Fur Magic
                   Andre Norton
                         The Magic Books 04




                    A 3S digital back-up edition 2.0
              click for scan notes and proofing history


                                 Contents
·   Authors Note

·   1. Wild Country

·   2. Strong Medicine

·   3. War Party Captive

·   4. Broken Claw

·   5. Bearers of the Pipe

·   6. Eagles' Bargain

·   7. Raven's Sing

·   8. A Forest of Stone

·   9. A Shaping of Shapes

·   10. The Changer Challenged

·   About the Author


      This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events
    portrayed in this book are either products of the author's
    imagination or are used fictitiously.
      FUR MAGIC
      Copyright © 1965 by The Estate of Andre Norton
      All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
    this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
      A Starscape Book
      Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
      175 Fifth Avenue
      New York, NY 10010
      www.starscapebooks.com
      ISBN 0-765-35299-0 EAN 978-0765-35299-6
      First Starscape edition: April 2006
      Printed in the United States of America



                        Authors Note
                                                                ^»
North American Indians, no matter of what tribe, have many
legends of the Old Ones, those birds and animals (all greater than
their dwarfed descendants we know now) who lived as men before
the coming of man himself. Some of the furred or feathered people
had strange powers. Foremost among them was the Changer. To
the Plains Indians he most often wore the form of a coyote, an
animal noted even to this day for its intelligence and cunning above
the ordinary. To other tribes he was the Raven, or even had the
scales of a reptile.
  One of his many names was the Trickster, since he delighted in
practical jokes and in outwitting his fellows. The Changer aided as
much as he harmed, turning the course of rivers to benefit the Old
Ones, altering their lands for their profit. His were the powers of
nature. And widely separated Indian nations agreed that he at last
created man--some say as an idle fancy, others that he wished to
make a new servant. Only it did not work out as he had planned.
  The legend that the Changer "turned the world over" is current
with the Indians of the far Northwest.
  One version of the story states that he at last defied the Great
Spirit, and through the Thunderbird (that awesome winged
messenger, the greatest of totems) was sent into exile. But a day
for his return has also been decreed. Where upon he shall come
forth to turn the world back again. Man will then vanish and the
Old Ones will once more live to fill the woodlands, the prairies, and
the deserts from which man has so long hunted them.



                         Wild Country
                                                                   «^»
It was cold and far too dark outside the window to be really
day-time yet. Now if he were back home this morning--Cory sat on
the edge of the bunk, holding the boot he was sure was going to be
too tight, and thought about home. Right now he would be willing
to sit out in the full blaze of Florida sun if only all could be just as it
had been before Dad went off with the Air Rescue to Vietnam. Aunt
Lucy would be downstairs in the kitchen getting breakfast and all
would be--right. Only Dad was gone, to a place Cory could not even
pronounce, and Aunt Lucy was nursing Grandma in San Francisco.
So Florida was not home any more.
  "Cory!" It was not a loud call, nor was the rap on the door which
accompanied it a loud rap, but Cory was startled sharply out of his
daydream.
  "Yes, sir, Uncle Jasper, I'm coming!" he answered as quickly as
he could, pulling on first one boot, then the other. With speed,
though the buttons did not slip very easily into their proper holes
this morning, he fastened his shirt and tucked the tails into his
jeans.
  He longed to roll back beneath the covers on the bunk, maybe
even pull them over his head, and forget all about yesterday.
Horses--
  Cory winced, rubbing aching bruises. Riding--But at least they
were going in the jeep today. Only he did not want to face Uncle
Jasper this morning, though there was no hope of avoiding that. He
stamped down hard on each foot, the unfamiliar height of the heels
making him feel as if he tilted forward, so different from Florida
sandals.
  Horses--Cory had found out something about himself yesterday
which made him drag his booted feet now as he opened the door and
went reluctantly down the ranch-house hall. He was afraid, not
only of the horse Uncle Jasper had said was old, and tame, and good
for a beginner to learn to ride on but of--of the country--and
perhaps a little--of Uncle Jasper.
   Last night he had lain awake and listened to all kinds of
disturbing noises. Of course, he had told himself over and over that
there was nothing to be afraid of. But he had never lived out in the
open before, with not even a paved road, and with all those
mountains shooting up to the sky. Here there were just miles and
miles of nothing but wild things--tall grass no one ever cut and big
trees and--animals--Uncle Jasper had pointed out a coyote track
right beside the corral last night.
   Corral--Cory's memory switched again to his shameful
performance at the corral yesterday afternoon. Maybe it was true,
what he had once read in a book, that animals knew when you were
afraid of them. Because that tame old horse had bucked him right
off. And--and he had not had the real guts to get back up in the
saddle again when Uncle Jasper said to.
   Even now, though it was so cold in the very early morning, Cory
felt hot all over remembering it. Uncle Jasper had not said a thing.
In fact he had talked about something else, brought Cory back here
to the ranch-house and showed him all the Indian things in the big
room.
  Indian things--Cory sighed. All his life he had been so proud of
knowing Uncle Jasper, boasting about it at school and in the
Scouts, bragging that he had a real live Indian foster uncle, who
had served with Dad in Korea and now lived in Idaho and raised
Appaloosa horses for rodeos. Then Uncle Jasper had come to Florida
just about the time Dad got his orders to ship out and Aunt Lucy
was called to Grandma's. And he had offered to take Cory to his
ranch for the whole summer! It had been such a wonderful, exciting
time, getting ready to go, and reading about the West--all he could
read--though it had been tough to say goodbye to Dad, too.
  He stood in the doorway looking out into the early morning,
shivering, pulling on his sweater. Now he could hear men's voices
out by the jeep and the moving of horses in the big corral.
  Horses. When you watched the cowboys on TV, riding looked so
easy. And when Dad and Uncle Jasper had taken him to the
rodeo--well, the riders had taken a lot of spills--but that had been
watching, not trying to do it yourself. Now when he thought of
horses all he could really see were big hoofs in the air, aiming
straight at him .
  "Cory?"
  "Coming, Uncle Jasper!" He shivered again and began to run to
the jeep, resolutely not looking towards the corral. There had been
a couple of stories he had read about devil horses and cougars and--
  The hills were very dark against the greying sky as he reached
the jeep. Uncle Jasper was talking to Mr. Baynes.
  "This is Cory Alder," Uncle Jasper said.
  Cory remembered his manners. "How do you do, sir." He held out
his hand as Dad had taught him. Mr. Baynes looked a little
surprised, as if he did not expect this.
  "Hi, kid," he answered. "Want to see the herd, eh? Well, hop in."
  Cory scrambled into the back of the jeep where two saddles and
other riding gear were already piled, leaving only a sliver of room
for him. Two saddles--not three--one for Uncle Jasper, one for Mr.
Baynes--He felt a surge of relief. Then Uncle Jasper did not expect
him to ride! They would be at the line camp, and maybe he could
stay there.
  He tried to find something to hold on to, for Uncle Jasper did not
turn into the ranch road, but pointed the jeep towards a very dark
range of hills, and cut off across country.
   They bounced and jumped, whipping through sage-brush, around
rocks, until they half fell into the dried bed of a vanished stream,
and used that for a road. Once they heard a drumming even louder
than the sound of the motor. Uncle Jasper slowed to a stop, his
head turning as he listened so that the silver disks on his hatband
glinted in the strengthening light. Then he got to his feet, steadying
himself with one hand on the frame of the windscreen, his face up
almost as if he were sniffing the wind to catch some scent as well as
listening so intently.
  Cory studied him. Uncle Jasper was even taller than Dad. And,
though he wore a rancher's work clothes, the silver-studded band
on his wide-brimmed Stetson, and the fact that he had a broad
archer's guard on his wrist, made him look different from Mr.
Baynes. The latter was tanned almost as dark as Uncle Jasper and
had black hair, too.
  Then Cory forgot the men in the front seat as he saw what they
watched for, a herd of horses moving at a gallop. But the wildly
running band passed well beyond the stream bed and Cory sighed
with relief.
  "Cougar started 'em maybe," Mr. Baynes commented. His hand
dropped to the rifle caught in the clips on the jeep side as men had
once carried such weapons in saddle scabbards.
  "Could be," Uncle Jasper agreed. "Take a look when we come
back--though cougar is more interested in deer."
  The jeep ground on. Now Cory thought of cougar, of a big
snarling cat lying along a tree limb, or flattened on top of a rock
such as that one right over there, ready to jump its prey. He had
read about cougars, and bears, and wolves, and all the other
animals of this country when he was all excited about coming here.
  But that had been only reading, and now that he was truly living
on a ranch--he was afraid. One could easily look at the picture of a
cougar, but it was another thing to see shadows and think of what
might be hiding in them.
  Cory stared at the rocky ridge they were now nearing, really
coming much too close. Was that a suspicious hump there, a hump
that could be a cougar ready to launch at the jeep? Cougars did not
attack men, he knew, but what if a very hungry cougar decided
that the jeep was a new kind of animal, maybe a bigger species of
deer?
  The trouble was that Cory kept thinking about such things all
the time. He knew, and tried to keep reminding himself, of what he
had read in all the books, of stories Dad had told him of the times
he himself had stayed here with Uncle Jasper--that there was
nothing to be afraid of. Only now that he was here, the shadows
were too real, and he was shivering inside every time he looked at
them. Yet he had to be careful not to let Uncle Jasper know--not
after what had happened yesterday in the corral.
   They bounced safely past the suspicious rock, and the jeep pulled
up the bank to settle down again in a very rough and rutted way.
Uncle Jasper guided the wheels into the ruts and their ride, while
still very bumpy, was no longer so shaky. The sky was much lighter
now and those big, dark shadows, so able to hide anything, were
disappearing.
  Save for the ruts, they might have been passing through a
country where they were the first men ever to travel that way.
Cory saw a high-flying bird and thought, with a thrill not born from
fear this time, that it must be an eagle. It was the animals possibly
lurking on the ground that scared him, not birds.
   The rutted way swung around the curve of a hill and they came
to a halt before a cabin. Cory was surprised to see that it looked so
very much like those he was familiar with in the TV Westerns.
There were log walls, with the chinks between the logs filled with
clay. A roof jutted forward to shelter the plank door, and there were
two windows, their shutters thrown open. To one side was a pole
corral holding several horses. And a stone wall, about knee-high,
guarded a basin into which a pipe fed a steady flow of water from a
spring.
  In a circle of old ashes and fire-blackened stones burned a
campfire. There was a smoke-stained coffee-pot resting on three
stones, with the flames licking not too far away.
  Cory sniffed. He was now very hungry. And the smell from a
frying pan, also braced on stones, was enough to make one want
breakfast right away. The man who squatted on his heels tending
the cooking stood up. Cory recognized Ned Redhawk, Uncle Jasper's
foreman, whom he had seen only at a distance a couple of days
before.
  "Grub's waitin'. Light an' eat," was his greeting. He stooped
again to set out a pile of aluminium plates, and then waved one
hand at some logs rolled up at a comfortable distance from the fire.
  "Smells good, Ned." Uncle Jasper uncoiled his long length from
behind the steering wheel of the jeep. He stood for a moment
breathing deeply. "Good mornin' to hit the high country, too.
Baynes is ready to pick him out some prime breedin' stock."
   "White-top herds most likely," Ned returned. "Saul says they're
movin' down from Kinsaw now at grazin' speed. You should be able
to take your look 'bout noon, every thin' bein' equal."
   "Been huntin', Ned?" Uncle Jasper nodded towards the
still-barked tree log that formed one support for the porch roof of
the cabin. Cory was surprised to see what hung there--an unstrung
bow, beneath it a quiver of arrows. Of course, he knew that that
big bracelet Uncle Jasper wore was a bow guard, and he had seen
bows in a rack at the ranch. But he thought they were only for
target shooting. Did Uncle Jasper and Ned still use them for real
hunting?
   "Cougar out there has got him a taste for colt. Plenty of deer
'bout, no need for him to use his fangs on the herds," Ned said.
"He's a big one, front forepaw missin' one toe, so he marks an easy
trail. Found three or four kills this past month, all his doin'--two of
them colt."
  "Should take a rifle," Mr. Baynes cut in. He pulled the one from
the jeep clips as if ready to set off hunting the big cat at once.
  Uncle Jasper laughed. "You know what folks say about us, Jim.
That we're too tight with pennies to buy shells. Fact is, we like to
use bows, makes things a little more equal somehow. Killin' the
People goes against the grain, unless we have to. Anyway--this is
our way--"
  What did he mean by "the People," Cory wondered. Did he mean
that he and Ned hunted men ? No, that could not be true. He wished
he dared to go over and examine the bow. And the quiver--he could
see it was old, covered with a bead-and-quill pattern just like the
very old one back at the ranch. And there was a fringe of coarse,
tattered stuff along the carrying strap. He had seen something like
that in a picture in a book--scalps! That was what it had said under
that picture--scalps! Cory jerked his eyes from the quiver and sat
down beside Uncle Jasper on one of the logs, determined not to
imagine any more things.
  "Here you are, son." A plate of bacon and beans, a mixture he
would not ordinarily consider breakfast, was offered him.
  "Thank you, sir. It sure smells good!"
  Ned looked at him with some of the surprise Mr. Baynes had
shown. "Cliff Alder's boy, ain't you?"
  "Yes, sir. Dad's in Vietnam now."
  "So I heard." But there was something in that bare statement of
fact which was better than any open concern.
  "This all new to you, eh?" Ned made a sweeping gesture which
seemed to include the hills and the beginning of the valley in which
the cabin stood.
  Before Cory could answer, there was a sharp yelp from farther up
in the heights, which was echoed hollowly. Cory did not have a
chance to conceal his start, the quick betraying jerk of his head.
Then he waited, tense, for Uncle Jasper, someone, to comment on
his show of unease.
   But instead, Uncle Jasper set down his coffee cup and looked up
the slope as if he could see who or what had yelped. "The Changer
is impatient this mornin'."
 Ned chuckled. "Takes a likin' for some plate scrapin's, he does.
Wants us to move out and let him do some nosin' 'bout."
  "The Changer?" Cory asked, his shame in betraying his alarm
lost for a moment in curiosity.
   It was Uncle Jasper who answered, his voice serious as if he were
telling something that was a proven fact. "Coyote--he's the
Changer. For our tribe, the Nez Perce, he wears that form, for
some other tribes he is the Raven. Before the coming of the white
men there were my own people here. But before them the Old
People, the animals. Only they were not as they are today. No, they
lived in tribes, and were the rulers of the world. They had their
hunting grounds, their warpaths, their peace fires."
  "But the Changer," Ned was rolling a cigarette with loose tobacco
and paper, and now he cut in as Uncle Jasper paused to drink more
coffee, "he never wanted things to be the same. It was in him to
change them around. Some say he made the Indian because he
wanted to see a new kind of animal."
  "Only he tried a last change," Uncle Jasper took up the story
again, "and it was the Great Spirit who defeated him. So then,
some way, he was sent out to live on an island in the sea. When
enough time passes and the white man puts an end to the world
through his muddlin', then the Changer shall return and turn the
world over so the People, the animals, will rule again."
  "Could be that story has somethin'," commented Mr. Baynes,
"considerin' all we keep hearin' of world news. Most animals I've
seen run their lives with a lot more sense than we seem to be
showin' lately." He raised his own cup of coffee to the direction from
which the coyote yelp had sounded. "Good mornin' to you, Changer.
Only I don't think you'll get a chance to try turnin' the world yet a
while."
  "When," Cory asked, "is he supposed to turn the world over?"
  Uncle Jasper smiled. "Well, you may just be alive to see it, son. I
think the legend collectors have it figured out for about the year
2000, white man's time. But that's a good way off yet, and now we
have some horses to look at."
  Cory's fork scraped on his plate. Horses--but there were only two
saddles in the jeep. He glanced--unnoticed, he hoped--at the rail
beside the corral. One there--that would be Ned's. Maybe--maybe
Uncle Jasper would not force him to say right out what he had been
trying to get up courage enough to say all morning--that he could
not, just could not, ride today.
  But Uncle Jasper was talking to Ned. "Seen any more smoke?"
 "Not yet. But it's time. Sometimes he just rides in without
warnin'--you know how he does."
  Uncle Jasper looked down now at Cory. "You can help me, Cory."
   "How?" the boy asked warily. Was Uncle Jasper just making up
some job around here to cover up for him? He felt a little
sick--after all his big plans and wanting to make Uncle Jasper glad
he had asked him--and Dad proud of him--
  "Black Elk is due about now. He is an important man, Cory, and
he generally stops here before goin' on to the ranch. There's a line
phone in there." Uncle Jasper nodded at the cabin. "But Black Elk
keeps to the old ways, he won't ever use it. If he comes, you can
phone in and they'll send the other jeep up to drive him down. He
does like a jeep ride."
  "You mean the old man still travels around by himself?"
demanded Mr. Baynes. "Why, he must be near a hundred!"
   "Close to that," agreed Uncle Jasper. "He was with Chief Joseph
on the Great March. His uncle was Lightning Tongue, the last of
the big medicine men. And Black Elk was his pupil, made his fastin'
trip for a spirit guide and all. He says it's his medicine that keeps
him young. Ned sighted a smoke from the peaks three days ago,
which means he's on the trail. And he likes to spend a little time at
the spring." Uncle Jasper nodded to the bubbling water. "Place
means a lot to him, though he's never said why. Has something to
do with the old days. He may stay to inspect any colts we bring
down. Still has a master eye for a horse. They used to pay him well,
our breeders, to pow-wow for them. Most of the old ones believed he
could get them a five-finger colt every time. But that's something
else he won't talk about any more. Says the old times are slippin'
away and no one cares--makes him disappointed with us." Uncle
Jasper finished his coffee.
  "What is a five-finger colt?" Cory wanted to know.
   "A perfectly marked Appaloosa has five well-placed spots on the
haunches, and that makes a five-finger horse. Not all of them have
it, even if they are carefully bred. They give us Nez Perce the credit
for developin' the Appaloosa breed, but whether that's just legend or
not"--he shrugged--"who knows. We did and do have good luck
raisin' them. And now they're in big favour, for which we can thank
fortune.
  "So, Cory, if you'll stay here and wait for Black Elk, phone in if
he wants to go on down to the ranch, that will be a help. If he
wants to wait, tell him we'll be back before the sun touches Two
Ears. He doesn't hold with watch-measured time."
  Mr. Baynes and Ned had already gone on to the corral, making
ready to rope out their mounts.
  "All right, Uncle Jasper." Cory stood up. "I'll stay right here."
  But as the men saddled up and prepared to ride for the high
country, Cory had to struggle not to call out that he wanted to go
with them, that somehow he would stick on a horse, that he was
willing to walk all the way, but that he could not stay here alone.
   Uncle Jasper rode over with a last message. "Don't forget the
phone. And your lunch is in a box in the jeep. Don't wander
off--this country can be tricky when you don't know it. But you've
got good sense, Cory, and I know you can be depended upon not to
get lost."
   At least Uncle Jasper gave him that much credit, thought Cory,
and tried to take some comfort from that. But he knew that he had
fallen far below the standard Cliff Alder's son should have kept.
   After they were gone, Cory went and sat in the jeep. Somehow,
with the sun-warmed seat under him, he felt more secure. He had
thought that once the men were gone it would be quiet. But now
when he listened he heard all kinds of other sounds. A bird flew
down from the roof of the cabin and pecked at some of the crumbs
from breakfast. And some brownish animal shuffled around the far
end of the cabin, plainly intent upon its own affairs, paying no
attention to Cory. But he watched it carefully until it disappeared.
  Finally he got out of the jeep, to gather up the plates and pans
and carry them to the spring basin, scrubbing them clean with
sand. It was something to do. Ned had taken the bow and
quiver--Cory thought again of the cougar.
  What if it hunted, or wandered, up this way? Would the cabin be
a safe place to hide? But if there was a phone inside--
   He pushed open the door, wanting to be sure. After the bright
sunlight of the clearing, the inside was dusty dark. Cory stood
blinking on the threshold until his eyes adjusted to the gloom. Two
bunks, now stripped to their bare boards, were built against the far
wall. A stove was to one side, a box half full of wooden lengths
beside it. There was a wall cupboard, its door open to show another
pile of plates, a row of cans, and some tin cups.
  In the centre of the room was a table with four chairs. But on the
wall to the left, stretched out tightly by pegs, was a skin. Of what
kind of animal Cory did not know, but it was large. It had been
scraped free of hair and on it were paintings. He moved closer. The
paintings had been drawn in red and yellow and black, all colours so
faded now that in the half-light he could hardly make them out.
  There were horses with the spotted hindquarters of the
Appaloosa breed. There were men, some with feathers on their
heads, others wearing crude little hats. The hatted men carried
guns, while the feathered ones were armed with bows and only a
few guns. Cory realized that this was meant to tell the story of
some old battle.
  As he came out into the open again, he heard once more the
challenging yelp of a coyote, and he wondered if it was angry
because he was there--that, as Ned had said, it wanted to come
down looking for camp food. A fresh wind blew, but it was warmer
than it had been at dawn. He pulled off his sweater and dropped it
on the back seat of the jeep.
  This Black Elk, Mr. Baynes had said he was very old. And Uncle
Jasper had said he had been with Chief Joseph on the retreat when
the Nez Perce had been driven from their lands and had fled
towards the Canadian border.
  Cory had read about that. He had always wanted to know about
the Nez Perce, because of Dad and Uncle Jasper. But Uncle Jasper
had never lived on a reservation, because his father, too, had had
this ranch. And Uncle Jasper had been in college when the Korean
War broke out, and then he enlisted in Dad's outfit.
   Somehow he found it hard to think of Uncle Jasper as a real
Indian. When they had come through town to the ranch four days
ago, Cory had seen other Indians. Most of them were dressed like
ranchers. There had been just one old man with grey braids falling
from under his hat.
  If this Black Elk was so old, maybe he wore braids and looked
more like the Indians in the books. Cory tried to imagine how Uncle
Jasper would appear if he were dressed as his ancestors in
bead-and-quill-trimmed buckskin, with his hair long, and scalps on
his quiver.
 Scalps--Cory thought of the ragged fringe on Ned's quiver strap.
Had those really been scalps ?
                     Strong Medicine
                                                              «^»
Cory had no desire to wander far from the cabin; Uncle Jasper need
not have worried about that. But as the morning grew late he
walked along the cliff behind the cabin out in the bright sun. Thus
he discovered a crevice behind the spring. Or rather he fell into it,
his boots slipping on the rock as he climbed for a better look at the
valley stretching on from the line camp.
  A small bush that guarded the entrance to the opening broke
under his weight, and his head and shoulders were suddenly in
darkness as he lay on his back, kicking in surprise and shock. He
threw out his arms and they struck painfully against rock walls,
scraping off skin against those rough surfaces. As he fought to sit
up his struggles grew wilder, for he felt as if he were caught in a
trap.
  Then he pushed against earth under him, and sat up, facing out
into the open. There was a queer smell here and he rested on
something soft that moved under his hip as if it were alive.
  He jerked away as far as he could, and felt under him fur and
skin. Had he landed on some animal? No, this was more like a bag.
   Edging forward, Cory came into the open, bringing his find with
him. It was a bag of yellowish-brown skin, strips of fur dangling
from it. There were pictures on the bag, like those on the skin on
the cabin wall, and some feathers tied to the strips of fur. Though it
was shaped as a bag it had no opening, Cory discovered as he
turned it around in his hands.
  He got to his feet stiffly, the tumble having started all of
yesterday's bruises aching again. Bringing the bag with him, he
went to the jeep to hunt in the storage compartment for a torch.
With this in his hand he returned to the crevice, shining the light
into the rock-walled pocket.
  Against the back leaned a wooden pole from which hung feathers
on bead-sewn strings. And there was a covered basket of woven
grasses. Suddenly Cory remembered something Uncle Jasper had
said about Black Elk, that there was a place here he visited. Maybe
this was it. These things looked new, or at least not as if they had
been here for years and years from the real Indian days. Perhaps he
had better put everything back just as he had found it. But the top
of the basket was squashed in; he must have broken it when he
landed.
  Cory tried to pull it loose. Inside was a turtle shell broken
straight across. And when he picked it up some pebbles fell from it.
Nothing was going to fix that again. He would just have to tell
Uncle Jasper about it later. But at least it was an accident. And if
he put everything back--
  He went to the jeep for the skin bag. And he had that strange
feeling for an instant as he laid his hand on it that it was alive in
some way. Maybe this was just because it had been warmed by the
sun. But he was glad to get rid of it; he laid it beside the smashed
turtle shell in the basket, then pushed the broken bush as a cork to
stopper the crevice.
   Here the overflow of the spring basin trickled into a thread of
brook. Cory knelt to wash his hands, and saw the flick of a fish tail
going downstream. He wiped his palms on the sun-warmed grass
and looked at a tall rock. At least that had no breaks in it, and if he
climbed to its top he would have a good view of the valley.
 From the jeep he got the field glasses he had brought this
morning. These in hand, he climbed to the top of the rock.
  The stream from the basin joined a larger rivulet and finally a
wider flow of water. Grass grew high and there were clumps of tall
bushes or low trees. From one of these copses below moved brown
animals. Cows? But this was a horse ranch. Cory adjusted the
glasses. Out of the distance moved great shaggy bodies burdened
with coarse tangles of hair on their shoulders and heads--buffalo!
   Unbelieving, Cory watched the big, horned head of the first
animal he had focused upon rise, a wisp of grass now hanging from
the powerful, bearded jaws as the bull chewed with satisfaction.
One, two, three of them, then a smaller one--a calf. But buffalo
had been gone from this country for a long time. They were only to
be seen in parks or zoos. Could some have hidden out wild in the
hills?
  Grazing their way slowly, the buffalo reached the water, stood to
drink their fill, the water dripping from their throat hair as they
raised their heads now and then to look about.
  Suddenly the big bull moved back a length, faced the way they
had come, his head dropping lower, horns ready. The other two
adults copied him, setting the calf behind the safe wall of their own
bodies.
 Cory turned the glasses in the direction the bull faced. He saw
movement in the tall grass. Wolf?
   Whatever was there was certainly larger than the coyote Uncle
Jasper had pointed out to him when they had driven to the ranch
from the airport. Yet it looked like that animal.
  Then--
  Cory blinked.
   The coyote-shaped head rose higher than that of any animal. It
was not a coyote at all but a mask worn by a man, an animal hide
over his head and shoulders. Yet, Cory would have sworn that at
first he had seen a very large but real coyote.
  As the man in the mask moved forward, Cory saw that he wore
not only the furred hide about his head and shoulders but that
below he had on the fringed buckskins of a history-book Indian.
  He did not carry a gun or even bow and arrows as Uncle Jasper
and Ned used. Instead, in one hand, he held a feather-trimmed pole
such as Cory had seen in the crevice, the feathers fluttering in the
breeze. In the other was a turtle-shell box, just like the broken one,
mounted on a handle, and this he shook back and forth. He was not
walking directly forwards, but taking quick, short steps, two
forward, one back, in a kind of dance.
  The uneasiness Cory had felt in the crevice returned. He had a
strange, frightening feeling that though the man in the mask had
no field glasses, though he had not even looked towards Cory
huddled on the sun-warmed rock, he knew the boy watched him
and for that he was angry.
  Was--was this Black Elk? But Uncle Jasper, Mr. Baynes, they
had both said Black Elk was an old man. Somehow Cory did not
think the masked dancer was old; he moved too quickly, too easily,
though of course Cory could not see his face.
   Now the boy could hear a low murmur of sound, and a sharp
click-click. Cory wanted to slide down the rock, put it between him
and the dancer. Yet at that moment he could not move; his arms
and legs would not obey his frightened mind.
   The feathered pole in the dancer's hand began to swing back and
forth and Cory watched it, even though he did not want to. His fear
grew stronger. Back and forth, back and forth--now that murmur
of sound was louder and he thought he could almost distinguish
words, though he could not understand them. And he must--not!
That much he was now sure of.
   He fought against what seemed to keep his hands holding the
glasses to his eyes. He must not watch that swinging pole--With a
jerk Cory managed to drop the glasses. He sat there in the strong
heat of the sun, cold and gasping, as if he had just crawled out of
the chilled water of a mountain stream where he had come near to
drowning.
  Now when he dared to look again, the buffalo were only brown
lumps. And he could not see the coyote-masked dancer at all. With
a choked cry of relief, Cory slid down on the opposite side of the
rock, glad to have that as an additional wall between him and the
valley, and ran for the jeep.
  Once more he climbed into its seat, his fingers curling around the
steering wheel, shivering all through his body. But this--this was
real! Slowly he began to feel warm inside again, and he relaxed.
  Cory did not know how long he sat there. But the sun was high
and hot on his head, and he was hungry when he finally roused
himself to reach into the back and get his lunch box. In his mind he
had gone over and over what he had seen, or thought he had seen.
Buffalo--three big ones and a calf, and then the man in the coyote
mask dancing. He was sure, almost, that he had seen it all. Yet,
was any of it real?
  There was only one way to prove it--go down there and look.
Even if they had all gone by now, they would have left tracks.
But--could he?
  Cory's head turned slowly from right to left, once more that chill
crept up his spine. It was all very peaceful--ordinary--right here.
He had unwrapped one of the big meat sandwiches and sat with it
as yet untasted in his hand. If he did not go down there--right
now--he never could.
   And if he did not, then he would have this to remember--that
Cory Alder was a coward. What he would not quite admit to himself
yesterday after the horse had thrown him, what he had felt in the
dark of the night when he heard all those strange sounds, was very
plain. Cory Alder was a coward--a boy Uncle Jasper would be
ashamed to have around. And what about Dad--Dad who had two
medals for bravery--what would he think if he knew what Cory felt
right now? Afraid of a horse, of the dark, of animals, of the
country?
  Dad would be on his way downhill right now. He would look for
tracks. He would even stand right up to face a buffalo, or that
dancer with his feather-strung pole and his coyote mask. That is
what Dad--or Uncle Jasper--would do.
  Cory dropped the sandwich on the seat and crawled stiffly out of
the jeep. His lower lip was caught between his teeth, his hands
balled into fists. He began deliberately to walk back towards the
rock, but he did not take the field glasses this time. No, he would
not sit far off and look through those, he was going--down there!
  His walk became a run as he knew that he must hurry before he
lost the will to go and would have to return to the jeep. He ran with
his head down, his eyes on the ground, with the small brook from
the spring to guide him to the larger stream.
  He was past the rock now, and the taller grass whipped against
his legs. All the time he listened for that sound that the dancer
made. But what he heard was just the distant call of some bird.
  Cory dodged about a tall bush and nearly fell as his toe caught
against a root. He managed to keep on his feet. But that taught
him caution and he slowed, made himself look around. Somehow,
even though he was now away from the jeep, which had seemed the
only anchor in a suddenly threatening world, he felt better. The sun
was bright as well as hot and the quiet promised that perhaps the
dancer was gone.
  He came out between two bushes on the stream bank and knew
that chance rather than any plan of his had brought him out just
across the water from the point where the buffalo had drunk. The
water looked shallow. It was so clear he could see a fish below. And
there were some stones in it standing dry-topped to offer a bridge.
  Cory sat down and pulled off boots and socks, wadding the socks
into the boots. Gripping those in one hand, he jumped to the first of
the stones. Water lapped up a little over his toes, so cold he gasped.
But the next stone and the next were wholly dry. Then he was on
the other side.
  There was a clay bank with tracks cutting it. He did not wait to
put on his boots, but padded on, stepping gingerly as sharp bits of
gravel made him hop, to look at those tracks. They had been made
by hoofs, he was sure, though he was no tracker. And not too long
ago. But he could not have told whether a buffalo or a steer had cut
them.
  Cory sat down on a weathered log to put on his boots again. He
took a long time, but at last he could stall no longer. There had
been hoofed animals here, but would he find any traces of the
masked dancer if he looked farther?
  He did not want to. But he got to his feet, made himself face in
that direction, take one step, then another--
   The grass was so tall--Cory halted. That grass was waving, and
not because of any wind. Something was moving through it towards
the river, towards him! He took a step backward and his feet
slipped in the clay. As he had fallen before into that crevice beside
the spring, so now he went down into the river, the flood of cold
water splashing up and about him as he sat in it waistdeep just
below the bank.
   For a long moment he was shocked into just sitting there. Then a
sound from the bank brought his attention back to the hoof-scarred
rise. Yellow-brown head with sharply pricked ears, yellow eyes fast
upon him, a muzzle open to show a tongue lolling from between
fanged jaws--
  Cory yelled. He could not have bitten back that cry. He threw
himself away from the bank and from what stood there, flopping
back into the river, somehow getting to his feet and splashing on, to
put the width of the water between him and that animal.
  He fought his way up the opposite bank and ran, not daring to
look behind to see if that thing followed. It was no masked dancer;
his glance, hurried as it had been, told him that. A wolf--a
coyote--a huge four-footed hunter had stood looking down at him.
The worst his imagination had pictured for him now seemed to have
come alive.
  Cory's breath whistled in gasps as he took the rise into the
narrow end of the valley where the cabin stood. The phone in the
cabin--what had Uncle Jasper said--that someone would come if he
called?
  Water squelched in his boots, and he found that the
unaccustomed high heels made it hard to balance as he fought his
way up the slope. He grabbed at bushes, even at large tufts of
grass, to pull himself ahead. Then he rounded the rock from which
he had used the glasses, saw the cabin and the jeep ahead, and
threw himself at the promised safety of both with all the strength
he had left.
  But as he brought up with force against the side of the jeep, he
heard the nicker of a horse. He turned his head to look wildly at the
corral--Uncle Jasper--Ned--somebody--
  There was a horse standing there right enough. The vividly
marked spots of an Appaloosa were half hidden by a brilliant
Navajo blanket, draped over the saddle instead of under it. The
horse was not tied, but stood with dangling reins.
  Cory, panting, turned his head farther. The rider of the horse
rested on the beaten earth of the cabin porch. In spite of the heat of
the day, he had another brightly coloured blanket folded cloakwise
about his shoulders. He was sitting cross-legged and there were
moccasins on his feet, the sun glinting on their beading, fringed
buckskin leggings showing above them.
  The dancer?
  But when Cory looked beyond the clothing to the man's face, he
lost any certainty. He had never seen such an old man before. The
dark skin covering the prominent bones was seamed with great
ridges of wrinkles, the chin jutting out in a sharp curve that
matched the heavy rise of the big nose above.
  Hair, grey and long, had been reinforced with bits of furred skin
into braids that hung forward on the blanketed chest, each braid
ending in a beaded tassel of yellowish fur. On the deeply wrinkled
face were dabs of yellow-white--could it be paint?--that stood out
sharply against the weathered skin.
  The eyes, which were so hidden among the wrinkles that Cory
could not really see them, seemed to be turned on him. And under
that regard Cory tried to pull himself together, a hot flood of
shame, worse than any he had known before, flushing through him.
He stood away from the jeep very conscious not only of the way he
had burst into the clearing but also of his drenched clothing.
  But the old man on the porch said nothing, made no move.
  He must see Cory, but it was as if Cory had to make any first
advance. Very hesitatingly the boy moved forward. This must be
Black Elk, but what was Cory to do or say now? For want of any
guide, Cory finally spoke first.
  "I am Cory Alder. Uncle Jasper--he said to phone for the jeep, for
Black Elk. You are Black Elk, sir?"
  The old man did not reply and Cory stopped. He would have to
walk around him to get into the cabin and phone. And supposing
this was not Black Elk? How could he be sure if the old man would
not answer?
  "Please," to Cory his voice sounded very weak and unsure,
"are--are you Black Elk?" It was almost, he decided, like trying to
talk to Colonel Means. Only somehow this old Indian was even
harder to face than Colonel Means, who had once come home with
Dad.
  "Black Elk--yes."
  Relief flooded through Cory at that answer. So he had
understood! Why, then, all Cory had to do was call for the jeep, and
maybe he could ride back with Black Elk and whoever drove it to
the ranch, leaving a note for Uncle Jasper. That would work out all
right. And he would not have to stay here any longer.
  "I'll call the jeep from the Bar Plume." Confidence returned and
Cory started on, but a hand of brown, wrinkled skin drawn tightly
over bones came from under the blanket and gestured him back.
  "No. I stay here. Eat--drink--"
   "Yes--yes, sir." Cory looked to the seat of the jeep where he had
left his lunch--how long ago?
  There were crumbs and smears on the seat, but no sandwiches.
And ants were thick about a blob of spilled jelly. Had Black Elk
helped himself? No, there was a piece of ragged bread on the
ground between the jeep and the nearest tree, as if the food thief
had been frightened off, perhaps by the coming of the Indian.
  Cory remembered the cupboard in the cabin; perhaps there was
something there. At least he knew how to make coffee and fry
bacon, if he could find coffee and bacon somewhere inside. He made
a careful detour about the visitor, who did not move either head or
body, and entered the cabin.
   To his relief there was food in the cupboard. He chose quickly:
tinned corn, bacon, a tin of peaches, some coffee in a sack. Not
much, but maybe enough. He returned to the open, to build up the
fire and turn out bacon in the skillet he had earlier washed by the
spring. He could not tell whether Black Elk was watching his every
move; the old man might just have gone to sleep. But at last Cory
was so intent upon his cooking that he was startled when a shadow
did fall across the stone where he had set out plates, and he looked
up to see the blanketed figure.
  Perhaps once Black Elk had been as tall as Uncle Jasper, now he
was bent forward and the blanket fell about him in heavy folds,
hiding most of his body. Cory, wiping the back of his hand across
his sweaty forehead, wondered how the old Indian could wrap up so
in this heat. His own clothes were almost dry now, though they felt
uncomfortably wrinkled. And his wet boots pinched his feet.
  He hurried to pour out a tin cup of coffee and offer it to Black
Elk. Once more that skeleton hand appeared, to accept the cup.
  "It's pretty hot," Cory warned. But if Black Elk understood him,
it did not matter, for the old man gulped it down in two long sucks,
then held the cup out for more.
  He drank the pot dry while Cory sizzled the bacon, added drained
corn to the fat, and piled the result on their plates. Then he ate, not
greedily, but steadily, not only the contents of the plate Cory gave
him but reached out and took Cory's portion also, while Cory was
busy making more coffee.
  Then Black Elk finished by cleaning up the whole tin of peaches.
Cory, licking his lips and more aware than ever of his own hunger,
gathered the empty plates together and stood up, to head for the
cabin and the phone.
   "No jeep now." The old man, who had not spoken during the
meal, leaned forward to face the fire now dying back into ashes.
The forefront of his blanket fell open and Cory saw what must have
been hidden there earlier. Held in his hands, almost as if it were a
living animal that must be restrained from escape, was something
Cory had seen before--the bundle of skin he had put back into the
broken basket in the crevice.
  He did not know whether Black Elk heard his small gasp as he
recognized it. But he was sure that the other was watching him
intently for some purpose.
  "Medicine." The old man's voice was thin and high. "Strong
medicine." He waited as if for some comment from Cory, and
minutes dragged on while Cory felt more and more uncomfortable.
  "I fell," he said at last in a rush of words "I slipped and fell. I
didn't know that was in the hole, and I didn't mean to break the
basket--or do anything wrong!" This was like watching the masked
dancer all over again, Cory thought. And he was afraid again--just
as much as he had been before.
  "You held it--this medicine!"
   He thought that was meant as a question and he answered, "Yes,
I didn't mean to do anything wrong, sir! I fell, and then it was
under me. I--I brought it out in the light, just to see what it was.
But then I took it right back again and put it in the basket--honest,
I did."
  "You touched. Very wrong. Now must be made clean again."
   Black Elk held the bag against his chest with his right hand. The
left disappeared inside the shield of blanket, to emerge with the
fingers tightened into a fist--a fist which was first shaken and then
opened over the fire. He must have thrown something into the
midst of the coals, Cory thought, for there was a puff of smoke that
shot up and then became a column.
   "You"--Black Elk looked to Cory--"touched. Now you make
clean. Take medicine bag, hold it in smoke, hold tight. You do
wrong; now you do right."
   It was an order Cory could not disobey. He came reluctantly to
Black Elk, accepted the bundle, edged forward until he could hold it
into the full stream of the smoke. It broke and eddied about the
bundle, floating around Cory's head. He smelled a strange scent,
tried to jerk his head one way or another to rid it from his eyes and
nostrils. But he could not, and the smoke grew thicker and thicker
until he could see nothing at all but its billows.



