Old Red Crane, in the mean time, had gone to the shore and picked up a rock bigger than his head, and now he stood with it raised high above his head watching for the otter to come back. This it soon did, the children below having scared it, and now it swam close to the shore where the bank went straight down, hoping to find an air-hole, or a beaver-hole into which it could crawl, and then climb up into the beaver's sleeping-place above the water, where there would be plenty of air.
There was no hole of any kind, except an open place in some rapids quite a long way above, and the otter had to breathe before it could get back to that place. Its lungs were full of air, and it had to let it out and draw it in again, or die. So when it was quite close under Red Crane, it rose to the under surface of the ice and blew out the air against it, a great long wide silvery bubble. But before it could breathe it in again, Red Crane dashed the rock down right over it. Crash! went the brittle ice, the jar scattering the big bubble into a hundred little bubbles, and frightening the otter away at the same time. There it was without air in its lungs, and no way to get any except at the hole at the rapids, so far, far away. That place the poor animal tried to reach. It swam slower and slower, Red Crane and the children following it. Very soon it had to expand its lungs, and as there was no air, water instead flowed in through its nose and filled them. That was the end. The animal gave a few feeble kicks, then sank to the bottom of the river, and lay still. It was dead. Dead from want of that little bubble of air it had lost. Could it have kept that, letting it out against the ice, and then drawing it in again, it could have traveled for miles, or until it came to an open place where it could crawl out of the water.
Grandfather Red Crane was all excited now. "Who would have thought we would get a medicine animal so easy as that?" he said. "It was just lucky that it stopped to make its bubble in front of me. But it is a good sign. Sinopah, we will save the skin for you. When you grow up we will make a bow-and-arrow case of it for you, and I know that it will bring you good luck in war."
And with that he sent the children to camp after an axe with which he chopped a hole in the ice. Then he fished out the otter with a forked pole. It was a big otter; all of four feet long from the nose to the tip of its tail. The old man forgot all about the red willow, and dragging the animal, and the children following, he went straight back to camp, where he carefully took off its fine furred hide and stretched it to dry in the right shape.
CHAPTER IX SINOPAH'S FIRST BOW
"It is time for our son to learn to use the bow," said White Wolf one evening when all the family was sitting in the light and warmth of the little lodge fire.
"Ai! So it is," old Red Crane exclaimed. "I will begin work on one for him to-morrow, and it shall not be a wooden bow; it shall be made of horn."
"I wouldn't take so much trouble as that," said White Wolf. "A bow of wood will be good enough for him to begin with."