“‘These,’ said he, ‘are the children of the big-leaved plants; put them into the ground and they will grow and make other plants that bear children. And now, I must tell you just how to plant: Gather a great, long, wide pile of old dry logs, dry brush and weeds, and set it afire. The heat from it will burn the ground, burn the sod, and make everything soft under it. Then, when the place has cooled, gather from around badger holes, squirrel holes, and wherever you can find it, plenty of the brown earth they have thrown out, and mix it with the burned black earth, so that it will not pack hard around the seeds, and keep them from coming up into the sunlight.
“‘After you have taken all the seeds from the stems, you must put them in a sack and not touch them again with your hands. With an antelope horn you will make row after row of little holes all across the burned ground and only a hand apart, and with a buffalo-horn spoon drop a seed into each hole. When that is done, and it will require a long time, you and yours are to dance along each row of seed, singing the sacred songs, your feet lightly pressing down the ground over the seed. At the end of a row you must step across to the next row, and dance backward on that one, and forward on the next, and so on until the last row has been pressed down, and all your songs have been sung. Then you can go away from the place for a time. Return after one moon has passed, and you will find that the young plants have grown above the ground. Watch them, that insects do not destroy them. Give them water if the rains fail you. They will grow all summer, and fade with the ripening of the choke-cherries. Cut them then, care well for them, and you and your people will have a plenty for your winter smokes and ceremonies. There! I have told you all!’
“It was planting-time then. Lone Bull moved right up to the foot of the lower one of the Inside Lakes, and did everything that he had been told to do, his wife helping him in every way. People hunting from down Chief Mountain way came and saw his growing plants, and went home and told about them. The four medicine men just laughed. ‘Ha!’ They cried. ‘He has no na-wak′-o-sis! He wanted to join us and we would not let him into our society. He but plants some useless weed.’
“But later on, just as their planting was getting ripe, a terrible hailstorm came along and destroyed it all; every leaf was cut into fine pieces! They cried from grief! Then they said among themselves: ‘Na-wak′-o-sis we must have or our medicines will be without power. It may be that this Lone Bull really has the true plants: let us go up and see them.’
“They went, all the people with them, and saw that he had the sacred plants. The hailstorm had come nowhere near his place.
“Said they to him then: ‘You have a big planting, and we will help you gather it, and you and we four will use it. You shall join us.’
“Lone Bull laughed long before he answered: ‘I need no help from you. You shall each have a little of my planting for your own use, and you shall pay me well for it. The rest, excepting what I need, I shall give to the people, and hereafter they will always have all that they need of the plants.’
“And as he said that he would do, so he did, and the people gave him great praise and honor for it all, and he lived to great age. Kyi! Why not? He had the beaver—the water medicine! It is a powerful medicine to this day!”
A visitor in our camp this evening told a tale that ill pleases us. There is a tourist camp away up in Gun-Sight Pass, one of the most weirdly beautiful places in this whole country. There, the other day, an employee was putting up a table on which were painted arrows pointing to the different mountains, the name of each peak alongside its particular arrow.
A tourist standing near and watching the work suddenly exclaimed: “Why, over there is a peak that has no name. Can you not name it after me?”