                    War Party Captive
                                                               «^»
Cory blinked, and blinked again. There was still smoke before him,
but it no longer filled his nose or smarted his half-blinded eyes. This
vapour rose in a straight column to the sky--a signal column.
  And he had something very important to do. His hands moved
and a thick branch of pine cut across that column, purposefully
breaking it.
  His hands!
  But those were not hands holding the branch, those were
paws--with claws and a coarse brown fur covering them! And his
body--He was no longer standing on his two feet; he was squatting
back on rounded haunches, his hind feet big paws with webs
between the toes. Over all his body was thick fur.
  Frightened, he tried to screw his head around farther to see over
his shoulder. There was a broad, flat tail lying in the dust behind,
balancing him as he stood, or rather crouched, before the fire. It
had no fur, but was scaled instead.
  Cory dropped the branch of pine, put his paw-hands to his
face--to touch great teeth in an animal's jaw.
  "What--"
   He had said that, but the sound in his own ears was a kind of
chirp. And he was alone--no Black Elk, or cabin, or jeep, or corral,
or horse. Even the valley was not the same. He was up among some
rocks with a small pocket of fire before him that was again sending
its unbroken thread of smoke into the sky. What had happened to
him, and to the world he had known?
  Cory dropped down, to plant his forefeet against a rock. Suddenly
he felt so frightened he was weak, unable to move. He shut his
eyes, keeping them so with all his strength. Now, when he looked
again everything would be all right--he would be safely back at the
campfire. He was afraid to open his eyes, to take the chance that
this was no dream but somehow real. But it could not be! It just
could not be!
   At last he counted, to fifty, to one hundred, to one hundred and
fifty, telling himself each time that when he reached the last
number he would look. At two hundred he fought his fear to the
point where he could open his eyes.
   There was the same rock before him, and the two furred paws
resting against it. If this was a dream it still continued. A scream
was in Cory's throat, but the sound he uttered was not a boy's cry;
it was a guttural animal noise.
   Bracing himself back on those forepaws, he tried to look about
him once more for some clue as to what had happened. Staring
down at his plump body, he noticed for the first time that there
were things that did not belong to an animal. He was wearing a
band of skin that crossed from one shoulder to under the opposite
foreleg. It was covered with small, overlapping scales that glittered
in the sun, and it supported a kind of box made from a pair of shells
fitted together. In addition, from the outer edge of the shell
container dangled short strings of colourful seeds.
  By the fire was a pile of pieces of wood, all showing marks, not of
an axe, but of having been gnawed to the proper length. And by
them was a spear with a wooden haft and a point of bone, sharp
and dangerous looking.
  That, too, was ornamented below its head with some small shells
threaded on bits of grass or reed. When Cory reached for it, he
discovered it was just the right length and shape for his paw to
grasp easily. It must be a weapon intended for this animal body to
use.
  But whose body? Not his!
   Once more fear churned in him and he wanted to run as he had
from the river when the coyote had stood on the bank watching
him.
  River--water--He must have water! That was safe, a place to
hide. Water!
   Cory, still holding the spear in his paw, turned away from the
signal fire, padding around the pocket among the rocks, hunting an
open way through which he could reach the safety of the river. He
did not know how he was so sure that it was near him; he was just
certain that it was and that he must reach it soon, or a greater
danger than any he had yet faced would catch up with him.
  He found at last the narrow space that formed a gateway, and
scrambled through. He discovered now, somewhat to his surprise,
that he did not naturally walk four-footed as his animal body might
suggest was the proper way to travel, but that he stumped along on
his hind legs, his heavy tail held a little aloft to keep it from
dragging, though now and then it thumped against the ground.
   Certainly the brush and scattered trees were all much taller than
he remembered. Or was it that he was smaller? But he was
following a trail in the earth which bore the print of many paws
and hoofs which led down the slope.
  Water--He could smell it! Cory's shuffle became what was for
this new body a high burst of speed. Smell water ? asked one part of
his mind. You cannot smell water. You can hear it, see it, taste it,
but not smell it. Yes, you smell it, replied this new body firmly.
  The trail led to water and seeing that before him, Cory's new
body took command, plunging him forward in a dive. Then he was
swimming effortlessly under the surface with more speed and ease
than he had known in travel ashore. The feeling of danger was
easing. He broke surface again and climbed out where a small side
eddy of stream formed a pool in a hollow, the surface of which was
troubled only by the skating progress of water insects and the
occasional bubble blowing of some underwater dweller.
  The pool provided a mirror for Cory to see himself.
  "Beaver!" Again the word emerged as only a chitter of noise,
which he understood. He leaned closer, straining to see, to know
that this was indeed what he had become.
   Beaver, yes, but Cory's zoo-remembered image did not quite
match the reflection in the water. Gauging his size by the trees and
the rocks, while he was smaller than the boy Cory Alder, he was
still about twice the size of the beavers he had seen at the zoo. And
in addition to the skin strip with the shell box, he wore several
strings of small shells and coloured seeds fastened around his thick
neck, while on top of his head was a net of them anchored by his
small ears. His eyes were ringed with circles of yellow, undoubtedly
paint--though why had that not washed off in the water?
   He laid down the spear, which he had carried without being
really aware of it all through his swim across the river. Using his
claws as wedges, Cory pried open the shell case. There was charred
moss inside, and from it the smell of burning, around a small coal.
He snapped the shell shut again. So he was a beaver, but one who
was armed with a spear, carried fire, and wore paint and strings of
beads. How--and why?
  The Old People! The story Uncle Jasper had told--about the
animal people and the Changer. Animals who had held the world
before the white man or even the Indian--who had lived in tribes,
gone on the warpath, hunted, and--
  Somehow the thought of hunting brought with it an instant
feeling of hunger. Cory remembered the lunch he had not so much
as tasted, the plates of hot food, both of which had been cleaned up
by Black Elk. What did beavers eat? Wood, or bark, or something of
the sort? He looked around him, wondering what thing growing
along the pool side might be best, and thought that he would have
to let this new body decide for him, just as it had when it brought
him down to the river.
   It pointed him now to a low-hanging willow, and shortly Cory
was relishing bark his strong front teeth stripped from the
branches. He ate well and heavily, intent for a moment on the
filling of his too empty stomach. And it was not until he was
finished that he began to think again.
  What had happened to him, he could not guess, unless he was
dreaming. If so, this dream was not only longer than any he could
remember, but far more real. He could not recall any dream in
which he had eaten until comfortably full, or gone swimming and
actually felt the touch of water. Now, though, the fright that had
sent him running to the river was fading. What he felt was more
curiosity as to what was going to happen next.
   Absent-mindedly he kicked some remaining shreds of willow bark
into the pool and looked around him. The need to explore was part
of his curiosity. He would travel by river, instead of clumsily
waddling on land. It only remained to decide which way, up or
down.
  Perhaps it was a desire to make his travel as easy as possible
that sent him finally down. But he soon discovered that the
waterway was not lonely. It had its own population, and he
watched the life he met there carefully.
  Fish wriggled about, and there were birds that skimmed above
the water or waded out to hunt frogs. There was no sign of any
animal, until he came to an untidy mass of dead twigs and the like
wedged against a hole under the water line of a clay bank.
   "Muskrat!" Cory could not have told how he knew this, but know
it he did. The lodge in the clay bank was deserted, however, more
so than if deserted by chance. His lips wrinkled back from his chisel
teeth as he tracked a scenting of the story to be read there.
Death--and something else--mink!
  His beaver paw closed tightly about the haft of his spear.
  Mink and danger... but not recently... The war party that had
raided here had been long gone--at least two suns, maybe three
dark times. Without realizing how or why, Cory's thoughts began to
follow another path. And then, it was almost as if he had opened a
door--or perhaps it would be better to say the cover of a book--so
that he could read--not much, but enough to warn him.
  Mink warriors raiding upriver. And a beaver scout--that was
he--questing down. Not in advance of a war party--no. Rather to
seek out a new village site because shaking of far hills had opened a
path in the earth to swallow up the pond that had held their lodges
for a long time.
  Mink--one mink he, Cory-Yellow Shell could grapple with--could
gain battle honours perhaps just by touching without danger to
himself. But a war party of them--that brought the need to go
softly and avoid notice. And he had been in the open, swimming as
one of the finned ones with no need to fear except from the
long-legged walkers.
   He raised his head well out of the water, shadowed by the mass
of bedding that had been cast forth from the muskrat den. Some of
that had been clawed over by the mink; their scent was all through
the top layer. And the strong musk of the lodge's rightful owner did
not hide it completely. Now Yellow Shell listened and a distant
cawing made him tense, very still.
  The Changer! Or rather one of his crow scouts. The beaver did
not so much as twitch a whisker until he heard a second call,
farther from the river and to the north. When he took to the water
again, it was with all of Yellow Shell's skill and not Cory's
blundering. Yet Cory's wondering, his fear, his need for knowledge
was still there, sharing the beaver's memory.
   Yellow Shell worked his way along the riverbank, using every bit
of cover. Twice more he scented mink. And then another and more
pleasing and friendly odour--otter. There was a slick mud slide
down the bank and to that the otter scent clung, though over it the
mink taint was strong as if the enemy had nosed up and down that
clay surface for some time.
  Half buried in the mud at the edge of the water, Yellow Shell
nosed out a broken necklet of shell beads. There was a spot of blood
on its stringing thong. So the mink had counted coup, killed or
taken a prisoner here. He climbed out on the bank and went
scouting.
  One otter, he decided. Perhaps young. And the minks had lain in
ambush beside the slide. They had rolled in sage to cover their
scent. He finally found the scuffed marks of battle, two more
splashes of blood, and followed that trail back to the water's edge.
They had taken a prisoner, then.
  Again Yellow Shell snarled silently. Slinking mink! He dug the
butt of his spear into the soft earth of the bank with a quick thrust.
By now the otter was dead, or had better be. The mink had evil
ways of dealing with captives.
   This was no beaver affair. Only mink was enemy all along the
river, for long ago beaver and otter had smoked a pipe in a lodge
they had both had a share in building and made peace, which had
thereafter lain between their tribes. They were no menace to each
other, though both were water peoples. For the beaver liked roots
and bark, the otter hunted meat. And sometimes it chanced that
they camped together and had gift givings and song dances.
  Cory stirred. How did he know all this--what otter smelled like,
or mink? And those scraps of memory about things that seemed to
have happened to Yellow Shell before he became Cory, or Cory him?
This was the strangest dream--
  He turned his spear around in his forepaws. Maybe if he went
upriver again, right back to the place where the fire had been--he
could wake up in the right world, stop being Yellow Shell, be Cory
Alder again.
   Then a shadow swept overhead, making a dark blot first on the
bank and then on the water. Again, for the third time, that chilling
fear gripped Cory. He screwed up his head, which was never meant
to rise at such an angle from a beaver's shoulders. A big
bird--black--coasting along--crow!
  And with that recognition his fear grew stronger. He was no
longer the beaver Yellow Shell with powers of scent, hearing, sight.
He was Cory in a strange body and in a frightening world.
  And he was Cory just long enough to be betrayed.
   Out of nowhere--for he still watched the crow wheel over the
river--fell a rope of twisted hide. It looped about his chest, jerked
tight enough in an instant to pin his forelegs to his body, and
dragged him back from the water towards which he made an
instinctive start. The force of the pull overbalanced him so that he
toppled on to his back, scraping across the ground, striking the slick
clay of the otter slide, up which he was drawn, still on his back.
  Before he could gain his feet at the top or make use of his quite
formidable beaver weapons of teeth and tail, he was struck on the
head, and both sun and day vanished completely in the bursting
pain of that blow.
  It was with Cory's bewilderment that he awoke again. His head
ached and there was a sticky mass on one cheek that his exploring
tongue was able to touch enough to tell him it was blood. His
forepaws were tightly roped to his sides, his tail fastened with a
loop the other end of which was about his throat, so should he try to
use his tail as a weapon the movement would strangle him.
   He lay on his side under a bush and there was the stink of mink
all around. Also, there was a mink curled up not too far away, a
plaster of fresh mud and leaves across foreleg and shoulder. The
warrior faced away from Cory. He had several thongs around his
neck, now pushed to one side by the plaster on his wounds, and
those were strung with rows of teeth, among which--Yellow Shell
brought his front teeth together with an angry click--were several
from beaver jaws.
  The mink kept shifting position and it was plain that his wound
pained him. Now and then he turned his head a fraction and
snapped at the edge of the plaster, as if that gesture gave him some
relief from his misery.
  By the wounded guard's side Yellow Shell counted at least five
war pouches, three of them fashioned from turtle shells. This told
him that he faced an experienced and wily adversary. For those
who counted turtles among their dead enemies were the best of
their tribe. As well as he could, Cory tested the strength of the
cords that held him. They were of hide, braided, and there was no
breaking them. Now his fate would depend upon chance and upon
the very important point of how far they were from the mink
village. For it was apparent he was not to be killed at once, but
saved for some unpleasant later purpose.
  It must be, beaver knowledge told Cory, close to evening. And
night was mink time, even as it was normally for beaver also. If
they went on by water in the dark, his captors might have to loosen
him to do his own swimming, and that would give him a chance--
  But he was not to be so lucky. The wounded mink suddenly
raised a war club, a knot of stone tied to a shaft, the ball having
several ugly, stained projections. Perhaps that was what had
brought Yellow Shell down. Crouching, the mink listened.
  Beaver ears caught what human ones might have missed, a
stealthy slithering sound. Then three more minks appeared, as if
they had risen out of the earth.
   They did not speak to the guard, but half ran to their prisoner,
the last one dragging something. What that was, Cory discovered a
moment later when he was roughly rolled on to a surface made of
saplings still studded with branch stubs. To this his captors made
him fast by vicious pulls of rope. Then he was dragged along and
dropped, to land with punishing force at the bottom of a cut, again
to be pulled along.
  Here the drag did not catch so easily, but slipped better behind
the two minks pulling it, giving the two coming from the rear little
need to lend a push. The sled balanced on the top of another incline,
was given a vigorous shove by the minks behind, and plunged on
down what could only be the otter slide, to land in the stream.
  Travel by land became travel by water, and the push and pull of
the mink party appeared to be taking them along at a swift pace.
Cory, unable to move, the painful up-twist of his tail beginning to
hurt almost as much as the pounding in his head, felt himself borne
along on the surface of the river, eyes up to the night sky. Though
he could not turn his head far enough to see, he was aware, shortly
after, that the first party of his captors had been joined by more of
their kind. He wondered if they had an otter in their paws also.
   A moon rose soon and its clear light on the water did not appear
to alarm the mink party. If they had any enemies in this part of the
country, they did not fear them. Perhaps they claimed this whole
section of the river as their territory and had long since cleared it of
any who might dare to challenge their rights to it as a hunting
ground.
  Cory was carried on under a place where long willow branches
hung close to the water, reminding him that it had been some time
since he had eaten. A long--How long would this dream last?
  Dreams--what had someone said way back at the beginning of
this day which had ended so strangely--about dreams? Something
about someone who dreamed? Oh, Uncle Jasper--He had said it
about Black Elk. Medicine dreams--Didn't the Indians believe that
a boy must go out and stay without eating until he dreamed about
an animal who was to be his guardian for the rest of his life?
  Black Elk--and that bag he had said was strong medicine.
   The bag and the fire and the smoke, and Black Elk making him
hold the bag into that smoke. This dream had started with that--as
if it were a medicine dream. Only Cory was not an Indian boy, and
these minks were certainly not guardian spirits out to help him.
What he had of Yellow Shell's thoughts told him that they were
exactly the opposite.
  And what about the black crows and the Changer, who could
change animals, and tried to make man, or had made him, and who
was finally beaten because he could not change or move mountains?
   The ache in Cory's head grew worse. The brightness of the moon
hurt eyes that could not turn away. He shut his eyes and tried to
put all his strength into a desire to awaken from this dream.
Only--how could you make yourself wake up? Usually a bad dream
broke of itself and you found yourself lying in bed, with your heart
pounding, your hands wet, and your stomach twisted inside you. He
felt as scared and unhappy now, only he was not truly Cory but a
beaver and a prisoner.
   The raft on which he was tied continued to whirl along, and he
felt rather than saw that two of the minks swam, one on either
side, giving it a steer now and then, keeping it steadily moving.
Then he heard a distant roaring and beaver mind told Cory that it
was bad water--a fall, or perhaps a rapid.
  His raft turned in the water as the minks shoved it out of the
current. A little while later it was in the shallows, bumping around
stones while the war party scraped, tugged, and lifted at it.
  "You"--a mink head twisted on a slender neck was held closer to
his so that he could see the glinting merciless eyes of the
warrior--"walk. Stop--we kill!"
  The sounds were so gabbled and ill-pronounced, it was as if the
mink spoke beaver but not well. But Cory felt the freedom as the
cords that had held him to the raft were loosened. Then they
boosted him to his hind feet, leaving his tail still fast to his neck.
The line about his forepaws was grasped at the other end by the
mink who had hissed the order and warning, and a sharp pull at
that started him on.
  It was a rough way, and twice Cory lost footing and fell among
the rocks. Both times he was prodded to his feet again by his own
spear in the hands of a mink; once he was beaten on the haunches
by a club. Somehow he got on, but he no longer tried to think.
There was only one thing left, to watch the barely marked trail and
try to keep walking it.
  They had left the riverbank, but the roar from that direction
grew louder. Then they turned again, and Cory, struggling to keep
alert, believed that they now paralleled the water. Twice they
rested, not for his sake, he knew, but because two of their own
company had leaf-and-mud-plastered wounds.
  The second time they pulled off the trail, Cory saw that he was
not the only captive. Ahead was another wounded, bound with
ropes--an otter. But that animal seemed hardly able to move, and
two of the minks pushed and shoved him along.
   At last they returned to the riverbank and the minks brought up
the raft to which Cory was once more tied. By that time he was so
tired that when afloat on the water he fell into a state that was
neither sleep nor a faint, but a combination of the two.



