Boom! went the gun, and the powder-smoke for a moment hid the cave from the view of those watching at the foot of the slope. When White Wolf fired his rifle he at once sprang off to the left of the cave, and none too soon. Out of it and through the smoke came a yowling, tawny mountain lion that rolled and twisted around on the snow while blood streamed from a bullet-hole in its neck. The dogs now turned brave and closed in on it, only to be bitten and clawed by the furious big cat, and knocked off in all directions by its big front paws. Several of them never stopped running until they reached camp.
Sinopah and the other children, as well as the women and the old man, stood watching all this from the foot of the slope, all of them so excited that they never spoke a word. They saw White Wolf hurriedly reloading his rifle, and were fearing that, after all, the wounded animal would get up and run before he could shoot it again. But no; with one last weak kick it suddenly lay still in the snow, and then they all ran up the slope to look at it. Sinopah took hold of the forelegs and tried to lift it, but he couldn't; the animal was far bigger and heavier than he.
"Ha! It is a she deer-killer," said White Wolf; "and by the looks of her there must be some young ones back there in the cave. Here, father, hold my gun while I go in there."
He was not gone long, and returned with a wee little mountain lion in his arms. It was no larger than a house cat, and its light-colored, fuzzy fur had faint dark spots. It was so young that it did not know enough to be afraid of man, and when White Wolf stroked it and rubbed its head, it purred just as our house cats do, only much louder than they.
"Oh! Oh! Give it to me, father," Sinopah cried, and soon had it wrapped in a corner of his robe, where it kept right on purring.
While White Wolf and old Red Crane were skinning the big cat, the women and children went back to the berry patch, where they soon gathered nearly all of the fruit on the trees, and then they went home to their lodges, where they spread the berries on clean rawhides to dry. A part of the fruit was given to Otaki to dry in the little play lodge.
That evening, as Sinopah sat beside his grandfather with the mountain lion kitten in his arms, he asked why service-berry bushes had so many sharp thorns.
"Old Man made them grow there," his grandfather replied. "Listen. It was this way: Old Man made the world, and all the animals and trees, and everything on it. But if he was a world-maker, he often was very foolish and forgetful.
"One day Old Man was walking on the edge of a cutbank beside the river, and happening to look down he saw clusters of beautiful red berries in the water. He was very hungry, so off came his clothes and off he dived from the bank to get some of the fruit. But although he swam and dived a long time he could see no more of the berries, so he climbed up the bank and lay down. Looking at the water again, there were the berries in it, just where he had seen them before, and off he dived again after them, and could not find them when he got into the water.
"And so he kept climbing out on the bank, and diving again after the berries, until he became so weak that the last time he nearly drowned. It was all he could do to get back on the bank, and there, happening to look up, he saw that the little tree over his head was full of berries. At that he tossed a stick at the branches, and saw that when they moved, the branches and the berries in the water also moved. Then all at once he saw that he had nearly died diving after the shadow of the berries, and that made him very angry. As soon as he could he got up and beat the tree with a club, and made thorns grow thickly on its branches: 'There! after this all your kind shall have thorns,' he said, 'and those who want your fruit in plenty must beat it off with clubs.'