"Those red willows over on the bank would make good smoking mixture. Could you manage to climb up there and cut me some?"
"To be sure, my son, to be sure," answered Mish-o-sha, walking rapidly toward the willows. "I am not so weak and good-for-nothing as you seem to think."
Seegwun struck the canoe with his hand, pronouncing the magic words, Chemaun Poll; and away it went with the two
brothers aboard, leaving the Magician high and dry, and gnashing his yellow teeth.
The girls ran to meet them at the shore, Nin-i-mo-sha rejoicing that the old man had been left behind, while her sister could think of nothing but the attractive boy who looked so much like his big brother.
"But Mish-o-sha can call the canoe back to him," said Nin-i-mo-sha, "until a way is found to break the charm. Some one must keep watch, with his hand upon it."
Ioscoda begged permission to do his part; so they left him, with night coming on, sitting on the sand and holding fast to the canoe.
It was a tiresome task for a little boy already weary with long waiting. To amuse himself he began to count the stars. First he counted those in the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, then the ones that look like a high-back chair, and the three big bright ones in the belt of Orion the Hunter. He did not know them by these names, which were given them long afterward; but he recognized the cluster called O-jeeg An-nung, the Fisher, who brought Summer from the sky because his boy was cold.
Ioscoda also was cold, sitting there in the wet sand. But Indian boys do not complain. Yet seeing the Fisher stars, he thought of his own dear father, and wondered where he might be. Had Ioscoda been a white boy, instead of a red, we think the sand he sat on might have been a little wetter for his tears. As it was, he found himself looking at the sky through a kind of fog. What was it? He rubbed his eyes, lost his count, and began all over again.