                         Broken Claw
                                                                 «^»
A series of wild screams and cries rang in Cory's ears. He tried to
move, but he could only turn his aching head a little. And when he
did that, he looked into the narrowed eyes of a mink swimming
beside the raft to which he was bound. Those eyes were ringed with
red paint, which added to the hatred in them.
   Beyond the mink's head, he caught sight of a river-bank where
there were more of the furred warriors slipping now into the water
to head for the incoming party. Then the raft under Cory gave a
leap forward as if hurled by the push of a new energy, bumped out
of the water up and down over gravel and stones, adding to the
aches in his helpless body.
  So, still bound, Cory was towed on into the mink village. It was
no small gathering place, as his Yellow Shell memories told him
that of a beaver clan would be, but a number of lodges.
  Sheets of bark had been set up on end, bound together with
saplings, all made into cone shapes, not unlike the tepees Cory
remembered from the pictures of the Plains Indian villages of his
human past. To the front of most of these were planted poles from
which dangled strips of fur, strings of teeth, a feather or two. No
two of them were alike and perhaps, Cory thought, they stood for
the owner of that particular lodge.
   But he was not given time to see much, for a flood of
minks--squaws and cubs--closed about him. Armed with sticks,
clods of hard earth, they struck at him, all the time keeping up that
horrible squalling until he was deafened as well as bruised by their
blows. But finally the minks of the war party, perhaps fearing that
their captive might be too battered before they were ready to deal
with him themselves, closed about the raft and drove off his
tormentors.
  They came to one lodge set a little apart from the rest and sharp
teeth cut speedily through those cords that kept Cory on the raft,
though not his other bonds. He was pushed, rolled inside, and then
his captors dropped the door flap and left him in the dusk of the
interior. For it was not yet dawn and very little light entered.
Perhaps not for Cory eyes, but for Yellow Shell it was enough to see
that he was not alone, that another securely tied captive lay on the
other side of the bark-walled shelter.
  It was the otter, his fur bedabbled with blood, his eyes closed. So
limp and unmoving was he that Cory thought perhaps he was
already dead; though why the minks would leave him here in this
way if that were so, he could not tell.
   Yellow Shell memories frightened Cory; he tried to push them
out of his mind. He did not want to think about what minks did to
their captives; he wanted to get out of here, and as soon as he
could. But all his pulling and twisting only made those hide ropes
cut the more sharply into his flesh, sawing through fur to the skin
underneath. He had been very skilfully roped; nowhere was he able
to bend his head to get at the cords with teeth that could sever
them in a moment, for the loop tying head to tail stopped that. To
try was to choke himself.
  After several moments of such struggling Cory lay still, looking
about him in the tepee to see what might be put to his use.
   Around the sides, except near the door opening, dried grass lay in
heaps as if to serve as beds. But the two prisoners had been dumped
well away from them. Some pouches or bags of skin hung from the
upper walls, far above the reach of his head. There was nothing
else--except the otter.
  Cory turned his head as far as he could, to watch the other
captive. He saw that the otter's eyes were now open, and fixed on
him. The otter's mouth opened and clicked shut twice. The Yellow
Shell part of Cory's mind knew that signal.
  "Enemy--danger--"
  Such a warning was not needed. Both the boy and beaver parts of
him knew that minks and danger went together. But the otter was
not yet finished.
   As with Yellow Shell, the otter's forepaws had been lashed tightly
to his sides, but he could still flex his claws and those nearest the
beaver now moved--in a pattern Yellow Shell also knew. Finger
talk was always used by tribes that were friendly but whose speech
was too different for either to mouth.
  "Mink and--other--"
  Other? What did the otter mean by that?
  Yellow Shell's paws had been so tightly tied they were numb; he
could hardly flex them now. But he was able to give a small
sideways jerk expressing the wish to know more.
  "Crows come--with orders--" The otter strained, but the effort
was so great that he lay panting and visibly weakened when he was
done.
   Crows? Cory thought back to the river where he had watched the
crow and so had been easily captured by the minks. The Changer?
A crow, or crows, carrying orders to the minks? The Yellow Shell
part of him was almost as frightened as Cory had been when he
first found himself in this strange world.
   And, Yellow Shell's fears warned, if this was some matter of the
Changer, it was worse than just minks at war. There was even
more need to get out of here. Cory looked at the otter again. That
animal lay with his eyes closed, as if the energy he had used to
sign-talk had completely exhausted him.
  Cory tried to squirm towards the otter, but the way his neck and
tail were tied prevented him, and his faint hope of having the otter
chew through his bonds was gone. If the otter could roll to him--?
But he could see that a second loop about the otter's hind feet,
lashed to a stake driven into the ground, kept him tight.
   The beaver's struggles had brought his shoulder against a lump
on the ground, painful under him. He twisted his head as far as he
could and saw that the lump was his own shell box. He wondered
why his captors had not taken it from him. Then he remembered
what it held--the small coal. He had fire, if the coal were still alive.
And there was the dried grass of the beds. Could he make use of
that? No, said the beaver part of him. But Cory's mind said yes to a
desperate plan. Only how could he open the box with his forepaws
tied?
   Cory began to wriggle, trying to lift his shoulder under which the
box lay. For long minutes he was unsuccessful; the box moved when
he did, remaining stubbornly under his body in spite of all his
efforts. Then it gave a little as he tried harder to raise his weight
from it. He did not know how long he would have before the minks
might burst in. And every time that fearful thought made him
move faster, the box seemed to slide back farther under him.
  At last it was free of his shoulder. Now began the strain to turn
his head far enough, to roll so that he could reach the box with his
chisel teeth. Again that seemed impossible, and so hard was the
task that he could hardly believe he had succeeded when he did get
the shell between his teeth and held it there firmly. Now to reach
the bedding at his left. To move caused agony in his tail, or else
choked his throat. He could only do it by inches. But at last, with
the shell box between his teeth, his nose nudged against the heap of
dried grass.
  What he was going to do now was very dangerous. To loose fire
where he and the otter lay so helpless--But Cory's desperation was
greater now than Yellow Shell's shrinking, and he would not allow
himself to think of anything beyond trying to do this.
   Those strong teeth, meant for the felling of trees, crunched
together on the shell, and he smelled the smouldering coal inside.
Then, with all the force he could muster, Cory spat the broken box
and the coal in it on to the grass, saw it catch with a small spurt of
flame. He gave an upward heave of his hind feet and tail so that
the flame could eat at the cord holding so cruelly tight. He could
smell singed fur now, feel the burn, had to fight Yellow Shell's fear
to hold steady. For while animals knew fire and used it gingerly,
they still had greater fear than man of what was to him the most
ancient of tools.
  Just when he was sure he could no longer stand it, the pressure
on his throat was gone and he was able to bend his head forward
far enough that his teeth severed in one snap the ties about his
forelegs, gave another to cut those holding his hind legs.
   He felt the pain of returning circulation, stumbled when he
wanted to move fast and easily. But he staggered to the otter, bit
through the cord that fastened him to the stake. Then, dragging the
smaller animal with him, Yellow Shell reached the rear of the bark
tepee. He thrust the bedding away from the wall with great sweeps
of his paws, throwing it towards the entrance to make a wall of fire
between them and any mink trying to enter.
  Luckily the grass did not burn as fast as Yellow Shell had feared
it might, but rather smouldered, puffing out smoke that made him
cough, hurt his eyes. But teeth and claws were now at work on the
rear wall. And before his determined assault the wall split.
  What would he find awaiting them outside? Armed minks? But
this time he would be ready for them, with punishing tail, claws,
teeth. And he, Yellow Shell, was the better of any mink or two or
three. Even if they jumped him as a pack, he could give a good
account of himself before they pulled him down.
  It was the smoke whirling out with them that masked their
going. And the nature of the minks was an aid. For they were of the
same nature as beaver and otter; they had to be close to water.
And, though the village was on the bank of the river, it was still too
far from water to suit the furred raiders. As Yellow Shell made for
the stream, with the otter he dragged along, he fell into a
water-filled cut running between the tepees. How that had been
made was a wonder to him as he plunged beneath its surface and
struck out in the direction of the river. The minks did not try to
control the flow of water as did his own people. They built no dams,
or any ditches down which to float the wood, bark, and leaves that
meant houses and food. But this cut was the saving of Yellow Shell
and the otter now.
   The passage was narrow for a beaver, having been made for the
lighter bulk of minks. For, while the warriors who had captured
him were much larger than any mink of Cory's world, they were
still less in size than Yellow Shell. In spite of the tight fit at some
parts of the way, the beaver won through and brought the otter
with him.
   He surfaced to breathe at last, turned the otter around to brace
the smaller animal's wounded body against the wall of the ditch
while he cut through his bonds. The otter's eyes were open and he
was now aware of what went on about him. As soon as the cords
fell away, he brought up his forepaws in an urgent signing:
  "To the river!"
  Yellow Shell needed no urging. He went under water, keeping
one forepaw on the otter until that animal gave an impatient
wriggle and freed himself from the beaver's hold, passed him, and
slid from the ditch into deeper waters.
   Able as the beaver and otter were in the river, yet the minks, too,
could follow them there with deadly ease. They would be more wary
of attacking either animal in the water, however, where both were
more at home than the minks. Yellow Shell noted that while the
otter moved quickly at first, he soon lagged, and it was plain that
his wounds, which began to bleed again, were slowing him down.
One was on the back of his head, proving, Yellow Shell thought,
that he must have been struck with a club. The other hurt was on
his forepaw, which the otter kept tucked against his chest as if to
shield it from even the slight pressure of the water.
   A discolouration from blood tinged the water, leaving a trail to be
followed by the enemy. Yellow Shell dared not take the time to
scout behind to see whether the minks had yet discovered their
escape. He could only hope to be on their way in what small time
they had left before the hunt started behind. With any luck the
burning tepee could hide their escape for a time.
  Cory did not try to struggle now against Yellow Shell for
command of the beaver body. He only wished that this too real
dream would end and he could wake up once more into the world he
had always known.
  Upstream or down? The beaver hesitated. It was the otter who
waved with his undamaged paw that they should go up, against the
current. Yet, would that not be the very way the minks would
expect them to go--back towards where they had been captured?
   The otter signed again, impatiently. "Upstream--hurry--" He
tried to follow his own directions, but swam clumsily, and an eddy
pushed him towards the bank. Yellow Shell easily caught up with
him, shouldered him on, across the river, towards the opposite
bank. Along that they made a slow and painful way, keeping under
water where they could, pausing for rests where roots or brush
overhung the water to give them a screening shadow.
  For it was day now and a bright one, with sunlight glittering on
the surface of the river, insects buzzing above, water life to be seen.
Yellow Shell ate willow bark within his reach without leaving the
stream. The otter clawed aside water-washed rocks with his good
paw, aided by the beaver when he understood what his companion
wished, and snapped up the crawfish hiding under such roofing.
   He was, the otter signed, named Broken Claw; he looked ruefully
at his torn paw as he gestured that. And he was of the Marsh
Spring tribe, though this was the season when his people split into
family groups and went off for the summer hunting. Since he had
no squaw or cubs in his lodge as yet, he had been on a solitary
exploring trip when he had been trapped by the minks. And at that,
Broken Claw showed shame at his failure to be alert. He had come
upon a slide, he told Yellow Shell frankly, and had tried it out.
Absorbed in the fun of the swift descent, he had gone up and down
more times than he could remember now, the result being that he
lost all caution and had at last slid directly into a net trap of the
minks.
  It was not the minks he feared most, however, but the fact that
he must have been spied upon by crows who reported him to the
mink raiders.
  "The Changer--"
  "What does the Changer?" Yellow Shell asked in the beaver
language.
  "Who knows?" The otter seemed to understand enough of those
guttural sounds to sign an answer. Perhaps he understood beaver
even if he did not speak it. "But it is bad when the Changer comes.
The world may turn over--as it is said that in time it will."
  The world may turn over --that touched another and frightening,
memory for Yellow Shell. There would come a day--all the
medicine makers said it, sang it, beat it out on drums when the
People came to dance big medicine--that the world would turn
over, when nothing would be as it now was. And all that was safe
and sure would be swept away, and all that was straight would
become crooked, all that was light would be dark. And the People
would no longer be People, but as slaves.
  "As slaves--" Yellow Shell's paws moved in that sign and Broken
Claw nodded.
  "Already that begins to be. You saw the waterway of the mink
village. That was dug by slaves, beavers they took as cubs and
made work for them."
  "And what becomes of them?" Yellow Shell's teeth snapped, his
strong tail moved through the water, sweeping a stand of reeds into
a broken mass. "What happens to them after they so work?"
  "They go, none know where," Broken Claw answered. "But the
crows of the Changer carry many messages to that village."
  "If the Changer meddles--" Yellow Shell shivered. Again Broken
Claw nodded.
  "True." His good forepaw moved in a gesture of agreement. "It is
best that our peoples know of this. Mine are scattered, which is
evil. We must gather together again, although this is against our
custom in the days that are warm. What of yours, Elder Brother?"
  "They move village. I am a scout for them."
   "It would be better for them not to find new water in this land,"
replied the otter. "The sooner you say that to your chief, the better
it shall be for your people."
  "And you?"
  "To the lodge of our chief Long Tooth, who stays in a place
appointed where our people may gather in time of danger. He will
then send messages, signal fires, to draw our people there."
  "Yet the minks will be behind us now--"
  Broken Claw nodded. "The minks, yes. If they listen indeed to the
words of the crows and those who fly scout for them in the sky,
then we must both travel with the ever-seeing eyes of the war trail.
In the water we need not tie fringes to our feet to wipe out the trail
we leave, but they are also of the water and they will know." He
looked about where they had eaten, and Yellow Shell saw the
foolish way they had behaved in their hunger.
  It would be a very stupid mink who would not see the stripped
willow, the overturned rocks, and not know that a beaver and an
otter had halted here to rest and eat.
  The otter signed. "Yes, we have been as cubs untaught, my
Brother. Let us hope that this does not lead to evil for us."
  At first Yellow Shell thought that some of the traces could be
hidden. A moment's study told him that was impossible.
  All they could do now was to put as much space between them
and this breakage as they could.
   But while his powerful beaver body had almost recovered from
the rough handling given him by the minks, though his head still
ached and his exploring paw touched a tender swelling on his skull
where the war club had fallen, the otter was less able. And though
Broken Claw tried valiantly to swim forward on his own, at last he
fell behind. When Yellow Shell realized that and turned back, he
found the otter drifting with the current, almost torn away from a
feeble claw hold on a river rock.
  "Hold this." Yellow Shell took the other's good paw and worked it
into a loop of necklace about his own shoulders. The otter seemed
almost unconscious again. He watched what the beaver did, but did
not say anything as the other made preparations to tow him.
  Putting out a forepaw to hold the otter's head so they could look
at each other, Yellow Shell signed slowly.
  "Where--is--your--chief's lodge?"
  The otter blinked. Then his injured paw moved in a short answer.
  "Stream--into--river--big stone--painted rock--follow stream."
  "How far?" Yellow Shell next asked.
  But Broken Claw's eyes were closed, his head lay limply back
against the paw that the beaver used to brace it higher.
  So, with the weight of the otter now dragging against him,
Yellow Shell paddled along the bank, still keeping to the protection
he could find there against sighting from the sky. He found that
swimming with Broken Claw as a helpless burden tired him
quickly, and he had to rest more and more often, pulling the otter
out of the stream under some overhang so he could breathe. Twice
he cowered in such a hiding place as the shadow of wings fell on the
water. Once he could not be sure whether that was a crow or some
hunting hawk. But the second time he caught sight of black
feathers and was sure.
  For a long time after that the beaver crouched over the otter in a
cup beneath the overhang of bank, not sure as to what to do. If they
had been seen by that dark flyer, then the minks would speedily
know where they were. But if they had not, and took to the water
now, then the crow might be perched in some tree, watching for
them to do just that.
  But the minks did not arrive and he guessed he was only wasting
precious time in hiding. Yellow Shell ventured out again, still
towing Broken Claw. At their next rest, however, the otter roused
and seemed better able to understand what they were doing. He
agreed that he was weak enough to need Yellow Shell's support.
But he urged that the beaver help him now up on to the bank
between two rocks.
  From that point he made a long and searching study of the river.
Yellow Shell did the same, but could see nothing except insects,
birds--including two of the long-legged stalkers of fish and frogs.
And no black-winged ones. Then below them, a little ahead, the
grass parted and a deer trotted out to dip muzzle and drink.
  Broken Claw crowded against him, using contact of shoulder
against shoulder to catch Yellow Shell's full attention. With his
good forepaw the otter pointed upstream and to the opposite bank.
  The beaver recognized what must be the landmark Broken Claw
had told him about. But to reach it they must cross the open river,
in full sight of the sky. And on the other side he could sight no
bushes or overhang of bank to cover them.
   A cawing flattened both animals between the rocks where they
sheltered. Crows--two of them--wheeled above the river. One of
the long-legged waders called in return, challengingly, in warning
against such an invasion of his territory. Of him the crows seemed
to take little heed.
  Then the wader took to the air and Yellow Shell did not mistake
the purpose with which the larger bird set out to clear away the
black-feathered invaders. They fled south, the wader winging after
them. But in the time when they had been above the river, had
they sighted the two among the rocks? There was no answer to
that, no answer but again to make such speed as they could, to get
away from that point before the crows could report them, or
manage to elude the wader and return.



