"Besides," continued Chet-woot, "there would be no one to fetch wood for mama and the babies."
"Yes, there would be someone," said the chief, his eyes snapping fiercely. "You would be here to help your mama."
"I?" exclaimed the young man. "But how can I, when I shall be at the
Potlatch? I go to all the Potlatches."
"So much more reason that you stay home this once and care for your mama and baby sisters, and you shall stay. Lapool and little Ta-la-pus will go with me. It is time the boy saw something of the other tribes. Yes, I'll take Lapool and Ta-la-pus, and there is no change to my word when it is once spoken."
Chet-woot sat like one stunned, but an Indian son knows better than to argue with his father. But the great, dark eyes of little Ta-la-pus glowed like embers of fire, his young heart leaped joyously. At last, at last, he was to set foot in the country of his dreams—the far, blue, mountain-circled mainland.
All that week his mother worked day and night on a fine new native costume for him to wear on the great occasion. There were trousers of buckskin fringed down each side, a shirt of buckskin, beaded and beautified by shell ornaments, a necklace of the bones of a rare fish, strung together like little beads on deer sinew, earrings of pink and green pearl from the inner part of the shells of a bivalve, neat moccasins, and solid silver, carven bracelets.
She was working on a headdress consisting of a single red fox-tail and eagle feathers, when he came and stood beside her.
"Mama," he said, "there is a prairie wolf skin you cover the babies with while they sleep. Would you let me have it this once, if they would not be cold without it?"
"They will never be cold," she smiled, "for I can use an extra blanket over them. I only use it because I started to when you were the only baby I had, and it was your name, so I covered you with it at night."
"And I want to cover myself with it now," he explained, "its head as my headdress, its front paws about my neck, its thick fur and tail trailing behind me as I dance."