"Sounds like dem crazy folks in dat car comin' from Chicago. Seems like de whole worl' done got crowded wid fools. What you laffin' at, boy?"
In a little while the party landed at Memloose Island. Before them, rising sharply against the evening sky, drooping cottonwoods lifted high above an undergrowth of willows. The party marched down a little trail for half the length of the island, and then, at a point where the trail divided into the sombre interior of the wooded terrain, they left the sunlight.
After a march of a hundred yards they came upon a clearing. About the clearing in the fringing woods were fifty rickety structures lifted on poles. On each of these, with its grinning skull lying towards the east, lay a skeleton.
The Wildcat began to sweat. He counted a dozen skeletons and added a few dozen prayers to his perspiration. In a green alcove opening from the wider clearing seven skeletons stood erect in a ring about a flat stone.
His captors carried the Wildcat to this stone and held him. A little apart from him Running Bear opened the services with a yell which echoed like a chorus from the inferno.
The Wildcat gave up hope.
"They sho' got me. What dey is I don' know. Lemme go, boys."
The smoke from a dozen fires lifted in the clearing. Staggering in from half a dozen paths came as many painted warriors, each bearing on his back a salmon nearly as long as its red-skinned carrier.
Running Bear abandoned the vernacular for a moment and dropped into English.
"The Gods of the waters have sent the salmon. The black man can feast with his red brothers."