                   Bearers of the Pipe
                                                               «^»
Taking advantage of the retreat of the crows, they crossed the river
at once and rounded the base of rock that divided the other stream.
Yellow Shell halted in surprise as he glanced up at that pillar of
stone. For set as a deep hollow in it, well above the level he could
reach, even standing as erect as he could, was the mark of a paw. It
was not, he saw upon closer inspection, the track of a beaver, or of
an otter, or a mink. Yet it was clearly an animal sign, left
imprinted in the rock as if that had been soft mud.
  Around it were traces of old paint, and some of that rubbed into
the hollow of the track itself, indicating that it was indeed mighty
medicine and such a mark as would be a boundary to a territory.
  "The paw--" He swam on to catch up with Broken Claw, who was
heartened to the point of travelling by himself again.
   "Mark of a Great One, a River Spirit," Broken Claw answered.
"It is big medicine. If it were otter, or beaver, then the mink could
not pass it. But it is for all water dwellers and so cannot aid us
now."
   The stream, once they were beyond where it split about the pillar
to enter the river, was what Yellow Shell would have selected
himself if he could have picked their means of escaping observation.
   For it was a narrow slit, much overgrown with bank-rooted
bushes and willows. Also it was plain that this was otter country.
They passed otter marks on other stones, not pressed into rock, of
course, as the river spirit had set its print, but left in pictures of
coloured clay above the high-water mark. These were not of his
tribe and Yellow Shell could not read them. But twice Broken Claw
paused by some that looked fresher than the rest and at the second
such he signed:
  "Many return to the tribe. There is danger--already they may
know that."
   Again his spirit was more willing than his body. And, although he
had seemed strong enough to enter the stream on his own and
swim therein for some distance unaided, he began to slip back, and
finally clung to a water-logged tree root until Yellow Shell once
more lent his strength to the smaller animal.
   The stream entered a marsh where there were tall reeds and a
series of pools. Some farther off were scum-rimmed and
evil-smelling. But along the brook the water was clear and Yellow
Shell felt safer than he had since his capture by the mink war
party. Then the otter pulled against him and the beaver came to a
halt where the stream widened to a pool, a pool half-dammed by a
fallen tree and some drift caught against that.
   At the otter's gesture, Yellow Shell aided Broken Claw to the top
of the tree log. Pressing his wounded paw tightly against him, he
used the other to beat upon a stub of branch still protruding from
the log. It gave off a sound that carried out over the marsh. And
then Broken Claw paused, for from far in the water-soaked land
before them came a pound-pound of answer.
  "They know we come," he signed, slipping from the tree to the
water. And Yellow Shell saw marks on the log that said that this
signal must have been so given many times before.
  So they continued, and the beaver was not surprised when an
otter suddenly arrived out of a reed bed, to look at them and then
be gone again, giving Yellow Shell only a swift glimpse of a painted
muzzle, a headdress of feathers and reed beads. But there had been
a spear in the otter's paw and he had carried it as one well used to
that weapon.
  At last they came out into what must have been the centre of the
swamplands, a core of dry land rising as a mounded island, well
protected from discovery by the watery world around it. Earth,
which was mostly clay in which were many stones, had been
heaped and plastered together, perhaps on a foundation of rocks.
On this were the lodges of brush, also plastered with mud that had
hardened in the sun. The lodges were smooth-walled and wholly
above water, but with something of the same look as beaver
lodges--as if they might have been copied from the larger homes of
Yellow Shell's people.
  There were otters awaiting their coming, the warriors in front,
squaws and cubs behind, but only a handful compared to the
number of lodges. If, as Broken Claw had believed, the tribe was
assembling again, not all had yet reached this swamp stronghold.
   Coup poles stood in front of about five of the lodges, their battle
honours dangling--not strings of teeth as in the mink village, but
here bunches of feathers or coloured reed chains. The waiting
warriors made way for Yellow Shell to climb up on the island. For
these last few feet Broken Claw shook free of his aid and walked
alone. Two of the foremost of those who waited hurried to his side,
giving him support and leading the way through the almost
deserted village to a middle lodge that was larger than all the rest,
its clayed sides covered with pictures, and coloured marks drawn in
the soft substance and then filled in with black or red paint. As on
the rocks some of the marks were weathered, but others stood out
brightly as if only recently done. And Yellow Shell knew these for
tribe and clan records, so this must be the lodge of not only a tribal
chief but one who also held the rank of medicine singer.
  A warrior pushed past Yellow Shell to loop aside a curtain
knotted out of dried reeds. And the beaver paused, allowing Broken
Claw and his two supporters to enter first. There was a small fire in
the centre of the lodge and from it came a thin blue thread of
sweet-smelling smoke. To one side squatted a very old otter, his
muzzle white. As his head swung towards them, Yellow Shell saw
that he had but one eye, that the other side of his head was scarred
with long rips that were well healed. Before him was a small
ceremonial drum made of a tortoise shell with the skin of a salmon
dried tight across it. On this the old otter beat softly from time to
time, using only the tips of his claws, making a kind of muttering
sound, as if something deep within the earth whispered to him.
   Facing him across the fire was a younger otter, but one who had
yet more years than Broken Claw, or even the warriors who had
brought their wounded comrade into the lodge. He was the largest
otter Yellow Shell had ever seen, fully as big as a beaver. Around
the eyes he had painted black circles, and on his chest hung a disk
of bone carved and painted--the badge of a high chief. Thrown over
one foreleg and trailing out behind him on the floor was a square of
reeds woven together, with feathers tucked into that weaving to
make a bright robe of ceremony.
   There was a burst of otter talk that Yellow Shell could not
understand, and then the chief reached under the edge of his
feather-patterned robe and brought out a long-stemmed pipe. With
two claws he skilfully brought up a burning twig from the fire and
set it to the bowl. With a puff of fragrant smoke rising from it, he
raised the pipe towards the roof of the lodge, the sky, pointing it
again down to the earth, then east, north, west, and south, finally
offering the stem to Yellow Shell.
  Taking it carefully into his forepaws the beaver drew a deep
breath and then puffed it out slowly, turning his head meanwhile in
the same order as the otter chief had presented the pipe.
  As he passed the pipe to the left and so into the waiting paws of
the old otter who had stopped his drumming to take it, the chief
spoke in swift sign language.
  "The lodge of Long Tooth is our brother's. The food and drink that
are Long Tooth's are our brother's. Let him rest, and eat and drink,
for the trail behind him has been long and hard."
  The reed matting that was the door of the lodge was drawn aside
as a squaw almost as old in years as the drumming otter brought in
a bowl, which she set before Yellow Shell, and with it a gourd that
now served as a cup and from which came the scent of some stewed
herb. The beaver dipped into the bowl and found fresh alder bark,
sweet to the taste, and with it bulbs of water plants.
  As he ate and drank, courteously ignored by all, Long Tooth
talked to Broken Claw. Then the young otter was taken away by
his friends and the chief sat staring into the fire, the pipe now
resting under his paws but no longer burning. The ancient otter
went back to the low drum of claw on stretched fish skin.
  But at length he said something to the chief, and Long Tooth
nodded slowly. The old otter reached into the edge of the fireplace
and scooped up a pawful of grey-white ash. He scattered this over
the surface of the drum, adding a second pawful to the first, so that
there was now a thin coating of powder on the drum top.
  Then, putting one paw on either side of the drum as if to hold it
very steady, he threw back his head, so that his grey muzzle
pointed almost straight up to the roof over their heads, and began a
chant in a voice that was thin, and old, and quavery. But, as the old
one continued, Yellow Shell, listening, knew he was hearing a
medicine singer of power, one who could control great forces. And so
the beaver sat quietly, not daring to stir.
  Cory felt that he had been shut tight into a small part of Yellow
Shell from which there was no escape, and this was frightening.
Yet with that fear was the feeling that something important was
going to begin right before his eyes, and he gazed as intently upon
the medicine otter as the rest.
  The quavering chant died away and the otter was visibly taking a
deep breath, drawing air into his lungs as if about to plunge into
water and stay thereunder for a long time. Holding that breath, he
leaned forward over the powdered drum. And then he blew his
lungs empty, straight over the ashes.
  Cory expected to see them all disappear, but they did not. What
was left made a pattern, an outline, crude but recognizable, of a
bird. And Yellow Shell knew that symbol, for it was one common
with all the river tribes, and perhaps with the plains tribes also,
though with them the river peoples had little dealings. It was the
mark of the Eagle, or rather of the Eagle's totem--the Thunderbird.
  The old otter and Long Tooth looked at each other and nodded,
then the otter chief signed to Yellow Shell:
  "This is a bad thing now on the river. The minks move here and
there. They raid, they take prisoners, and always the crows fly
before them, spying. Other things move--perhaps they are
spirits--but who sees spirits except when he dreams a medicine
dream? It is not wise of such as we to look upon the ways of spirits.
Yet the Changer is both spirit and of the People, and what he does
can mean much evil to all of us. We do not know what he would do.
They say that in some time to come he will turn the world over and
the People will be slaves if they live. Though slaves to what--we do
not know--perhaps evil spirits. Perhaps the time comes now when
he would do this. And we cannot tell if there are any we can call
upon who are strong enough to stand against the Changer.
 "But of all of us the Eagle lives the highest, the closest to the Sky
World. And if he will aid us, then--"
  What he might have added he did not, for in that moment the old
otter uttered a sharp cry. Yellow Shell had been so intent upon
what the chief was saying that he had been staring straight at the
otter's paws, with only a glance now and then to the face of the
speaker. Now he jerked his head around and saw that the old otter
was eyeing him, Yellow Shell, with a searching stare.
  Now the old one's withered paws moved, shakily, with less ease
than Long Tooth's, but with the same authority the chief used.
  "The mark of the Changer is on you! You are and you are not
beaver!"
  Cory did not know the proper signs, but his beaver paws moved
in an answer that was the truth.
  "I am and I am not beaver. But," he hastened to add, "I am no
enemy."
  "No," the medicine otter agreed. "You are a friend to us, to all
who stand against the Changer. Listen well: if you would find what
will defeat him, perhaps make you not beaver-with-another but
wholly beaver, wholly other again, then go you to Eagle. For this is
a spirit thing and Eagle knows more than we do--or else Raven
does, Raven who shakes the dance rattle, who sings the
songs-of-great-power for Eagle's tribe."
  Cory was eager. "You mean Eagle--he can change me back?"
   But the medicine otter shook his head. "Only the Changer can
change. But there are ways, powers, to make him--sometimes. And
from Raven, who is Eagle's holder of spirit power, you can perhaps
discover that which shall be as a spear for the hunting of the
Changer."
   "We send a pipe to Eagle." Long Tooth spoke now, his claws
glistening in the firelight as his paws moved. "If you wish, you may
go with the pipe bearers. You have earned much from us by
bringing Broken Claw back, but this is a spirit way and so not to be
followed unless one has great need. If your need seems so to you, go
with our pipe people into the mountains."
  "Yes." Yellow Shell's answer was swift and sure.
  "Rest you then," the old otter signed. "For the way is long and
hard. And it will take time for the pipe medicine. There are songs
and dances of power to be used to make it ready."
   The beaver was shown a heap of bedding grass at the back of the
chief's own lodge for his resting and he curled upon that thankfully,
so tired that he could no longer hold his eyes open. But even as he
fell asleep he wondered that one already asleep in his own
world--as Cory must be--could also sleep in a dream.
  Sound awoke him and for a moment or two he could not
remember where he lay, but the dried, sweet-smelling grass was
under his nose and as he moved, it rustled, making him remember.
So the dream was not yet finished and he was still the beaver
Yellow Shell; he did not need to look upon the paws that were his
hands, or the fur on his body, to be sure of such knowledge.
  He turned his head. The old otter had put aside his drum, was
squatting hunched forward closer to the fire. Before him lay a
bundle tied with thongs that were threaded with beads of cut reeds
and seeds, and bits of feathers. Over this the otter held his
forepaws and Yellow Shell knew that this was a medicine bag and
one his hosts considered to possess great power. The medicine otter
was now drawing forth a portion of that power into himself. He
chanted, but in a very low voice, using otter language that Yellow
Shell did not understand.
  With the tips of his claws, the old otter placed around and over
that decorated bundle a covering of skin, pieced-together fish skin,
and over that a second cover of woven grasses that was painted
brightly and heavily with power signs of coloured clay. Then he
arose, with a stiffness that suggested that he moved only with
great pain and effort, to place the bundle back in a sling hung from
the roof of the lodge.
   Squatting again, he sat nursing his forepaws against his chest,
singing in a low mumble. But he did not wait for long. The curtain
door of the lodge was pulled aside and Long Tooth entered, carrying
a long bundle painted half red, half black, so that Yellow Shell
knew that this, too, was a medicine thing.
  Two more otters followed him. Both wore ceremonial paint and
each carried a coup stick that he planted in the earth before the fire
on the side where he took his place.
   The chief laid his bundle on a decorated mat and untied the first
of its wrappings while they all chanted. There was a second
wrapping painted blue and yellow, a third that was all red, and a
last that was white, each unfastened with great care by Long
Tooth. Then there was exposed a pipe.
  It was a pipe of great ceremony and a very old one, Yellow Shell
knew. Its bowl was of red stone that had been chipped with
patience into the shape of an otter's head. The long stem was
decorated with reed and seed beads and painted black.
  Once the pipe was free of its wrappings, the old otter leaned
forward to hold his wrinkled paws over it, giving to it the power he
had drawn from the medicine bundle. Cory noticed that he did not
touch it, nor did any of the other otters, including Long Tooth.
   After some minutes the chief again covered the pipe with the
wrappings that had lain loosely under it, one, two, three, four.
When the last and outer one was securely tied, he slipped the whole
into a case of oiled fish skin, a final protection for the bundle. And
to this was made fast a carrying strap so that he who bore it would
still have his paws free.
  Yellow Shell sat up on his haunches and the grass of the bedding
rustled, sounding very loud in the lodge where the chanting had
now ceased. The old otter had wavered back to the bedding on his
side of the fire and curled up there, as if what he had just done had
exhausted his store of energy.
  "A sun and a sleep have you lain here, Brother," Long Tooth
signed to Yellow Shell. "It is now well with you?"
  "It is well, Elder Brother. My feet are ready for the trail."
  "And the trail awaits the feet of those who bear the pipe,"
returned Long Tooth. "Fill yourself from our bowls, drink from our
stores, Brother, then go with our good will."
  He must have made some sign or sound Yellow Shell did not
catch, for the old squaw came in once more with a steaming bowl of
drink, a newly culled bunch of water roots and alder bark. And
Yellow Shell ate all he could stuff into him, knowing that it was
well to depart for a long journey with a full stomach, for that was
an honour to the owner of the lodge.
  They set out at sunset. The bearers of the pipe were the same
two warriors who had shared the ceremony in the chief's lodge, only
now their paint-of-ceremony had been washed from their fur and
they went with only the sacred white colour circling their eyes, and
in bars on their foreheads. Nor did they carry spears, for even the
mink must respect an enemy who travels with a medicine pipe, lest
raising paw against such travellers bring the wrath of all spirits
down upon the attacker.
  Yellow Shell had gone to the lodge where Broken Claw lay, his
wounds packed with healing mud and herbs. The younger warrior,
his eyes dulled by fever, had looked longingly at the beaver.
  "I--would--I could--take--this trail--" he signed with slow
sweeps of his uninjured paw.
  "So it is known, Brother," Yellow Shell returned. "But if this time
you do not take this path, there shall come another when you do.
Know this, between you and me there is blood shared and we are as
two cublings of the same litter."
  "It--is--so--and together we shall take the war trail against the
mink!"
  Yellow Shell nodded. "The spirits willing it, yes, my Brother!"
  The three left the swamp by a waterway so overhung with reed
growth and brush that Yellow Shell guessed it had been purposely
hidden. In places it was almost too narrow for the bulk of his
beaver body, but the otters skimmed through it with ease.
  Before dawn they were well away from the swamp and had
travelled overland, which was the greater danger, through a
woodland, heading for a stream that would lead them into the
mountains. His companions seemed so sure of the trail that Yellow
Shell followed them without question. But they went most
cautiously through the forest, sharing out, before they ventured
into that dangerous territory, the contents of a fish-skin packet
that had sage and other strong-smelling herbs worked into oil, to
hide their scent from the flesh eaters.
  Once they crouched together in a well-rotted hollow log to watch
the passing of a cougar. He was snarling softly to himself as he
went, and, though Yellow Shell did not understand the great cat's
language, he could guess that he must have missed an early kill
and was now intent on making up for that loss. Whether it was the
pungent stuff with which they had smeared their bodies, or else the
spirit power of the pipe, the green eyes did not turn in their
direction. And death on four padded feet went back and away from
where they sat in hiding.
  Yellow Shell found it difficult to keep up with the otters, though
they all dropped to four feet. They ran with an up-and-down
humping movement whereas he waddled at an awkward shuffle.
And he knew that he was delaying them, though they did not say
so.
  The forest lay at an upward slope and they were heading in the
direction of the heights. Cory found himself listening for the call of
a crow even as he had during their flight up-river. At the same time
he was aware of seeing more about him than he had ever noted
before. To look at things through Yellow Shell's eyes was indeed to
see a new world. The range of sight was closer to ground level, in
spite of the beaver's large size, but at that range it was much
keener than a boy's.
  They did not pause to eat; in fact they carried no food with them.
Yellow Shell had only the spear Broken Claw had urged him to
take, shorter and lighter than the one he had carried before, but
with a very sharp point. And his two companions bore only the pipe
in its wrappings, taking it in turn with its carrying strap about a
shoulder.
  At dawn they came out of the forest on the edge of a drop, below
which, in a canyon, ran the stream for which they searched. They
made their way cautiously down the rise and all three splashed
thankfully into the water, the otters straight away turning over
stones in search of their favourite food--crawfish.
  Yellow Shell was not so lucky. There was only rocky ground here,
no willows, alders, or water plants. He would have to hope that up
ahead he could find something to fill his now empty stomach. Or
else, if the otters were planning to rest through the daylight hours
and travel at night, perhaps he could prospect downstream and
return.
  He signed a question and the elder of the two pipe bearers
replied. There was a deep overhang ahead, if the bank had not
collapsed. Scouts from the village had long ago established a resting
place. As for casting downstream for food--perhaps Yellow Shell
was wise to try. There was little ahead in the way of growing
things and he might go hungry if he could not share their hunting.
  The overhang was still there and the otters whisked into its
shadow, pulling up out of the water to roll in a patch of sand,
drying their fur. Yellow Shell looked around carefully, setting
landmarks in his mind. Then he plunged back into the water, this
time swimming with the current downstream.
  For a space there was nothing but rocky walls, and his hunger
grew the keener because he began to fear that he would have to go
so far hunting food that he would have a long trail back. At last he
came out from between those walls as one would emerge from a
gate and was in a small meadow-like pocket.
  A deer snorted and stamped, startled, as he edged along the bank
towards a good stand of willows. But there were no wings in the
early-morning sky and he crept from the water to examine the
possibilities of breakfast.
  In the end he was able to eat his fill, though the food was not as
good as that of the otter village. And, having done that, he set
about cutting such lengths of bark as would not be too difficult to
carry, tying them together with twists of tough root. With the
otters' warning in mind, he thought he would do better to carry
food with him up the mountain, and he hoped what he could take
would be enough.



