"Umph, uh-ump!" chuckled the old beast reminiscently. "We drove; we drove. What else was there to do? Taku-Wakin was my man. Besides, it was great fun. One-Tusk helped me. He was one of our bachelor herd who had lost a tusk in his first fight, which turned out greatly to his advantage. He would come sidling up to a refractory young cow with his eyes twinkling, and before anybody suspected he could give such a prod with his one tusk as sent her squealing.... But that came afterward. The Mammoth herd that fed on our edge of the Great Swamp was led by a wrinkled old cow, wise beyond belief. Scrag we called her. She would take the herd in to the bedding-ground by the river, to a landing-point on the opposite side, never twice the same, and drift noiselessly through the canebrake, choosing blowy hours when the swish of cane over woolly backs was like the run of the wind. Days when the marsh would be full of tapirs wallowing and wild pig rootling and fighting, there might be hundreds feeding within sound of you and not a hint of it except the occasionaltoot-tootof some silly cow calling for Scrag, or a young bull blowing water.
"They bedded at the Grass Flats, but until Scrag herself had a mind to take the trail to the Squidgy Islands, there was nobody but Saber-Tooth could persuade her.
"'Then Saber-Tooth shall help us,' said my man.
"Not for nothing was he called Taku-Wakin, which means 'The Wonderful.' He brought a tiger cub's skin of his father's killing, dried stiff and sewed up with small stones inside it. At one end there was a thong with a loop in it, and it smelled of tiger. I could see the tip of One-Tusk's trunk go up with a start every time he winded it. There was a curled moon high up in the air like a feather, and a moon-white tusk glinting here and there, where the herds drifted across the flats. There was no trouble about our going among them so long as Scrag did not wind us. Theyclaimed to be kin to us, and they cared nothing for Man even when they smelled him. We came sidling up to a nervous young cow, and Taku dropped from my neck long enough to slip the thong over a hind foot as she lifted it. The thong was wet at first and scarcely touched her. Presently it tightened. Then the cow shook her foot to free it and the skin rattled. She squealed nervously and started out to find Scrag, who was feeding on the far side of the hummock, and at every step the tiger-skin rattled and bounced against her. Eyes winked red with alarm and trunks came lifting out of the tall grass like serpents. One-Tusk moved silently, prod-prodding; we could hear the click of ivory and the bunting of shoulder against shoulder. Then some silly cow had a whiff of the skin that bounded along in their tracks like a cat, and raised the cry of 'Tiger! Tiger!' Far on the side from us, in the direction of the Squidgy Islands, Scrag trumpeted, followed by frantic splashing as the frightened herd plunged into the reed-beds. Taku slipped from my neck, shaking with laughter.
"'Follow, follow,' he said; 'I go to bring up the people.'
"It was two days before Scrag stopped running.
"From the Grass Flats on to the Islands it was all one reed-bed where the water gathered into runnels between hummocks of rotten rushes, where no trail would lie and any false step might plunge you into black bog to the shoulder. About halfway we found the tiger-skin tramped into the mire, but as soon as we struck the Islands I turned back, for I was in need of good oak browse, and I wished to find out what had become of Taku-Wakin. It was not until one evening when I had come well up into the hills for a taste of fir, that I saw him, black against the sun with the tribe behind him. The Five Chiefs walked each in front of his own village, except that Taku-Wakin's own walked after Opata, and there were two of the Turtle clan, each with his own head man, and two under Apunkéwis. Before all walked Taku-Wakin holding a peeled stick upright and seeing the end of the trail, but not what lay close in front of him. He did not even see me as I slipped around the procession and left a wet trail for him to follow.
"That was how we crossed to the Islands, village by village, with Taku-Wakin close on my trail, which was the trail of the Grass-Eaters. They swam the sloughs with their children on their shoulders, and made rafts of reeds to push their food bundles over. By night they camped on the hummocks and built fires that burned for days in the thick litter of reeds. Red reflections glanced like fishes along the water. Then there would be the drums and the--the thunder-twirler--"
"But what kept him so long and how did he persuade them?" Dorcas Jane squirmed with curiosity.
"He'd been a long time working out the trail through the canebrake," said Arrumpa, "making a Talking Stick as his father had taught him; one ring for a day's journey, one straight mark for so many man's paces; notches for turns. When he could not remember his father's marks he made up others. When he came to his village again he found they had all gone over to Opata's. Apunkéwis, who had the two villages under Black Rock and was a friend of Long-Hand, told him that there would be a Sign.