whirled the dust into the air and leaped into a hollow oak tree, where he changed himself into a serpent and came gliding out among the roots.
Hiawatha broke the tree to pieces with a blow of his magic mittens; but there was no Pau-Puk-Keewis inside of it, and Hiawatha saw him once again in his own form, running like the wind along the beach.
They ran until they came to the painted sand-stone rocks where the Old Man of the Mountain has his home, and the Old Man opened the doorway of the rocks and gave Pau-Puk-Keewis a hiding-place in the gloomy caverns underneath the mountains, shutting the rock doorway with a heavy crash as Hiawatha threw himself upon it. With his magic mittens Hiawatha knocked great holes in the rocks, crying out in tones of thunder: "Open! Open! I am Hiawatha!" But the Old Man of the Mountain did not answer.
Then Hiawatha raised his hands to the heavens and implored the lightning and the thunder to come to his aid and break the rocks of sand-stone into fragments, and the lightning and the thunder came snarling and rumbling over the Big-Sea-Water at the call of Hiawatha. Together Hiawatha and the lightning split the rock doorway into fragments, and the thunder boomed among the caverns, shouting: "Where is Pau-Puk-Keewis!"
Pau-Puk-Keewis lay dead among the caves of sandstone, killed by Hiawatha and the lightning and thunder. This time he was dead indeed, crushed by the rocks that had fallen upon him, and killed in his own form so he might never rise again.
Hiawatha took the ghost of Pau-Puk-Keewis and changed it into a great eagle that wheels and circles in the air to this day, screaming from the mountain peaks and gliding in great slants over deep and empty valleys. In winter, when the wind whirled the snow in drifts and eddies around the wigwams, the Indians would say to one another: "There is Pau-Puk-Keewis, come from the mountains to dance once more among the villages," and when we see great hills of sifted snow, heaped high and white by winter wind, we may think of Pau-Puk-Keewis and his dance among the sand dunes.