                      Eagles' Bargain
                                                              «^»
When they started on at nightfall, Yellow Shell found his bundle of
bark something of a hindrance, but as they went farther and
farther upstream, twice having to leave the water and climb around
small falls, he was glad he had it. For this was a waste sand of
rocks and stones and they seldom saw a green thing. When such did
grow, it was only a wind-twisted cedar or the like, which was no fit
food for him.
   Dawn found them high in the mountains, with one giant peak
standing directly before them. The otters, Red Head and Stone
Foot, signed that that was their goal and they would have to leave
the stream ahead and climb that wall in order to reach the eagles'
tribal grounds.
   Again they found shelter for the day. Yellow Shell ate sparingly
of his food and saw that the otters were following his example,
hunting for crawfish, but killing more than they ate and tying those
up in thongs of fish skin.
  "Where is Eagles' lodge?" Yellow Shell signed when they returned
with this food supply.
  "Up and up and up--" Red Head replied.
  "There is a trail?"
   "Part way only, then we light a signal fire," it was Stone Foot's
turn to answer. "If Eagle will speak with us, he will send warriors
to carry us the rest of the way."
  Yellow Shell did not like the sound of that. Earth or water safely
under one was one thing. To be borne aloft by an eagle who might
or possibly might not be friendly was something very different. But
he did not say so to the otters, since it appeared that this was a
usual way of visiting Eagle as far as they were concerned-- if they
had visited Eagle before. But if not his present companions,
someone from their village must have done so, or they would not be
so sure of how one got there.
  Again he slept. But this time he kept waking, and raising his
head to listen. For what he was not sure but there was a strange
feeling that the three in their hollow between the two rocks were
not the only ones on this mountain side, that other animals--or
things--moved here with some purpose. Though for all his
watching, and straining his ears to hear what he might not see, the
beaver sighted or heard nothing, save a flying insect or two, and
once a bird that skimmed low over the water but did not wear the
black feathers of a crow.
   If he was uneasy, so were the otters. Twice Stone Foot, the elder
of the two, slipped away from their crevice into the water, but not
to swim on the surface with a flick of the hind foot to send him
driving ahead as was the usual way of his clan. He vanished, diving
under with such power as to hide him from sight almost instantly.
Once he cast downstream, once up, and both times he returned
after a short space, to sign that the river was empty of any
travellers save fish. They kept watch on the land, but did not
venture from the stream side, napping in turns, one always on
guard.
   With the coming of dusk they left the water and began the last
portion of their climb. Land travel was a slower progress and both
the otters and the beaver disliked it. Already clouds were blacking
out what remained of the grey sky of evening, seeming to pull in a
tight circle about the top of the very mountain that they climbed.
Rain came, hard and fast, so that at times they had to take cover as
best they could from its fury, waiting until it slackened somewhat
so they could cross some open space that provided only poor footing.
  Flashes of lightning were bright and sharp.
  Thunderbird. His Yellow Shell mind drew a strange picture for
Cory, that of a giant bird perching on a mountain top or winging in
the clouds above such a peak, shooting those blasts of fire from the
fanning of its sky-wide wings.
  By one such flash he saw that Stone Foot had smeared mud
across his muzzle below his eyes, and knew that the otter had
taken the precaution of claiming protection from the earth. Now
Yellow Shell reached out a paw to scrabble in a small hollow by a
boulder and pick up enough of the wet soil to do the same. For
earth stood fast against the force of wind and water, and to claim
such protection now was what they must do on this mountain side
where wind and water attacked.
  At length Red Head, who was in the lead, turned from a last
straining climb, and they came out of the full force of the wind into
a cup-like space between two rocks, part wall of the mountain, and
a spur that shot out from the cliff. Water ran in a steady stream
through it, but as the otters hunkered down in that hollow, Yellow
Shell followed their example.
  The dark was so thick that even his night sight could no longer
serve him. Now the lightning ceased and the storm began to
slacken so that the runnel of water became a trickle and then
vanished altogether.
   Yellow Shell had held his paws in that water as long as it had
lasted. Never meant for such hard scrambling over a rough surface,
the pads on all four feet were scraped and raw, but the water eased
their hurt. He expected the otters to move on, but they did not, and
he began to think that perhaps this was the place where they must
signal for aid into the eagle country.
   For what was left of the night they dozed together in the cup,
sheltered from the last of the storm, the bundles of food at their
feet, the well-wrapped pipe safe between the two otters. But at
dawn they stirred, and Red Head brought out just such a shell
fire-box as Cory had used to escape the minks.
   Yellow Shell looked about for wood. If Red Head wanted a fire
they must have some. But he could see nothing save a
withered-looking bush fighting hard to keep its hold against a steep
slope.
  "That?" he signed and pointed to the bush.
  The otter nodded and Yellow Shell pulled out of the cup to go and
cut it down, an action he did not find easy since he feared starting a
landslide that would take him with it. But sharp teeth served him
well, and by patient effort he brought down a tree. In two trips he
had dragged back all that piece of growth to the crevice.
   Just as Red Head had produced the coal of fire to start new
flames, so did Stone Foot now bring out a small pouch that he held
waiting in his paw. The first otter took bits of branch and twig that
Yellow Shell had sheared off for him and with care built them into
a tripod of small sticks. It was small, too small, Yellow Shell
thought, to last long, but he could see nothing else usable anywhere
about them now.
   As the clear light of morning finally touched the mountain side
where they had sheltered, Red Head set the coal within his tepee of
brush and they saw a curl of smoke wreath up. When the first
small flame broke, Stone Foot reached out to quickly dump the
contents of his pouch on it. The answer was more smoke, but much
thicker and darker, with a reddish colour such as Yellow Shell had
not seen before. Channelled by the rock walls of the crack in which
they crouched, it rose up and up. There was no wind this morning,
as if the storm last night had exhausted it. And the smoke trail was
like a ladder climbing into the Sky Country itself.
   Yellow Shell remembered old tales of such ladders and how the
people of under earth had sometimes climbed them, not many
finding the Sky Country ready to welcome such intruders. Did--did
the otters believe that Eagle indeed lived in the spirit world?
   But his companions were making no effort to climb any such
way. Instead they ate from their packets of crawfish, and with
appetite, as if they saw no use now in saving any of the food for
later. Following their example, Yellow Shell finished the last of his
now dried bark and withered leaves, and found it not nearly enough
to satisfy him.
  The beaver had no way of measuring time in a world where
watches and clocks were unknown. But the fire burned itself out
swiftly, he thought. Yet the otters made no move to travel on, or to
hunt more wood for another fire. Having eaten all their food bag,
they settled back again, one on either side of the pipe, as if to sleep
away the day.
  Yellow Shell was restless, wanting either to go on ahead or to
retreat down the mountain. Retreat was possible, for he could see
their back trail plainly by day. But the otters were right, there was
no way ahead. They were faced with a sheer wall of cliff, as if some
giant had at one time used his knife to cut down a slice through the
mountain.
   A shadow swept across the cliff. Yellow Shell froze as that
winged shape wheeled about, circling, and, at each circle, dropping
closer to where the fire had burned.
  Out of the crevice came the otters. Still guarding the pipe
between their bodies, they reared up on their haunches to their
greatest height. The beaver did the same. The winged shape came
in, to perch upon a pinnacle of the spur that had been part of their
shelter.
  It was an eagle and, though Cory had never seen one so close, he
thought that this one was far larger than the birds of his own
world--as were also the beaver shape he wore, and the otters.
   It turned its head from side to side, looking down at them, its
wings still a little out-held and not folded against its large body.
Yellow Shell had to tilt back against the firm support of his tail to
see it well. But now he noted that around its feet it wore bindings
of coloured stuff from which hung seeds and the rattles cut from
snake tails.
  The eagle carried no weapon. Cory thought that it did not need
any but its own cruel-looking beak and talons. And now it opened
that beak in a screaming cry that shook Cory, and that was echoed
faintly from the heights behind from which it had come.
  The otters used sign language, taking turns. And Yellow Shell
read those signs. They were few and plain, telling that they were
pipe bearers, on a peaceful mission from tribe to tribe.
   Done with that, they sat waiting. The eagle appeared to be
thinking, as if he were making sure of the truth of their statement.
Then once more he gave that piercing scream. And, in answer,
more shadows flapped down along the face of the cliff, two of his
fellows.
  The otters, as if this were the most natural welcome in the world,
moved out into the open, and Stone Foot made the cord of the pipe
package tight to him, using as an additional lashing the thong that
had tied his crawfish bag.
   Then the eagle who had first arrived pounced, and Stone Foot
was borne aloft. A second came for Red Head, and the third black
shadow was over Yellow Shell. In that moment the beaver wanted
to flee. This was too like real dangers he had known in the past, not
an act of any friendship. But he had no time to move. The claws
closed about him and with a lurch, sickening to him, he was in the
air, the safety of the ground left rapidly below.
  There was a vast difference, Cory speedily discovered, between
travelling in a comfortable plane in his own world, and by eagle
power in this. He closed his eyes, trying not to feel the tight and
painful grip of the claws, the rush of wind, only hoping that the
journey would be a very short one.
  He was dropped, rather than set down, rolling over in a painful
half bounce. Opening his eyes, he struggled to his feet--to face
what he was surprised to find lay at the crest of that tall mountain.
  Perhaps the tower of rock and earth had been born a volcano, and
they were now where the inner flames had burned. For this was a
basin sloping from ragged stone edging. There was a lake in the
centre around an island of stone outcrops. About the outer edge of
that body of water were trees and grass, a miniature woodland.
  It was the island that Yellow Shell now faced, having been
dropped with the otters on a sand bar reaching into the water. And
the island was the eagle village, their bushes of nests mounted on
blocks, broken pillars, and mounds of stone.
   It was a crowded village, and there was much coming and
going--mostly of parent birds supplying their screaming young with
food. But those eagles who had brought the animals did not stop at
the village, rather they spiralled up to the wall of the basin valley
where Yellow Shell caught sight of other birds moving in and out of
fissures in the rock.
  The otters were busied with the pipe bundle, loosing its
wrappings, pulling off the fish-skin protective covering. But still the
four layers of painted skins were about it as they laid it carefully
out on the sand, the bowl end pointing towards them, the stem to
the village on the lake.
  However it was not from the village that the chief came. He
wheeled from the crags, circling down to perch on a big rock by the
shore, one worn in hollows where his huge feet rested, as if
generations of eagles had sat there before him.
  Tufts of weasel fur, for the weasel is a valiant warrior and skilful
in evading pursuit, hung from a necklace about his throat, together
with the tooth of a cougar, as if he had indeed counted coup on that
mightiest of four-footed enemies. He was a proud and fierce chief,
more for leadership on the warpath than on the peace trail, Yellow
Shell thought, as he looked upon him with awe.
   Several lesser eagles settled down on lower rocks. And every one
of them wore coup necklaces laced with that which told of their past
victories. But the last comer was no eagle.
  At first Yellow Shell flinched at the sight of those dead black
wings--a crow? Then he saw that this was a raven, larger than the
crows he had seen scouting when he fled up-river with Broken
Claw.
  No coup necklace was about the Raven's throat. But the rattles of
a rock rattler were tied to his legs, and he carried on a thong a
small drum, hardly larger than Yellow Shell's hind paw. He did not
have the painted circles of red or yellow that marked the eagles
about their eyes. A dab of white, spirit white, made a vividly plain
mark just above the jutting of his beak.
   The eagles and the Raven folded their wings as the otters moved
with a slow ceremony to unveil the pipe, wrapping by wrapping.
They worked in silence, nor was there any sound from the birds
who sat in such quiet that they might have been carved of the very
stone upon which they now perched. Even the noises from the
village lessened and Yellow Shell saw that there were fewer
comings and goings from there. Many of the parent birds settled
down on the nests, all facing towards the shore and the meeting
between the animals and their chief.
   At last the pipe was fully exposed and lay in the sunlight. It
seemed to shine, as if the sun put fire to the red of its bowl. For the
first time Stone Foot spoke, his voice rising and falling in a chant
that the beaver, while he did not understand it, recognized as a
medicine song, and not addressed to the eagles but to some
protective spirit.
   When he had done, Red Head, moving with care, dropped a pinch
of tobacco into the bowl and brought out his shell box with its
smouldering tinder. But he did not light the pipe as yet. He waited.
  Again a long period, or it seemed long to Cory, of just waiting.
Then the eagle chief moved from his rock perch to a lower stone set
closer to the otters. From that he stretched forth his leg, his claws
closing about the pipe stem. Red Head lit the pipe, and the eagle
chief raised it to the sky, pointed it to earth, and then to the four
corners of the world, even as Long Tooth had done with that other
pipe when he welcomed Yellow Shell to the otter village.
   The chief smoked, expelling a puff from his bill, passed the pipe
to the Raven. And the Raven in turn gave it to Stone Foot, Stone
Foot to Yellow Shell, and then to Red Head. Having blown the last
ceremonial curl of smoke, the otter tapped the tobacco ashes from
the bowl and laid the pipe back on its wrappings, the stem still
pointed arrow straight at the chief.
  A great clawed foot rose so that the claws could move in signs.
  "I am Storm Cloud of the Swift Ones, the Mighty Wings."
  Stone Foot signed in answer. "We are Stone Foot, Red Head,
bearers of the pipe. And this is Yellow Shell, who is--"
  The Raven hopped down from his stone perch. Among the eagles
he had seemed small. Standing thus on the ground to face the
beaver, he proved to be almost as large as Yellow Shell. He moved
with a lurch and Cory saw that his left foot had lost a claw. But he
steadied himself well on it as he signed:
  "This is a beaver, yet not a beaver."
  "That is true," Yellow Shell spoke for himself.
  "You bear a pipe?" The Eagle looked at him. "Do you speak for
the beavers?"
  "For myself only. The medicine otter said that the Raven had
great power, that he could aid me in becoming all beaver, all other
once more."
  "But this is not a matter of the pipe." The Eagle's sweep of clawed
foot was impatient. "It is the matter of the pipe to which Storm
Cloud has been summoned. What speak the otters?"
  Stone Foot's paws moved deliberately, giving to his signs the
dignity of a ceremonial speech in his own tongue.
  "There is much trouble along the river. Those who serve the
Changer fly and raid. The minks take prisoners for him, and we
know not what becomes of them. Our spirit talker has sung and his
dreams have been ill ones. We would know what the Swift Flyers,
the Mighty Wings, have seen in the land. For even the edges of the
Sky Country are theirs and little can be hidden from their strong
eyes."
  There was another pause before the Eagle made answer. "It is
true there is a new coming and going. The Changer's village has
moved close to the place of Stone Trees, though the hunting there is
poorer. It is as if they must wait there for someone, or something to
happen. Spirits walk by night; you may sense their passing. But to
know more than that, we must search--and we have left well
enough alone."
   The Raven bowed his head in a vigorous up and down. "Yes, yes,
it is better not to draw the eye of the Changer, lest he be minded of
one. But does your spirit talker fear that the time spoken of is
near--that the world is about to be turned over?"
  Cory saw all the eagles shift uneasily, their heads turn from the
Raven to the otters. He could see that the bold question disturbed
them.
  "There is always that to be feared," Stone Foot returned.
   "So. Well, the Thunderbird dwells yonder. We shall burn sweet
smoke such as he loves to have blown into his wings, and cry aloud
to the wind what we fear. But also, tell your chief," Storm Cloud
continued, "that we shall search from the air and learn what we
may. None of those who serve the Changer can out-climb or out-fly
us, as they shall learn if they match their powers against ours."
  Again there was movement among the eagles as they drew
themselves tall on their perch rocks with their pride as strong to
see as their war shouts would be heard.
  "The Swift Flyers, the Mighty Wings, are great ones, undefeated
in any battle," signed Stone Foot. "If this they will do, then all
along the river shall know that we will be prepared for any war, if
war is what they should bring upon us."
  Together with Red Head he began to rewrap the medicine pipe,
securing each fastening. But the Raven turned his attention now
fully on Yellow Shell.
  "You have come to Raven," he said. "Raven's ears are open to
hear what you would ask."
  "It is as I have said--the medicine otter told me that if I would be
as I was before the Changer looked upon me, I must come to the
Eagle and the Raven."
  But the Raven was shaking his head. "I hold the calling of spirits,
yes. They are sky spirits, and wind spirits, and a few earth spirits.
But the powers of the Changer they cannot break. They can only
tell you where to seek an answer, they cannot give it to you."
  "And will you ask them for me?"
  Storm Cloud's beak clicked together in a sharp sound, drawing
Yellow Shell's attention. As the beaver looked to him, he signed:
  "To do that requires a mighty singing. Such singing is not done
for nothing. We have no old peace with your people, nor have we
any friendship or brotherhood with you,
Beaver-who-is-not-wholly-a-beaver."
  "Friendship is a matter of giving as well as taking." The Yellow
Shell part of him made a bolder answer than Corey might have
used. "I ask not to be given where I do not give. What would you
want of me as a price for such a singing?"
   The Raven did not answer; it was as if he believed this a matter
of bargaining between Yellow Shell and the chief. He himself was
content upon Storm Cloud's decision.
   "You are of those who master water," the Eagle said after a long
moment's pause. He might have been trying to determine some
manner of payment of benefit to his tribe, thought Corey. "This, our
lake, is sometimes too full. Rocks tumble from the cliffs and close
the stream that empties it, and then there is much hard labour to
clear them free. Twice have storms so filled it that lower nests have
been washed away. Dig you a way for water to run, one that we
may use at such times, and this singing shall be yours."
   "I am but one beaver," Yellow Shell countered. "This may be such
a task as would need a whole clan to do."
  Storm Cloud's bill clicked again, impatiently. "A whole clan does
not ask for spirit singing, but you do. Therefore it is your task. And
perhaps only you can find a way to use the stream that is, clear it
more easily of rocks."
  "What I can do, I shall," Yellow Shell promised.
  The otters had the pipe recovered, were ready to be gone, and
Storm Cloud had already assigned two of his warriors to fly them
down the mountain. But Yellow Shell had a few moments to talk
with them. He signed a wish that they might find his own people
and warn them against marching south into these river lands
where trouble was gathering. And this, Red Head agreed, they
would do, sending their best scout north. Then the otters were
snatched up by the eagles, who seemed to want to rid themselves of
their guests as soon as possible, and Yellow Shell was left behind.
  Storm Cloud, too, was a-wing, heading back to the crags, and
only a young eagle swooped about the beaver. Even as Raven
signed, "Split Bill will show you the waterway," the eagle's clutch
was hard upon him, and he, too, was borne skyward in a fearsome
soaring.



                        Raven's Sing
                                                              «^»
Yellow shell looked over the terrain when the eagle warrior dropped
him at the outlet of the lake. There was a stream that fed through
a narrow gap and the beaver could see how a fall of rocks from
above would dam it. But this was not a trouble his people had had
to face before, for their task was usually the making, not the
clearing, of dams.
   He swam along the river outlet, nosing at both banks, trying to
find some way to deepen the flow of water. But he could not see any
method of tunnelling through the stone of the cliffs.
   Since the present outlet was so banked with rock, he returned to
the lake and began to explore its banks at this end. The eagle who
had brought him grew bored and flew away, and Yellow Shell was
left alone to face what seemed a hopeless task. But the beaver
stubbornly refused to admit defeat.
   In the end his forelegs and head suddenly broke through a screen
of brush into a hole in the mountain cup. If all the basin had been
formed by a volcano in action, then this crack had come at that
time, with a later spread of molten rock to roof above it. When
Yellow Shell padded into it, he found not the crevice he had first
expected but a channel, which brought him, by a very dark way,
out on the open mountain side on the other side of the basin wall.
  He went back to the valley of the lake and squatted down at the
edge of the water, eating a hearty meal of freshly stripped bark
while he studied the bank by that fissure. It was a big job for one
beaver working alone, but he could see no other possible way to
provide the eagles' lake with an emergency overflow exit. By
mid-afternoon he was at work.
   The bank of the lake must be undermined, cut through so that
there was an open spillway into that crack. He dug with his
forepaws until they were as sore as they had been from travel over
stone. Rocks had to be loosened and pushed from side to side, then
firmly embedded again to make a kind of funnel into the spillway.
  He worked through the last of the daylight, keeping on into the
night, stopping only now and then for a much needed rest or to eat
again from the food about him. Now he had a raw gash in the
earth, partly walled in with stones and such pieces of hard saplings
as he could pound and wedge in for security. Mud mixed with
broken brush was then plastered over that foundation, all to form a
channel. The whole thing was the height of his body above the
present level of the lake, and at that end he built another wall of
small stones, to be easily shifted by the strong claws of the eagles
when the need arose.
  He was lying with his sore feet in the lapping waters of the lake
at the next sunrise, so tired he thought that he could not easily
move again. But to the best of his beaver skill he had provided the
eagles with the safety they needed. Let the river leading from the
lake again be sealed by falling stones and they need only pull out
the thin dam corking this outlet, and the flood would pour through
the new channel. Of course there was no way of testing it until
such a calamity occurred, and Yellow Shell wondered dully if they
would demand such proof before they fulfilled their part of the
bargain.
  There was the whir of wings in the air above him and the eagle
who had brought him there, or one enough like him to be his twin,
landed on the edge of the restraining dam Yellow Shell had built.
He teetered there as he looked down into the channel the beaver
had cut and walled.
  Yellow Shell was too tired to lift his paws in any language sign.
But he nodded, first to the lake and then to the spillway he had
made, hoping that the eagle, if he were a messenger, would
understand that the task was done.
   The bird's sharp eyes shifted from the animal to the cut leading
to the dark hole in the basin side. Then his claws formed a series of
signs.
  "This is a way through the rock?"
  Yellow Shell pulled his sore paws from the soothing water to sign
back:
  "A way through the mountain wall. When the water rises, pull
the stones now under you. There will be a new way to drain--"
   The eagle bent his head to survey the dam on which he perched,
touched his beak to one of the topmost stones as if testing its
stability, or else estimating his chance of being able to move it
when the need arose. Apparently he was satisfied, for without
another sign to Yellow Shell he took wing and was out over the lake
in a couple of sweeps, heading, the beaver noted, not for the village
on the island but up to the crags where Storm Cloud and his escort
of warriors had gone the day before.
   Yellow Shell combed at his muddy fur, wincing when his sore
paw hurt, but intent on making himself clean if the eagles were to
come to inspect his handiwork. Their pride was known to all the
tribes, but the beavers were certainly not the least among the
People. He wished he had his boxes of paint, his ceremonial beads
and belt, that he might make a proper showing. For, looking at his
work of the past hours, he thought he could take pride in it.
 The eagle who had come to inspect did serve as a messenger, for
more mighty wings were visible in the morning air and very shortly
Storm Cloud, together with those who must be his subchiefs and
leading warriors, settled on the dam. They looked at the dam, at
the cut behind it, at the crevice into which the waters would be
funnelled when the need arose. Yellow Shell signed to the eagle
chief the purpose of each part of the spillway.
  Now--would the eagles demand from him a demonstration--one
which would mean that he must somehow dam that other river
outlet and turn the water into this? At the very thought of such
labour, his paws burned and his back ached. But it would appear
that Storm Cloud was not so suspicious of the beaver's skill.
   The eagle chief himself walked along the now dry funnel, thrust
his head and shoulders well into the hole of the crevice. But he did
not go all the way through. Perhaps he could see the light at the
other end, which was now more visible since Yellow Shell had also
cleaned the exit to allow easy passage.
  The eagle chief came back to face the beaver.
  "It is well," he signed. "You have made what was needed.
Therefore we shall now do as we promised."
   He must have given some signal that Yellow Shell was not aware
of, for one of the waiting warriors suddenly caught the beaver and
rose into the air. Yellow Shell closed his eyes against that fear of
being so far from the safe ground and hung motionless in his
bearer's hold as the wind blew chill about him.
   They did not return to the shore across from the village island
where he and the otters had been deposited before. Rather they
climbed up to the crags from which Storm Cloud had come. Here
was a flat shelf on which the beaver was dropped and he sat
carefully as close to its middle as he could without his distrust of
these heights being visible to his hosts--or so he hoped.
  The rock about him was cracked and broken and these holes and
crevices seemed to serve the birds as lodges. One such opening
faced Yellow Shell now. They were all patterned with drawings to
celebrate coups and deeds, not only of the living warriors who now
inhabited them but those of their ancestors, for the eagles must
have lived here a long, long time. But the lodge of stone that Yellow
Shell faced was very different from the others in that its painted
border was all of pictures showing strong medicine. And, as Yellow
Shell hunched there looking at those, Raven hopped forth from the
crack of the doorway. He clapped his wings vigorously and, at his
summons, two young eagles came from behind him, one carrying a
small drum painted half red, half white, the other a bundle that he
put down carefully beside a spot on the rock stained black by many
past fires.
  The eagle who had brought out the bundle now went to one side,
pulling back to the fire site in three or four trips short lengths of
well-dried wood that he built up into a tepee shape. This done, he
went to perch with the other eagles, except for the one with the
drum. There were rocks for their sitting all around the open space.
Yellow Shell turned his head from right to left and saw that all the
birds had settled down quietly in a ring, though he did not turn his
back on Raven to see if they were also behind him.
  Now the drummer began to thump with the claws of his right
foot, first gently, then with more force, so that it sounded at the
beginning as might the mutter of thunder as yet far off, growing
stronger and stronger.
  Raven took a coal from a firebox, set it to the tepee of wood,
tossing into the flames that followed substances he took from his
bundles.
  Smoke came, and it was coloured, first blue, then red--and there
was a mingling of strange odours to be sniffed. The puffs of smoke
did not spread, but rose in a smooth, straight pillar to the clouds as
had the signal fire of the otters. Yellow Shell, straining back his
head on his thick neck to watch them climb, thought that this
looked more and more like a rope reaching to the Sky
Country--which, here on the mountain top, could not be too far
away.
  Was Raven planning to use that to reach the Sky World and talk
there with the spirit peoples?
  It would seem not. Once the smoke was thick and climbing well,
Raven fastened dance rattles to his feet, took up turtle shells filled
with pebbles. Then he began to dance about the fire, and as he
danced he sang, though the words he croaked had no meaning for
Yellow Shell.
   Tired as he was, the beaver tried to fight sleep; yet in spite of all
his efforts, his head would nod forward on his chest and his eyes
close. Then he would straighten up with a start, glancing around
hurriedly to see if the eagles or Raven had noticed.
 But they were watching only Raven. Finally the fight became too
much for Yellow Shell and there was a moment when he did not
wake again, but went further into sleep.
  And he dreamed, knowing even as he dreamed that this was a
spirit dream and one he must remember when he awakened.
  He was flying high in the sky, not borne so by one of the eagles
so that the dread of falling was ever with him, but as if he, too, had
wings and had worn them all his life.
  Below him stretched all the world as was known to Yellow Shell.
There was the lake from which his clan had begun their march
south. And he saw them now, recognizing each and every one of
them. They had an otter in their midst and were watching that
animal's flying forepaws. So Yellow Shell knew that the warning
against the south had reached them and they would now turn back,
or perhaps east or west, to safety.
  And he saw the river, and the swamp marsh of the otter village
where warriors now made new spears and squaws were working on
a mighty gathering of food, as if they thought that their island
home might be under siege.
  There, too, was the mink lodge where he and Broken Claw had
been held captive, and there he saw the minks lashing beaver
slaves, thin, worn, undersized, to work building new canals. And
Yellow Shell ground his teeth together in hot anger at the sight.
   But all this was not what the spirits wished him to see. He was
swept along, rather than flew, to the southeast, with the mountains
of the eagles now at his back. So he came to a land that was
prairie, changing to desert in places. There was a village and he
saw that it was one of the coyotes, and now he knew that what he
was to be shown was the stronghold of the Changer.
  Down and down he dropped over that village, until he feared that
any one of those there would raise head to the sky and see him. But
none did, for the spirit dream was his protection. And he came to
ground before a skin-walled lodge set a little apart from the rest.
On it were pictures of great and strong medicine, so that he feared
to put out a paw to raise the flap of the doorway. Yet that he must
do, for the need that had brought him there so ordered him.
   Thus he came into the lodge and recognized it for one of a great
medicine person. But the spirits of his dreams raised his eyes to the
centre pole of the lodge and to the bundle hanging there, and he
knew that this was what he must have for his own if he would be
only Yellow Shell again. But when he reached up his forepaws to
seize it, there was a billow of dark and stinking smoke from the
place of fire and he leaped back, a leap that took him through the
door flap into the open again. Then he found that he could not
return, rather he was again soaring into the air, heading away
from the coyote town, back to the eagle mountain. And at last he
sat in the rock crags, across the smoking fire from Raven, who no
longer danced. The drumming had stopped and the drummer was
gone, so were the eagles who had watched. It was the beginning of
night.
  "You know," Raven did not sign that but croaked the words in
beaver, which, though harshly accented, were plain enough for
Yellow Shell to understand.
  "Yes, I know," the beaver returned.
   "To that place you must go, and the medicine bundle you must
take, then shall you be able to force the Changer to make the
wrong once more right. For that bundle is his strength and without
it he is but half of what he wants to be."
  "A long way," Yellow Shell said. "It will take much time."
 "Not too long by wing," Raven replied briskly. "Four feet would
make much of it, but we shall do better for you."
  "You are kind--"
  Raven opened his beak in harsh laughter. "I do not do this for
kindness, Beaver. I do it because the Changer and I have old
troubles between us. Once we were friends and made medicine
together. Then he learned secretly that which he would not share
with me, and he walked apart, daring to laugh when I asked that
we should do as brothers and have no knowledge held one from the
other. Thus, bring the Changer to humbleness and I shall be glad. I
would ask you for his medicine, but the spirits have foretold that
that must serve another purpose. However, without it he shall
suffer and that shall be as I wish it."
 He got up and the dance rattles about his feet gave off a faint
whisper of sound.
  "I cannot ask you into my lodge, Beaver, for there is much there
that only I can safely look upon. But you will find shelter in that
crevice over there, and food. Rest for a time, and then there shall
come one to see you on the first part of your journey."
  Yellow Shell crawled out of the wind, which now blew very chill
about him, into the opening Raven had pointed to. There he found
some bark one of the eagles must have brought from below. It was
not what he would have chosen for himself, and it tasted bitter. But
he ate it thankfully and curled up to sleep.
   Before there was any light a clawed foot shook him awake. It was
the young eagle drummer who stood over him. Seeing Yellow
Shell's eyes open, he signed swiftly that they must go. He did not
give the beaver any time to protest or question, but, as soon as
Yellow Shell crawled from the crevice, he seized him, and they were
off into the dark clouds and the wind. For the third time that flight
was a frightening thing and the beaver shut his eyes to endure it.
To make it worse, this was a longer flight than that up the
mountain or to the end of the lake. Those now seemed to have been
only short moments of danger.
  Over him the powerful wings beat steadily and Yellow Shell
guessed that, as in the spirit dream, they were heading southwest,
away from the mountains and over the prairie desert land where he
had seen the coyote village. He tried to think what he would do
when he got there. To secure such a precious thing from the lodge
where it was hung, in the midst of an enemy village, was so
dangerous an undertaking that he could not hope to be successful.
Yet the spirit dream had made most clear that that he must do.
  Suddenly he guessed that the eagle was descending and he
opened his eyes. Being held as he was face downward, he could
indeed see the earth racing up to meet him. But morning could not
be too far distant as the light was now grey--yet it was still dark
and shadowed on the ground.
   The eagle did not set him down gently, but loosed his grip, so that
Yellow Shell fell into the midst of a bush and was fighting against
its thorned branches all in an instant. When he had battled his way
free of that, his bearer was only a very distant moving object in the
sky, and he had no chance to thank him, if one could truly offer
thanks for being dumped so unceremoniously in an unknown land,
perhaps very near an enemy village.
   Yellow Shell sat up on his haunches and looked about. This was
plainly open prairie land and not too rich, for the only bushes he
could see were stubby ones with a starved look as if good soil and
much water were things they had never known since their seeding.
There were patches of bare sand here and there that gave rooting
to nothing at all.
   He turned his head slowly. The coyote village, wherever it might
lie, could not be set too far from some source of water, for water all
animals must have. Now he sniffed each puff of wind that reached
him, drew in deep breaths in every direction, hoping to pick up the
scent of water.
  Not only must he find water as a probable guide to the village but
as a source of food. The withered stuff the eagles had supplied the
night before had blunted his hunger, but it had not really satisfied
him, and now he wanted, needed food, and must have it.
  He was facing south when the very faint scent he hunted reached
him. There was no help for it, he must walk, over a country that
was not meant for his kind, awkward and slow on land. His only
hope of ever reaching that water was to be always alert to all that
lay about him.
  The sun was rising as he thumped along, his paws beginning to
hurt again as they met the hot, hard surface. He kept when he
could to the patches of coarse grass that offered cushioning. There
was life here; he saw birds, a lizard or two out in the early morning
before heat drove them into cover. And once he made a wide circle
around a place where the hated, musky scent of snake was a
warning.
  His only relief was that the odour of water grew ever stronger,
drawing him forward with longing to plunge into some river, even
into a pool, with cool wet all about him. Then he stiffened and
crouched low in the shadow of a bush, hoping he had taken to that
cover in time. The loud, ear-hurting call of a crow, of more than
one, sounded clearly across the land.
  Turning his head up and back, Yellow Shell was able to sight
them as they passed overhead--three of them, southbound as
himself but angling a little more to the east. If he dared believe
they were on their way to the coyote village, then there was a hope
that he could still reach water some distance away from the enemy,
for the scent seemed to run from east to west.
   Making very sure that the crows were well away before he left
his bush shelter, Yellow Shell stumbled on. He marked ahead every
bush or stand of tall grass in which he could crouch if the need for
hiding arose, and he made the best speed he could in a zigzag path
from one to the next.
   The water scent was so strong now that he had a hard time
keeping from breaking into a run. But he held to his caution and
kept up his move from cover to cover, waiting in between times.
The sun was growing hotter and there were more birds, but no
lizards, to be seen. Once he sighted a pair of rabbits. They were
painted for a raid, and were moving with caution like him. Young
bucks, he thought, perhaps out in a daring attempt to count some
coup in coyote country--though he thought that their daring was
that of young fools and that any coups counted in that way should
be their shame and not their glory.
  Beavers counted bravery a virtue as much as any other of the
People, but a brave fool got no praise from them for his folly. Yellow
Shell kept carefully out of sight of the pair, when in other times he
might have asked for directions. If they did fall to the coyotes,
which was only too possible, he wanted no tales told about his
presence in a place where a lone beaver could be so noteworthy a
happening as to attract instant attention and investigation.
  The ground suddenly ended in a sharp-edged drop and he looked
down into a gully. Perhaps at other times of the year the stream at
the bottom of it was a sizable river. But now it had shrunk into
hardly more than a series of pools, all shallow--too much so, at
least the ones he saw, for swimming. But it was water and his
whole body longed for its touch.
  Only the gully was so open. To venture down there where there
was no shelter was only asking to be sighted by crows, by any
coyote on scout.
  Yellow Shell angled along the bank, looking longingly at the pools
that at another time would have disgusted him by the murkiness of
their water. As he went, the pools did grow larger and joined with
one another, and there were actually signs of a sluggish current.
Perhaps closer to the source of this dying river there was more
water.
   At last he caught sight of greenery growing in the gully and, with
a thankful sigh of relief, he half tumbled over the edge, to slip and
roll down to the stream's edge. But he was not so forgetful of
danger not to turn and hide as much of the signs of his passing as
he could by wide sweeps of his tail.
  The growth was scrub alder and he feasted upon it. But he was
careful to take his twigs and bark from spots where the breakage
would not be easily seen. And he also cut a small bundle for future
use as he had before they had climbed the mountain. In a
semidesert land one could not depend on too much to be found.
  There was one pool that gave him a chance to sink deep beneath
the surface, wet through his sand- and soil-burdened fur, ease the
smarting of his paws. He dove and swam, always staying in the
shadow the growth threw across the water, until he felt almost his
old strong self again.
   By the measurement of the sun's path, it was now past noon. He
half floated on the water, trying to plan. As with most of the
People, the coyotes preferred the night to the bright of day. And
dark would find their camp alert and awake. To push on now for a
first look around, if the village did not lie too far ahead, might be
wise. He tightened the reeds binding his bundle of food and began
to swim, taking to the bank again only when the water grew too
shallow. But there were not many such places now. In fact the
stream soon became a river instead of a series of pools, and he was
able to make faster time than he had all the earlier part of this day.



                     A Forest of Stone
                                                                «^»
It was sunset, the sun having already dropped behind the
mountains to the west. Yellow Shell crouched in a thicket while he
rubbed vigorously into his coarse upper fur pawfuls of bruised,
strongly scented leaves. His hope that this might cover his own
musky odour was perhaps wrong, but it was the only protection he
now had. And to get into the coyote camp, to that lodge that stood
just a little apart but was the same one he had seen in the spirit
dream, was now necessary.
   He had watched it for a long time. But the door flap had
remained down, whereas those in the others of the camp were
propped open, lashed to small sticks to keep them so. This could
mean one of two things--that the lodge was indeed empty, or that
its owner was at home and desired no visitors. And for the beaver's
purpose there was a vast difference between those two facts.
  It had been late afternoon when he had found the village on the
north side of the shallow river. On the south bank were more
patches of sand until the land began to be true desert country.
  Yellow Shell had not had much time for exploring or scouting the
camp, for the coyotes were already stirring. Young squaws came
down to the water's edge, bringing skin bags rubbed with fat to
make them water-tight, taking the liquid back to their tepees. Cubs
ran about, playing wild pounce and chase games. And the beaver
watched yawning warriors come out of their lodges, stretch,
grimace to show long fangs, snap at flies, rouse for the night's
hunting hours. He wondered then about the two rabbit
braves--would they be caught in this territory before they could
retreat?
  One coyote, or two, or even three, he would dare to face by
himself. His teeth, his tail, his spear were deadly weapons. But to
be set upon by a pack--that would be like the ambush of the minks
all over again. So Yellow Shell prudently withdrew downriver into
hiding, to consider what must be done.
  He might, of course, go into hiding to wait out the night, try to
reach the lodge again the next morning when the village was once
more asleep. But time was important. He could not be sure how he
knew that, only that it was so.
  There was this--he could watch for his chance, and after the
hunting parties had left and the life of the village began to follow
the usual pattern, he might be able to reach the medicine lodge
unseen. He was lucky in that it was not the chief's, which was set
in the middle of the circles of tepees, but apart on the northern
edge. And perhaps, though he dreaded leaving the water, he could
work his way around to it, using the tall grass for cover. If there
was no one inside, he could get in easily enough, for the skin wall at
the back would split under his teeth.
  So, patiently, Yellow Shell lay in the water, only his head, under
the shadow of a willow, above the surface of the stream, watching
carefully all he could see of the camp.
  Someone beat a drum with quick, sharp taps, and then a howling
call rang out in a summons. He saw braves trotting towards the
centre of the village to answer. Not a war party. There had been no
dancing, no singing. No, he must have been right in his guess--a
hunt was now intended. And by the numbers in the pack so
assembled, the prey to be was no easily attacked beast. Could they
be after the horned ones of the prairie? Yellow Shell gave a short
snort at the thought. What powerful medicine must hang in their
midst if these thought they could bring down a buffalo! Yet so large
a gathering of hunters could not be aimed at any lesser game.
  He saw a part of the pack as they trotted out. At the fore went a
mighty coyote with lighter fur that showed almost white in the
twilight where it was not dabbed with paint. He was flanked by the
seasoned warriors of the village. Trailing this impressive van were
younger hunters, some hardly out of cubhood, bringing up the rear.
These did not prance or bark, but padded humbly in their elders'
wake as if deeply impressed by the task now before them.
  Yellow Shell waited until they were long gone, for they headed
north into the grassland, thus verifying his suspicion that it was
indeed buffalo they were going to run. And he wondered at the
daring of the chief who had planned this hunt, which even the Wolf
Tribe would think twice of attempting, old enemies of the horned
ones that they were.
   By the rise of the moon the camp was not quite so busy. Many of
the cubs were down splashing in the river. Yellow Shell had edged
back into the grassland, his nose wrinkling when the smell of meat
from the tepees reached him. As he went deeper into the prairie, he
used his keen scent to find certain leaves, pleased when he came
across a sage bush very aromatic in the night wind.
   Now he smeared more of the crushed leaves well into his coat,
along the scaly skin of his powerful tail. As a cover it might not be
all he could wish, but the coyotes were so keen of nose that he
needed all the protection he could find. The wind blew now from the
east, which was a small thing in his favour. But he hated to travel
on land, which was always hard for him.
  Once again he scuttled from bush to bush, working around in a
wide half circle that he might approach the camp from the north,
and thus be closest to the medicine lodge. To get right against its
back was his hope. He could listen at its wall, and if he heard no
movement within, he would take a chance and slit the skin.
   What he would do with the bag he sought once he had it in his
paws. Yellow Shell did not yet know. The spirit dream had shown
him that this he must do in order to help himself, and so he would
follow its direction.
  When the leaves were only green-grey smears on the pads of his
paws, he gave a last wipe of those paws on his haunches and moved
out. There was a stir in the village, but it did not reach the
medicine lodge. Perhaps the coyotes had good reason to be in awe of
the Changer, though all knew that he favoured the coyotes as
brothers and wore their shape more often than any other, dwelling
among them for periods of time, to their great joy.
  Now and again Yellow Shell gave an anxious glance to the sky.
He had not forgotten the crows he had seen flying in this direction,
though in all his scouting of the village he had not seen them here.
Perhaps they had brought some message, and, that task done, had
left again.
  With a last burst of the best speed a beaver could summon on
land, Yellow Shell reached the position he had aimed for, right at
the back of the medicine lodge. He edged as close as he could, laying
his ear against its surface, trying to hold his breath and still a little
the fast beating of his own heart, so that he could listen the better
and catch any small sound from within.
  The noises of the camp were annoying; he could not block them
out well enough to be sure that there was not a sleeper inside. But
after a long wait, the beaver knew that he could not remain there,
doing nothing. He would have to make up his mind before the
return of the hunting party. They must pass close to where he
crouched and he had little hope that his smearing of sage and other
scented leaves would cover him from their keen noses.
  He began to dig a little with his forepaws, pausing fearfully after
every scoop or two to listen. But there was no sound. At last his
fear of being discovered by the hunters' return grew stronger than
his caution, and he snapped at the skin wall of the tepee near the
bottom where he had made a hollow in the earth. Three such
slashing attacks and he had an opening large enough for his head
and shoulders.
  Immediately before him, tickling his nose and providing a screen,
was a heaping of dried grass and sage twigs for a bed place. There
was no fire in the circle of ash-smeared stones in the centre of the
lodge. No one was there.
   Yellow Shell wriggled all the way in, to sit up on the bed and look
about. There were no food-storage bags or water carriers hanging
from the poles set up against both sides of the lodge to support
such, on the right and left of the front flap door. And under him the
bedding was dusty dry, crunched as he moved, as did stuff long
gathered that had not been lately put to use.
  He could smell coyote, yes, but not as strongly as if one had
recently lived here. And he began a wary circuit, using his nose to
tell him what might have happened here.
  The smell of dried meat clung faintly to the poles for the storage
bags. And there was also the scent of herbs, which might be part of
medicine. But he was not ready for the disappointment that
awaited him as he straightened to his full height under the centre
pole of the tepee and stretched back his head to see where the
bundle had hung in the dream. There was nothing there.
  Of course, the Changer would have taken the bag with him when
he went. But where--where now must Yellow Shell follow or
search? The beaver slumped to all fours, the pain of his sore feet,
the aches in his body suddenly the sharper. And the misery of not
knowing what to do next was a dark shadow over his mind.
   As he so crouched closer to the beaten earth, he caught sight,
very plain in the gloom of the lodge, of a small bit of white--a piece
of eagle down. And he knew it for a thing of power. His dream--the
bundle--it had been wrapped in a skin bag with tassels of fur and
feathers dangling from it. This would seem to be a part of one such
tassel. Carefully Yellow Shell picked it up between two claws.
   The White Eagle! Not the mighty Storm Cloud of the heights, but
a far greater chief than he. Because the White Eagle truly ruled the
sky below the Sky Country, and only by his will might one pass
safely from the world below to the world above. Forever did he sit
on a far higher peak than any Storm Cloud knew, a peak in the
north. Always he faced the sunrise, but on his right and to his left
sat two younger eagles. And he on the right was the Speaker who
faced north, and he on the south was the Overseer. Those flew at
intervals high above the world so that they might see all that
happened, reporting to the White Eagle how it fared with land,
water, beasts and growing things.
   So this white down was the sign of the White Eagle and a
precious thing of much power. Holding it so, Yellow Shell knew a
slight spurt of hope, knew what he could now try. So when he
crawled out of the lodge, he took with him that wisp of feather.
   Now--to find a high place. He hunched up to look about him. The
river had rocks along its banks farther to the east. At the moment
those were the highest spots the beaver could sight. There was no
hope to return in time to the mountains, or even to the foothills. He
had this to encourage him--a rising and a strong wind that now
tugged at him.
  In his haste to try out his plan for finding where the Changer had
gone with the medicine bag, Yellow Shell almost lost his caution. It
was only a series of sharp barks from the direction of the prairie
that reminded him that he must still be alert to what lay there, to
the hunters who might at any moment return. And it seemed that
that was just what was happening now. For at that barking there
were more echoes from among the lodges and he saw the squaws
and older cubs gathering in excitement, the younger of them
heading out, in his direction, as if to meet the returning warriors.
   With a burst of speed difficult for his heavy body, Yellow Shell
scuttled as fast as he could towards the river, putting such a screen
of grass and brush between him and the village as he could find,
hoping to reach the river to the east well beyond the village.
   He was soon almost winded, for this was rough ground and his
fear pushed him to greater and greater efforts. The barking chorus
behind him took on the measure of a song and he thought he read
triumph in it. The warriors of the camp might be back from a battle
or successful raid--anyway, it was plain they had accomplished
something of which they were proud.
  Yellow Shell did not pause to look back, nor had he any eyes for
anything but the ground immediately around him. If he could but
reach the water--As it had been yesterday, the need for water was
now like a whip laid across his haunches.
   Here was a rise of rocks, those he had picked out as a good base
for his try at using the eagle down. But he had no thought of that
now; even in the night he could be sighted by those hunters from
the plains. Instead he plunged into the first opening he saw
between those rough stones, scrambling up and down, sometimes
slipping painfully on pebbles and gravel caught in the hollows
between them, until he came once more to a drop, with the stream
lying below.
  Taking the precious feather carefully into his mouth, Yellow
Shell thankfully dived in, allowed the water to close over him,
hardly daring to believe even now that he had managed to leave the
village without raising an alarm. Could it be that the power of the
spirit dream somehow clung to him, so that just as he had visited
the lodge by dream undetected by the coyotes, so he was now also
able to go in body?
   He swam upstream, ready to duck beneath the surface of any
pool if the need arose. The river-bed was narrower here, channelled
between steadily rising banks of stones embedded in sun-hardened
clay. He put as much distance between him and the camp as he
could, alert to any sound from behind that would warn that he was
being trailed.
  But perhaps whatever success the hunters had had so satisfied
the coyotes that they were aware of nothing else. Again he
wondered if they had indeed brought down a buffalo, for to those
whom the Changer favoured, such a coup might well be possible.
  Dawn found him on much higher ground, the stream now
running swiftly and with a force he found increasingly difficult to
battle against. He pulled out of its grip at last. There were no
alders, willows, or edible roots here, and he regretted not having
brought supplies with him. But hunger could not turn him back
now.
  The feather plume, when he took it carefully out of his mouth,
was almost as wet as if he had switched it through the river. He
held it up with great care to where the breeze blew, trying to dry it.
And as he did so, he chanted, though he did not raise his voice
above the mutter of the water behind him:
  "Eagle, hear me--
  Let your power be with me.
  White Eagle, hear me.
  Speaker, hear me.
  Overseer, the seeker, hear me.
  White is this,
  Of your medicine.
  Let the wind that is the beating
  Of your wings in the sky
  Carry this, which is of your own power,
  To join with that which is of its own.
  Carry high, and carry far,
  To join again that which is its own!"
   He pulled from around his neck what was left of his necklaces
and looped them with one paw about the haft of his spear, for this
was all he had to offer. Then he threw the spear and the dangling
ornaments up into the sky with all the force left in his tired foreleg.
It rose, swept on and on and was gone beyond the rocky wall. And
Yellow Shell was heartened, for it had not tumbled back into the
stones where he could see. But as long as he was able to watch, it
had gone up and up. Perhaps White Eagle would be pleased to
notice his offering, and would listen with an attentive ear to his
singing.
  Holding the feather still in the drying breeze with one forepaw,
Yellow Shell scrambled up and up to follow the general direction of
his vanished spear. It was not an easy climb and he was puffing
hard through a half-open mouth as he reached the top.
  Dawn was grey in the sky, the sun's day paint beginning to show
on the eastern sky. The river had made a wide curve and now he
could see that its source lay somewhere to the north, not the east,
perhaps in the very mountains where Storm Cloud's tribe nested.
  Once more the beaver chanted his petition to the White Eagle.
And out of the river valley, or so it seemed, curled a breeze that
although not forceful enough to be termed a wind, yet blew
steadily.
  Into this Yellow Shell loosed the feather. It was caught up in the
breeze, to be borne southward into the desert waste on this side of
the river. And with firm faith that he was indeed following a sure
guide, the beaver set out after it.
   It was light enough to see the feather clearly, to be able to follow
its flight. So small a thing to trust to--For the first time in many
hours, Cory thought as himself and not as Yellow Shell. Surely he
could not depend upon such a thing as this!
  But because the faith of his Yellow Shell self was so strong, Cory
did not struggle against it.
   To his surprise, it almost seemed that the feather was indeed a
purposeful guide. Twice, Yellow Shell tired and crouched panting,
unable to keep on. Then the feather was caught temporarily, to
flutter on the top of some sun-dried, leafless piece of dead growth,
only to be torn loose and carried on when the beaver was ready to
shuffle ahead. Finally a last gust whirled it up and up into the
bright blue of the cloudless sky as the beaver came to the edge of a
basin.
  This might be twin to that cupped-mountain stronghold of the
eagles. But whereas that had been green and held water, this held
sand, with strange, rough columns rising out of it, some of which
had been toppled to lie full length.
   Set up in the heart of this was a small skin shelter before which
crouched an oddly shaped figure. It was busy, its forepaws patting
and pulling at a mass of clay on the ground before it. Now and then
it sprinkled water from a gourd on to that mass, always returning
to its pinching and pulling, kneading and rolling.
  The feather was like a snowflake, drifting through a winter day.
As the beaver watched, it floated downward once more, heading
straight for the worker. And Yellow Shell knew that he had found
the Changer, though what he did here, the beaver could not guess.
  Carefully he climbed down the basin wall, scurrying as fast as he
could into the shadow of the nearest of those pillars, putting it
between him and the Changer. As he set a paw on it, he found it
was stone, yet once it must have been a tree, for it had the look of
bark and wood. And if so, this must have been woodland changed to
stone. Another trick of the Changer? If so, for what purpose? How
could trees of stone serve anyone--Unless the Changer had been
merely using his power for sport and to see what he might
accomplish.
   Yellow Shell crept on, though under his thick coat of fur he felt
cold enough to shiver. The sun might be beating hotly down on his
slowly moving body, yet the closer he drew to that absorbed
worker, the more he felt a deep chill of fear.
  Perhaps the Changer would catch sight of the eagle down, know
that it had guided someone to spy on him. And what would be the
fate of such a spy? To be changed--perhaps to such stone as these
trees? Go back, said his fear. Yet Yellow Shell shuffled on, from one
patch of shadow to the next.
  He could hear the faint murmur of song now, and he guessed
that the worker strove to sing into his fashioning of the clay some
power. Yet it would seem that he was not accomplishing what he
wished. For time and time again he would bring the full weight of
his forepaws down on the clay, smashing it all flat again, growling
over the destruction of his efforts.
   Forepaws? Yellow Shell blinked (Cory would have exclaimed
aloud had he then his human lips and voice). Those paws had looked
like yellow coyote paws from a distance. But now--now they
seemed to be human fingers busy once again at pushing, pinching,
rolling--
  He saw that the squatting figure was neither wholly an animal
nor a man, but a strange combination of the two, as if someone had
started to make a change from beast to man and the experiment
had been only half successful.
   Hands were at the end of furred forelegs, and the head was
domed, as a human skull, though large ears pricked on either side.
It was as if a man wore a beast's mask over his whole head. The
hind legs were still pawed, but the shoulders under the
yellow-brown hide were those of a man.
  To Cory-Yellow Shell the combination was worse than if one
wholly coyote or wholly human had been squatting there. To Cory
the beast-human was all wrong and to be feared, while his Yellow
Shell self found the human-beast unnatural and frightening. Yet
the beaver could no longer retreat; he was held where he was as if
bound to the column behind which he hid. And that realization
came with such a shock that he whimpered aloud.
  The singer's head lifted, green beast's eyes looked straight at the
stone tree behind which Yellow Shell crouched. The Changer made
a swift gesture, a beckoning. Against his will the beaver's body
obeyed that summons, creeping out into the sun, treading straight
to where the Changer worked in clay, with no hope of escaping that
powerful pull.
   About the Changer was a wide patch of dug-up earth, pocked
with holes out of which he must have scraped his clay. A big mass
of it was directly before him, having no form at all now, for he had
just once more pounded what he shaped into nothingness. He sat,
his man's hands resting upon its surface, watching the beaver. And
he no longer sang, but rather he studied, as if he saw a use in
Yellow Shell, as if some missing part to what he would shape had
come to him.
   Seeing that look, the beaver's terror grew, and with it an inner
stir in his human self also. Cory must now break through this
nightmare, awake into the real world before something worse
happened. He could not guess what that something was, but the
beaver's fear was a warning and he knew it too--as great as the
terror that had touched him when he had watched the buffalo and
the dancer.



                  A Shaping of Shapes
                                                               «^»
What have we here?" The Changer spoke, and it seemed to Yellow
Shell that his words were beaver, but to Cory's ears they were
human. "You have come here to take the wood-which-is-stone for
the making of spear points?" He nodded to one of the fallen pillars
where its side had been chipped and broken, shattered lumps lying
in the sand. "But, no, I think you have come for another reason,
and it is one that can well serve my purpose. Now sit you and
watch!"
  And with those words he seemed to root Yellow Shell to the
ground, for the beaver could not move, nor was he able to turn his
eyes from the Changer's hands.
   Once more the Changer mixed a little water from the gourd into
the pile of moist clay, and his fingers pushed and pulled at the stuff.
What arose from the muddy mixture under his coaxing was a small
figure that very roughly resembled a man. There were two legs,
two arms, a squat body, and a round blob ball for a head. But it was
very crude, and plainly its maker was dissatisfied, for with his fist
he impatiently smashed it back into the clay once more.
  Cory came fully to life in the beaver body, aroused to take control
at the sight of the manikin that had so disappointed its maker. And
he spoke, though the sounds he made were a beaver's gutturals.
  "You are making a man!"
  The Changer stopped kneading the clay, his head swung up so
those green eyes stared at Cory, or the beaver Cory now was. Very
cold, very frightening were those eyes. Yellow Shell, the beaver,
might not have been able to meet that stare for long, but Cory, the
boy, somehow found courage and held steady. Slowly that gaze
changed from cruel menace to surprise, and then speculation.
  "So--you are that one," the Changer said.
  What he meant by that, Cory did not know. But he continued to
face the half man, half coyote with all the will he could summon to
his aid. And now he had an idea. He did not know how such a
thought had come, but he grasped it with a new boldness, as if to
beaver stubbornness he added what only a human could know. He
did not reply to the Changer's half question, but he said:
  "You are trying to make a man."
  Once more those green eyes were chill with anger--Cory did not
know whether it was his guess or the Changer's own failure. A
mud-spattered hand half rose as if to aim a blow at the beaver.
Then it fell back on the clay, which he began to pinch and twist
again in moist chunks, though now his attention was more on Cory
than on what he was trying to do.
  "You would bargain--with me ?" There was a challenge in that
demand.
  "I offer you a model," Cory returned and waited in suspense, but
with some hope. Would the Changer accept, turn him back to his
human self for the sake of a model to copy for his manikin?
   And if he were once more a boy, could he stay that way? Could he
find his way back to his own world and time? The medicine bundle
was what he needed to bargain with the Changer--Raven and the
spirit dream had made that plain. And the medicine bundle was
gone from the lodge in the coyote village. The Changer was
working, or trying to work, strong magic here, so he must need
that powerful bundle. As yet Cory had had no chance to look
around, but perhaps if he got the Changer to believe he would be
willing to aid in this present task, he could be given that chance.
   The Changer's fingers were still now. He began to wipe the mud
from them by scraping one hand over the other, until they were
clean of most of the moist mass. All the time he eyed Cory as if he
were measuring, weighing, turning the beaver inside out to get at
what might lie beneath his furry hide.
  Would he get out the bundle? Did he need to bring it into the
open if he were to make Cory human once more? But the Changer
was apparently in no hurry. He still rubbed his hands together, but
absently now, as if his thoughts were very busy elsewhere.
  Then he began to sing, a low-voiced chant. Cory could not
understand the words, but the beaver's body began to shiver, chills
ran along his spine, down forelimbs and back legs. The broad,
powerful tail twitched, rose a little to beat up and down, hitting the
ground in a thumping he could not control. The bond that had tied
Yellow Shell in place no longer held.
   Instead the beaver began to dance, against his will. He moved to
no familiar beat of drum or ankle rattle, no sounding of turtle shell
filled with pebbles, but to the song the Changer sang. Faster and
faster he danced, whirling about in a dizzying circle that made his
head spin so that he felt he could no longer see, or think, or
breathe.
   On and on he spun in that bewildering circle until there was
nothing left in the world but that singing, loud as the crackle of
lightning, the roll of storm thunder across mountain tops. Still
Yellow Shell danced.
  As suddenly as he had begun, the singer stopped. Once more
Yellow Shell--no, not the beaver but the boy Cory--stood
foot-rooted to the ground directly before the pile of mud from which
the Changer was trying to shape his man. But Cory no longer wore
Yellow Shell's thick fur, his paws, his tail. In so much had he
won--he was a boy again.
  However, he could not move, as he speedily discovered. He was
as much a prisoner standing here as he had been when tied by the
mink ropes. And now fear returned to him as he saw the animal
jaws of the Changer open in a knowing grin, as if the other could
read his thoughts and took pleasure in defeating his hopes.
Perhaps--Cory shivered in spite of the sun's heat on his head and
shoulders--perhaps this strange creature could do just that.
  Still keeping his green eyes on Cory, the Changer began to work
again with the clay, pinching, prodding, pulling it into shape, not
looking at what he was doing at all, but rather at the boy's body.
But it would seem that this method worked, for the manikin that
now grew under his fingers was no rough figure but far more of a
human shape. And he sang as he worked, words that Cory did not
understand, though he recognized quickly that it was a song of
power.
  Up and up rose the figure the Changer made. Now it was as tall
as Cory's knees, as his waist, and still it grew as the Changer's
hands moved faster and faster, his singing grew louder. Never did
he look at what he fashioned, but always at the boy, though once or
twice he leaned over to spit into the mud, and again he threw into
the clay pinches of some dusty stuff he took from a small pouch
belted around his misshapen, half-beast body.
  Now the manikin stood as tall as Cory's shoulder. As yet the head
remained only a ball, but the body was clearly done. And Cory's fear
deepened, for there was this about the Changer's work--as it grew
more human, so did Cory hate it more. It was as though it might be
a great enemy, or the sum of all his own fears from both worlds.
   The Changer dropped his hands and for the first time his eyes left
Cory, so the boy felt a sense of relief, as if that intent stare had
held him prisoner. Now the shaper looked from Cory to the image of
mud and back again with long measurement, though the ball head
of the figure remained unfinished.
  Apparently satisfied with his work, the Changer edged backward
without rising to his feet, putting his hands to the ground on either
side to pull himself along. Again Cory felt relief from some
loosening of the will that held him. But he guessed that it was best
not to betray he had that small freedom, lest the Changer turn his
full attention once more on his prisoner.
   Now the Changer pulled sticks before him, so that they lay
between him and the image he had created. He set these up for a
fire as the otters had their signal, in the form of a tepee. But he did
not touch light to it at once. Instead he took from his belt pouch
some small packets of leaves folded in upon themselves, each
fastened with sharp thorns into tight packages. These he unpinned
one by one, to display small amounts of what might be dried herbs
or dust.
   Cory was deeply afraid now, though as yet he had not been
openly threatened. If he could have done so he would have run, just
as he had from the buffalo and the dancer. But, though he was
somewhat freed from the bonds the Changer had so mysteriously
laid upon him, he was not free enough to leave. He knew, he could
not tell how--unless that was part of Yellow Shell's beaver memory
still lingering with him--that if he could not fight now, it would be
the end of him. For the Changer's full medicine would be too strong
for him to withstand.
  Too strong for animals--but what about man? How had that
thought come to Cory? Animal--man. Man was an animal, but also
more, sometimes only a little, but still more. Thoughts raced in his
mind. If he let the Changer complete the magic he would do
here--then perhaps man would never be that little bit more, though
he could not tell how he knew that.
  Suddenly, as clearly as if his eyes actually saw it before him--a
picture formed in his mind--the head of a black bird. Crow--such
as served the Changer? No! There were white circles about the eyes
and the bird's beak opened to voice a medicine song--Raven!
  And it seemed to Cory that when he thought the name Raven,
the picture in his mind turned its eyes on him and a new picture
formed, by the will and power of Raven. Another bird head--this
one white--Storm Cloud? No, it was a greater eagle. And he
remembered the White Eagle to whom Yellow Shell had appealed
when he loosed the bit of down that had guided him here.
  But what had the White Eagle to do with--? Again as he
identified the picture, that majestic bird also turned to look
squarely at him and once more came another picture. But this one
was vast, clouded, he could see only a bit of it, and he sensed with
awe that it was given to no one to see the whole of what stood
there.
  And perhaps it was the remnants of Yellow Shell's memory that
gave an awesome name to that half-seen shadow. For that it was
awesome even the human Cory recognized. Thunderbird! And when
he named it in his mind it became clearer for a single instant. But
Cory could never afterwards recall just what he had seen then, or if
he had seen anything at all, but had only been blinded by the
appearance of something it was not given to his kind to understand.
  But Thunderbird's shadow remained with him. And to that vague
picture Yellow Shell's memory added some words that were strong
medicine--very strong. Cory did not repeat them aloud, but he
turned his head to look at the mud image, which moment by
moment grew less and less like clay, more and more like brown
skin laid over firm flesh, upheld by solid bone.
   Cory studied the ball of a head that had never been truly
finished, and in his mind he repeated the medicine words, trying to
shut out all but those words and the need for saying them over and
over. Why it was necessary to do this he could not say, only that it
was all he could do to prevent the Changer from completing his
purpose.
    Smoke with a strong smell puffed up around him, but drifted
more towards the image, clinging to the mud. Then hands reached
out to grasp the clay body on either side of its slender waist, lifted it
up. Cory, still watching, repeated the words in his mind now with
all his energy. He saw the Changer set the mud man down with its
feet in the blazing, smoking fire, so that the flames rose up about
it.
  Then the Changer stood up, his half-man, half-beast form even
stranger looking when he was erect. And he began a medicine song.
But Cory tried to shut his ears to the sound, to think only of the
words that would call the Thunderbird. While his feet could not
move from where they appeared to be fixed to the ground, he found
he could raise his hands somewhat. And they moved now in signs
following the words in his mind.
   At first the flames rose very high, shoulder high around the
image, and the smoke veiled it from view. There was a feeling of
triumph, of success in that smoke, and in the singing.
  Still Cory's hands moved to match the words in his mind and
perhaps the Changer was so intent upon his own magic that he did
not see what Cory did.
  Then the smoke rippled and a wind rose out of nowhere. The sun
was clouded and a chill edged the breeze. The dance and song
pattern of the Changer altered. He took a step or two more, then
stood, looking about him with quick wariness, as if he had been
shocked out of a dream.
   The wind not only whipped away the smoke but it pulled at the
live brands of the fire, whirling one up in a shower of sparks,
carrying it away, to be followed by a second, a third. The Changer
cried out, but his voice sounded more like the howl of a coyote. He
flung up his hand as if to stop one of those flying torches, and the
fire of it must have singed him painfully, for again he howled in
rage.
   His eyes flamed yellow-green, turning from the wind-driven fire
to Cory, and his lips drew back to show the fangs of a hunting
beast. He vigorously made signs with his man hands. For a moment
the wind died a little, the showering sparks did not fill the air.
  Only now the clouds had so darkened the sky that they made a
low ceiling. Cory felt that if he reached up his arm he could touch
them. From those clouds broke flashes of lightning and the Changer
whirled at the first brilliant crackling, as if he could not believe in
this sudden storm.
   He snarled at the flashes, again showing his fangs, and voiced a
long, wailing howl. He might have been ordering those clouds to
clear, the sun to shine again. But only for a moment he stood so,
looking up into the gathering fury. Then he turned, his anger
visible in every upstanding hair on his shoulders, in the prick of his
ears, the wrinkling of his lips.
  Once more his hands moved in signs. The bit of Yellow Shell still
in Cory cringed at the sight of those. For, not being a medicine
beaver, he could not read the signs, yet in them he saw great
power.
  Cory's thoughts faltered; he could no longer remember clearly
those words that had spoiled what the Changer meant to do here.
But his failure to keep up the fight did not seem to matter. Perhaps
he had only prepared the way for another force that would now
take over, whether he continued to call it or not.
  His hands fell heavily to his sides, as if once more chained there.
And he could not move, even when one of the wind-blown brands
burned his neck with its sparks, singeing his hair.
  For if the wind had subsided a little at the Changer's retort, it
rose again, scattering the fire as if a broom had been used for that
purpose. And the flames were almost gone as huge drops of rain fell
with the force of blows on the ground, on the dying coals, on the
mud image, and on Cory.
  Now the Changer stood to his full height, his Coyote head flung
back on his man's shoulders, his eyes searching the sky as he
turned his head slowly. It was as if he looked to find his enemy
above, searched there for a target against which to loose his
powers.
   For a long moment he stood so, while the coals of fire hissed
black and dead under the pelting of the rain and it grew colder and
colder. Cory, who only moments earlier had felt the terrible heat of
the sun in this desert place, now shivered and shook under the blast
of the chill.
  Seeming at last to have made up his mind, the Changer turned
his back on the now dead fire, on the image standing in what had
been its heart. He went to one of the dead bushes nearby and,
stooping down, laced the fingers of his right hand among its
branches, bringing it up out of the ground in a single pull.
  Its roots made a tangle from among which he plucked a bag.
Cory, seeing it, knew that this was what Yellow Shell had hunted.
This was the Changer's great medicine; with it in hand he was
armed, ready to stand firm against all the spirits of sky, earth,
water, and air.
  With both hands he held it aloft, into the full force of the storm,
shaking it from side to side as if it were a dance rattle, or as if he
wanted the spirits in that punishing wind to be well aware of with
what he threatened them.
  The wind died, the rain ceased, the clouds began to split apart.
All the while the Changer, holding high his mighty power, danced
and sang. That singing was not for the ears of man, it was stronger
than any lightning crackle, any cruel roll of thunder.
  Still the Changer danced and sang, and held the medicine bundle
as one might hold a spear against an enemy, driving away the
storm that had spoiled all his plans. For how long he danced so,
Cory could not have said, for time no longer had a meaning.
  But at last even the Changer must have grown tired, for Cory
could see again, hear again. And the beast-man sat upon the ground
even as he had when first Yellow Shell had looked down into the
forest of stone trees. There was now only a shapeless mass of clay
where the image had stood, flowing down from a blob supported on
two legs that the fire had baked into a more enduring substance.
  The Changer lifted the hand holding the medicine bundle and
tapped that mass lightly, and straightway even the legs became
mud again. He looked down for a long time at that sticky pile. Then
he roused, threw back his head, and gave one of those far-sounding
howls. Having done so, he stared at Cory and there was such an
evil glint in his narrow beast eyes that the boy tried vainly to fight
the bonds laid upon him.
  For a time the Changer made no move, though now and then he
turned his head with the coyote ears a-prick as if he were listening.
The sun went down, to leave them in the night. No fire burned and
Cory's human sight could not pierce the darkness as Yellow Shell's
had done. But, almost as if he wanted to prove to Cory that he had
won, the Changer rebuilt the fire, though it was not in the same
place as the other and he did not toss into it the contents of leaf
packets.
  There came a fluttering out of the dark, and feathered shapes lit
on the ground, hopped into the circle of light about the fire.
Crows--ten--twenty--more--coming and going so that Cory could
not count them, or even be sure that they were not the same ones
over and over. As each hopped past the Changer, he spat out on the
ground a mouthful of yellow-brown clay, which the beast-man
mixed with the other mass. And that grew taller and taller. Now he
scraped and mixed it well, working the new and old clay together as
he sang in a voice hardly louder than a murmur, as if he feared
being overheard.
  Some of the crows settled down on the other side of the fire. Cory
noted that they showed interest, not in what their master was
doing but in the medicine bag that lay close to him, for he had not
returned it to hiding after using it to drive off the storm. And the
boy knew that if he could but get it out of the Changer's reach, he
could put an end to all that was happening here. But he could see
no chance of that.
  Knead, pinch, pull, shape--the Changer's human hands moved
faster, with a greater sureness than they had before, as if, having
once made the manikin, his fingers remembered their task. But this
time the figure he wrought was larger, was as tall in fact as a man,
as Uncle Jasper.
  Uncle Jasper. Cory blinked. That other world seemed so far
away, so lost to him now. Yet, when he had thought of Uncle
Jasper--Yes! His hands had been able to move: Uncle Jasper, the
ranch--Dad--Just as he had seen the Raven, White Eagle, and that
shadowy other in his mind, so now he tried to picture all he could
that was most important to him of his own world and time. But, as
he felt his bonds loosen, he did not try yet to move. Patience he had
learned from Yellow Shell, and the determination to fight for
survival, but some of this stubborn will to face danger was now
Cory's own, either newborn or simply newly roused from a spark
that had always been there, but that he had not known he had.
  Let the Changer become so interested in his "man" that he would
forget Cory. Even now he seldom looked at the boy; he appeared no
longer to need him as a pattern.
   And the birds--They had eyes only for the medicine bag. To reach
it Cory would have to half circle the fire, but in a second, before he
got so far, the Changer could snatch it to safety. His only hope was
to wait for some chance.
   Again the body stood finished, the head remaining a round ball.
But this time the Changer went to work on that. He made no
attempt to give it a human face. Instead the clay moved under his
fingers into the shape of a long narrow jaw and nose, pointed
ears--the head of a coyote, twin to the one on the Changer's own
shoulders. He stood back at last to study it critically. Then, with
finger-tips, went to work again, modifying the beast look
somewhat. Still it was far more an animal's mask than any face.
But that apparently was the result the Changer wanted.
  Now for the first time in hours he looked directly at Cory with a
tooth-showing grin.
  "How like you my man?" he barked.
  "It is not a man." Cory told him the truth.
  "But it is the new man," the Changer told him. "For this is a man
as he should be for the good of the People. And for the good of the
Changer." Again he laughed, though it was more of a yapping.
   "Yes," he continued, "this is man as the People need him, for to us
he shall be a slave and not a master. These--" he touched the
dangling mud hands almost contemptuously, "shall serve the People
as sometimes paws cannot. These--" now he rapped the wide mud
shoulders, then stooped to run a finger-tip down the clay legs, "shall
bear burdens, run to our command. This is man as the Changer has
made him, shaped from the earth, hardened, as he soon will be, by
fire, made ready for the life--" now he turned to look at Cory with
those evil, narrow eyes, "you shall give him!"
  Cory cried out; he thought he screamed. And in that moment he
was answered out of the dark, out of the sky--with a shriek that
set the very earth trembling under them.



               The Changer Challenged
                                                              «^»
Once more the sky was torn by broad purple flashes of lightning
and a chill wind blew about them. In a half crouch, snarling, the
Changer turned to face the dark beyond the fire.
  Something moved there. Cory could not see it plainly; the clouds
were so thick, the night so very dark. But he thought that great
wings fanned, that a head as large as his own body turned so that
burning eyes might look upon them. And the boy wanted to throw
himself to the ground, dig into the sand, as if he were Yellow Shell
diving into the river water.
  The crows cried out, but they did not take to the air. Instead they
cowered close to the ground, as if seeking shelter where there was
no cover left. But the Changer now stood tall, his back to the fire
and to his man of mud, facing the fluttering in the night.
  "Hear me." He spoke as he would to Cory, yet even above the
noise made by the crows, the drumming of the thunder, he could be
heard. "I am He Who Shapes, and this is my power. You cannot
deny it to me for it is mine!"
  And he spoke as if he knew very well who or what was in the
dark there, and felt confident that he could safely face it so.
 Who--or what--This was the shadow that had risen behind the
White Eagle in Yellow Shell's vision--this was the Thunderbird !
   To Cory, Yellow Shell's memory supplied the rest--this was the
Thunderbird whose presence was in the storm, the wind, the
lightning, the pound of thunder, the rise of wind. The Thunderbird
spoke for one being only--the Great Spirit.
  "I am He Who Shapes, who changes," the Changer repeated, still
confident, but faintly angry now. "This is my power and I hold it
against all the spirit ones, great or small!"
  The crows cawed together harshly. Then, instead of taking to
wing, they scuttled out of the circle of light, taking shelter in the
shadow of one of the trees lying prone. If they could dig their way
into the sand, thought Cory, seeing their flight, they would be doing
that right now.
  There was a fanning of wings, so huge they could be felt as a
rippling of the air, and after that a new crackling of lightning. But
as yet no rain had appeared.
  "Elder Brother, listen. We have no quarrel, no spear, no claw or
fang now bared to make a red road running between us. You lead
the storm clouds into battle, as was given you to do. I but do as was
given me, I shape and change, shape and change. And now it is in
me to shape one who will serve the People, who will not say `Do
this, do that,' `Come be my meat and let me eat,' `Come be my robe
and let me wear.' For if I do not breathe life into this one, there
shall come another somewhat like him but of another shaping, and
then it shall be ill for the People, and all their greatness shall be
gone. They will dwindle into less and less, and some shall vanish
from mother earth, never to be seen again. I, the Changer, have
foreseen this evil thing. And because I am the Changer, it is laid
upon me to see that it will not come to be so."
  "The time is not due, the shape is not right. It is not for you,
Younger Brother, to do this, which is a great, great thing that none
but the one above may do." The words rolled out of the dark with
the beat of thunder, as if they were a chant sung to a drum.
  "I am the Changer, Elder Brother. So was the power given me in
the First Days, so it has always been. Such power once given
cannot be taken away. That is the Right and the Law."
  "That is the Right and the Law," agreed the voice from the dark.
"But also it is the Right and the Law that one may challenge you, is
that not also the truth?"
  The Changer laughed in a sharp, yelping sound. "That's the
truth, Elder Brother. But who can do so? For mine alone of the
earth spirits is the shaping power. You, Elder Brother, can control
the wind, the clouds, the lightning and thunder, the pound of rain,
the coming of cold moons' snow. But can you shape anything?"
  "The power is yours only--on earth," again agreed the shadow.
  "And it is on earth now that we stand, Elder Brother. Therefore, I
say that this shall be done--that I shall shape this `man' to be a
servant to the People. Nor will you again raise a storm to stop me,
for when I have so spoken, then it becomes my right."
  "It becomes your right," again echoed that mighty voice. "But still
you may be challenged--"
  "Not on my making of this thing," returned the Changer quickly.
  "Then otherwise," replied the Thunderbird. "For it is this message
that I bring--there shall be a challenge, and, if you lose, then you
shall with your own hands destroy this thing you have shaped, and
you shall forget its making and not so shape again. Instead you
shall be guided for a space by the will and wishes of he who
challenges."
  "And if I win?" There was such confidence in the Changer that he
seemed to be growing taller, larger, to match the shadowy giant
Cory could more sense than see.
  "And if you win, then it shall be as you have said. Though this
thing is wrong, yet it shall live and be all you have promised, a
servant to the People, never more than that."
  "So be it! Such a tossing of game sticks pleases me. But since I
am the challenged, I say that this testing shall be rooted in mother
earth, for I am her son and not one who commands air, wind, and
water as my right."
  "So be it," agreed the Thunderbird in turn. "You have the choice
that this contest be of the earth. Mine is the second saying, which is
this--"
   There was movement in the night as if mighty wings were
spread, and Cory felt those eyes burning not only on the Changer
and the image of mud but on him also. And in that moment he
guessed that soon, if ever, would come his chance, and he must be
ready to seize it. That binding the Changer had laid upon him still
held in part, but suppose the Changer would be so occupied with
this contest that he must use all his power for it? Then Cory would
be wholly free. He could see the medicine bag still lying beside the
fire, very plain in the light.
  The Thunderbird had paused for a long moment, as if he were
turning over in his mind several different possibilities of a
challenge. At last he spoke.
   "Of the earth, yet in a manner of seeing of my sky also. Look you
to the north, Younger Brother. What see you?"
  There was a vivid flash of lightning to tear aside the night,
holding steady as no lightning Cory had ever witnessed before had
done. Against it stood the black outline of a mountain, one of lesser
width but greater height than the eagles' hold.
  "I see earth shaped as a spearhead aimed at the sky," replied the
Changer. "This is a piece of medicine to be thought on, Elder
Brother. Perhaps it does not promise good for you."
  "A piece of earth," answered the Thunderbird. "As you have asked
for, Younger Brother. Now this be my challenge--which is not
really mine but that of One Above speaking through me--that you
take this earthen spear and without changing its form you lay it
upon the ground so that it no longer aims its point to the sky, but
into this desert country, even at this fire where you would harden
your shaping into life."
  Still that lightning banked behind the mountain, showing it
plainly. And the Changer looked at it steadily, nor did he show that
he thought the task impossible.
  "It is of the earth," he said, "and so must obey me." And to Cory
he sounded as confident as ever.
  Facing the mountain, he uttered some sharp howls, as if the huge
mound of earth and stone were alive but sleeping, and must be so
awakened to listen to his orders. Then his feet began to stamp,
heavier and heavier and heavier, as he put his full force into each
planting of those coyote paws.
  Stamp, stamp, right paw, left paw--
   Under his own feet Cory felt an answering quiver in the earth, as
if the force of that stamping ran out under the surface.
  Stamp, stamp--those paws were now digging holes into the
ground where the Changer brought them down with all his might.
At the same time he began to sing, pointing his human hands at the
mountain peak against that light which could no longer be
considered lightning, for it remained steady and clear.
  And having pointed out the mountain, the Changer now went
through the motions of hurling at the peak, although his hands held
nothing Cory could see.
  Stamp, hurl, stamp, hurl. Cory watched, yet the peak remained
unchanged. And the boy wondered if there was any time limit
placed upon this contest.
   With a great effort he dragged his eyes away from the Changer
and looked to where the medicine bundle lay. Now he began to try
his strength once more against the spell the Changer had held him
in. His hands moved to answer his will, and then his arms, stiffly,
with pain, as if they had been cramped in one position too long. He
tried not to flinch lest the Changer notice him. But the coyote head
remained steadily facing the mountain.
  Cory glanced up to see that the hurling motions had come to an
end. Now the Changer moved right hand and arm in a wide,
sweeping, beckoning. It might be that in answer to his signal he
expected that distant humping of earth to take to itself legs or
wings and come forward at his gesture.
  If he expected such, he was doomed to disappointment. But Cory
gave only a short glance at what the Changer did. He was edging,
hardly more than an inch at a time, out of the place where he had
been rooted for so long at the other's pleasure. Now the image stood
between him and the Changer, and he had yet some feet to go
around the fire to get his hands on the medicine bag. So much
depended upon whether the Changer would remember him, or
whether he would need the bag for his present magic. Cory could
only try, for he believed that he would not get a second chance.
  He stooped a little to flex his stiff knees, then stood erect several
times, remaining still when it seemed that prick-eared head was
about to turn. The crows had left off cawing, almost as if they
feared they were distracting their master's attention at this great
testing of his power. But they watched from where they were and
perhaps they would betray Cory.
   And what of that great shape? Had it indeed come to his call that
first time when the storm had destroyed both the fire and the
image baking in it? Yet Cory was sure, though he could not have
said how he knew, that that shape was not really concerned with
him at all, but only with what might happen when the Changer
shaped his mud and thought of giving it life.
  So Cory kept to his own purpose, to reach the medicine bag. With
his hands on that, could he indeed escape the Changer's
spells--return himself to his own world and time?
   Still the Changer sang his song, beckoned to the mountain. Then,
from far away, there was a rushing that became a roar and Cory,
startled, looked round.
   Where the mountain had stood stark and clear, shown only by
the light the Thunderbird had summoned, now shot a red column of
fire. A volcano?
  And that fire climbed into the sky, as might a fountain. As the
spray of a fountain falls, so did a shower of giant sparks come,
together with brilliant streams channelling the earth of the peak's
sides. The peak was being consumed. As its sides melted, so clouds
gathered above it, dark and heavy. From them poured streams of
rain, so that steam arose. And underneath him, as far from the
mountain as he was, Cory could feel the ground weave and shake,
move as if some great explosion tore under its surface.
  Cory was thrown forward, his hands out, and the fire the
Changer had built was scattered in brands that glowed and
sputtered. Even the Changer was down on his hands and knees,
and now he looked more animal than man. He was snarling,
snapping at a flaming bit of wood that had seared against his upper
arm.
   The image he had made tottered back and forth, though it did not
fall. And the Changer, seeing it in danger, made a sudden leap to
steady it, brace it up against the continued shaking of the ground.
  At the mountain the flames tore up and across the sky as if more
than just one peak was now burning, or as if earth itself, and rock,
could burn as easily as dried wood. But the flood from the sky
poured steadily on it, drowning that fire bit by bit. Though they
were miles away, they could hear the noise of that mighty battle
between fire and water.
  Under Cory's hand as he pushed against the ground to gain his
feet was a smooth object. The medicine bag! He had the medicine
bag! But where could he go--what could he do with it? He had no
doubt the Changer could get it away from him with ease if he
remained nearby.
  A glance told him that the Changer was still occupied with saving
his clay figure from breaking. Whether or not he could claim any
victory in the contest, Cory did not know. The Changer was
lowering the mountain, but not as the Thunderbird had
directed--moving the point undisturbed out to lie pointing into the
waste. And the storm the Thunderbird had summoned was putting
an end to the fire.
   Cory held the bundle tight against his chest. Then he scrambled
to his feet and began to run, without any goal, just out into the
desert, towards the wall of the basin that held the wood of stone. If
the crows gave warning of his going, he did not hear them, for that
roaring in the earth, in the sky, was a harsh sound filling the whole
night.
   Panting, he somehow got up the ridge, pausing there for a
moment to look back. The fire had caught the small hide shelter of
the Changer. From this point Cory could not see the shadowy form
of the Thunderbird, only the beast-man steadying his image against
one of the stone trees. Around and around above flew a wheeling
circle of crows. And seeing that, Cory began to run again.
  When he had first picked up the medicine bag, it had seemed
very light, as if it were stuffed only with feathers. But as he went it
grew heavier and heavier, weighing against him so that at last he
was drawn towards the earth. And he ran as if a prisoner's chain
were fastened to his feet; his flight became a trot, and finally a
walk. Now he was in the dark, though from behind, the glow of the
melting mountain was like a sun rising, only in the north instead of
the east. It sent his own shadow moving before him--and that
shadow changed.
  It had been a boy's as he left the hollow. Now it grew hunched of
back, thicker--Cory looked down at his own body. There was fur,
there were the webbed hind feet, the clawed forepaws, behind him
a scaled tail dragged on the ground. His pace was the shuffle of a
beaver. He was Yellow Shell again!
  The heart almost went out of Cory. He had been sure he had won
back his own body, if not his own world--but now--Now he had the
medicine bag, yes, but he had lost himself again. And in a clumsy
beaver body, in this desert place, he would have so little chance to
escape--for this was coyote land and he did not doubt that the
Changer would have the advantage.
  Yet he continued to shuffle on, the heavy bag clasped tight to his
chest with one forepaw while he walked on the other three with
what speed he could make. Water--if he could only reach water!
But this was desert. There was no water here.
  Unless--unless the storm would have given some to the land,
even if only for a short time before the sand drank it up!
  Yellow Shell's sense, his quivering nose in a head thrown as far
back on his bulky shoulders as he could raise it, sought water. And
the scent of it came to him--south and west. Unhesitatingly he
turned to find that water.
   He humped along at the best speed his beaver body was capable
of making. And the bag grew ever heavier, chained and slowed him
more and more. Yet he did not put it down, even for a breath of
rest. He had a feeling that were he once to let it out of his hold, he
would not be able to pick it up again.
  The false sun of the blazing mountain was dying now. Perhaps
the storm the Thunderbird had raised to quell the flames was
winning. So his path grew darker. He now entered a world of sand
dunes. To climb up and down carrying the weight of the bag was
more than Yellow Shell dared attempt. He had a vision of being
buried in some slip of a treacherous surface. So he had to turn and
twist, push along such low places as he could find. As Cory he would
have had no guide and might have become hopelessly lost. But as
Yellow Shell the scent of water found him a path.
   There came a cawing overhead. He did not have to look up to
know that one of the crows must have sighted him, that even if the
Changer had lost him for a time, now he was trailed again. That
the beast-man would be after him at once, Yellow Shell did not
doubt. His only hope was based on the fact that the scent of water
was now stronger and that the dunes among which he slipped and
slid were growing smaller and farther apart.
  He came around a last one, was out on a stretch of rocky ground,
great masses of it towering into the sky. The cawing over his head
echoed and re-echoed. More of the crows joined in a flock. He
expected them to attack him, to try to force him to drop the bag
that now weighed upon him as if he had his foreleg around a big
stone. But they only circled in the sky and called to their master.
   With a last burst of the best speed he could make, Yellow Shell
stumped across the stony land and came upon what he sought, a
cut in the earth with the silver of water running through it. Though
it was no true river, yet now it had a current that whirled along
pieces of uprooted sagebrush and the long-dried remnants of other
storms, so that to plunge blindly in with the weight of the bag was
a dangerous thing. But not as dangerous, the beaver thought, as to
remain on land where he was so clumsy and slow.
   Without stopping to think or look behind, Yellow Shell dived, and
the bag pulled him down and down, as if it would pin him to the
bottom of the cut, hold him anchored so that the rush of the water,
the beating of those floating pieces in it, would drown or batter him
to death.
   Yet Yellow Shell held to his stolen trophy, swimming along with
the current with what strength he had, dragging the bag with him.
It caught on rocks embedded in the bottom, on pieces of the drift,
and he fought it almost as if it were a live enemy determined to
finish him. But never did he loosen his hold upon it.
  Then he was caught in a sudden eddy of the current. The bag
loosened in his grip, almost whirled away. He fought to retain it but
had to crawl half out of the water to do that. And at that moment
he heard a noise that froze him where he was.
   The howl of a coyote sounded so loud and sharp it seemed as if
the hot breath of that hunter were able to dry the fur rising in a
fighting ridge on the beaver's back. Baring his murderous teeth,
Yellow Shell turned in the mud, tucking the bag under his body,
Cory's determination strengthening the animal stubbornness at
facing old enemies.
  Across the water was the Changer. But he himself had changed.
There was nothing of man left in the great yellow-white beast who
stood there. It was all animal, and the yellow eyes, the teeth from
which the snarling lips curled away, promised only death.
 Yellow Shell snarled back. His forepaws were set tightly on the
medicine bag, and now he lowered his head, nipping the taut
surface of the bundle with his teeth, his intent plain. Let the
Changer move at him and he would destroy what he had taken.
  The coyote watched him. As the fire on the mountain had paled,
so now the first streaks of dawn lighted the sky. And once more in
Yellow Shell's mind came a faint and ghostly vision of Raven,
behind him the White Eagle, and farther yet--the Thunderbird.
Somehow, from them, added knowledge came to his aid.
   Hold--if he could hold here and now until the sun rose. And then
let the sunlight touch upon the bag, so would the Changer's power
be broken. For he had used much of it, too much of it, upon the
mountain, which had not answered his call but been consumed in
part. In this much he had lost the battle, but he would try
again--unless his medicine was also destroyed.
   Knowing this, Cory-Yellow Shell crouched low above the bag,
sheltered it with his body. None too soon, for if the crows had held
off attack before, they did not do so now, but flew down and against
him, striking with punishing beaks at his head, his eyes, stabbing
his body painfully, though the thickness of his fur was some
armour. Using his tail to defend himself as best he could, Yellow
Shell stayed where he was, covering the bag.
   With the attack from the birds there came also a different attack,
aimed not against his body but his mind. A strong will battled
against him, sought to make him give up what he had stolen. First
it promised what he wanted most, his own body, return to his own
world. Yet Cory-Yellow Shell did not yield. Then it threatened that
he would never again be Cory, never return to the world he knew,
while the crows dived and pecked at him until he was bleeding from
countless small wounds on his head and shoulders.
  The first red was in the sky, and that grew while the coyote
prowled up and down the bank of the now fast-drying stream, and
the crows cawed their hatred and rage overhead. Why the Changer
did not attack in person, Cory did not understand. But the running
water seemed to form a barrier he could not cross. Only the water
was shrinking fast, and then--
  It was a race between the coming of the sun and the vanishing of
the water. If the water failed first, then Yellow Shell had no hope
at all. Yet the beaver crouched and waited.
  Sun--a first beam struck across the ground. Yellow Shell cried
out as one of the crows struck viciously at his eye. He did not
hesitate or try to protect himself, but used all his remaining
strength to push the bundle out into that weak beam as it became
stronger and stronger.
  As if the sun had lighted a fire, smoke rose from the bundle,
puffed out and out--
   Cory coughed, coughed again, staggered back a step or two. He
stood on two feet, he was a boy again. And in his hands he held the
bundle--or was it the bundle? For it crumbled as might dried clay,
sifting through his fingers in the fashion of fine sand. Then there
were only particles of ashy dust left. The smoke blew away from
him and he looked about as one just awakened from sleep.
  Sleep--dream--He was at the line camp! There was the jeep, the
corral, the horse and--Black Elk.
  The old Indian sat with his blanket wrapped around his shoulders
in spite of the heat. It was not dawn but late afternoon.
  "What--what happened?" Cory's voice sounded small, frightened,
and he was then ashamed of that sound.
  "World turned over," Black Elk answered.
  "The Changer--"
  "He was." Black Elk looked directly at Cory for a second. Was
there, or was there not (for a moment Cory felt the old chill of fear)
a yellow glint in those eyes? If it served as a reminder of the
Changer himself, it was gone in an instant.
  "He was, he will be," Black Elk spoke. "Medicine things, they are
not for the white man."
  "No." Cory was eager to agree. He wiped his hands vigorously
against his jeans, trying to smear off the last of the clinging dust
that had been the bag.
  "World turn over again," Black Elk continued. "Time coming--"
  "It was a dream." Cory backed away from the fire and the old
Indian. "Just a dream."
  "Dreams spirit things, sometimes true," Black Elk said. "Indian
learns from dreams--white man laughs, but Indian knows. You not
laugh now, I think."
  "No," Cory agreed. He certainly did not feel like laughing. He
glanced at that safe anchor to the real world, the jeep. But now,
somehow he had no need for such an anchor. The horse whinnied
and Black Elk spoke again.
  "Horse wants drink. You take--down to river--now!"
  Cory moved without hesitation to obey the order. He laid his
hand without shrinking on the curve of the Appaloosa's neck and
the horse blew at him, snorted. But Cory felt light and free inside,
and knew that he had lost the tight burden of his fear. No--he did
not need the jeep as an island of safety in a world that had been so
strange and dark and threatening, but was now more like an open
door to the learning of many things.
  He led out the Appaloosa. When he passed Black Elk, the old
Indian's eyes were closed as if he slept.
  The river was where he had seen the buffalo and the masked
dancer. Were those, too, part of the dream, of the world that had
not yet turned over? He did not know, but with every step he took,
Cory began to understand that what he had learned as Yellow Shell
was now a never-to-be-forgotten part of Cory Alder.
  Had the Changer (he could see him--the Raven, the Eagle, the
misty shape which was the Thunderbird--now in his mind for an
instant), had the Changer indeed really reshaped him? Not into a
beaver, but into someone stronger than he had been before he had
worn fur and stood in a stone forest daring to summon a power
greater than himself?
  The horse had raised his dripping muzzle from the water. Almost
without thinking, Cory guided him to a fallen tree trunk, using that
for a mounting block to scramble somewhat awkwardly but with
determination into the saddle. He gathered up the braided leather
thong of the Indian halter, and with growing confidence turned his
mount's head by a steady pull.
  He rode up the slope, his pride growing. And now he suddenly
heard thundering hoofs, saw the running of some free colts, and
behind, the dusty figures of three riders.
  Fur Magic--he could not tell why it had been his. But he sat
quietly in Black Elk's saddle to face Uncle Jasper, the western sun
warm on him, feeling very much a part of a new world.
                           --«»--«»--«»--

                           About the Author
                                                                «^
For well over a half century, Andre Norton has been one of the
most popular science fiction and fantasy authors in the world. Since
her first SF novels were published in the 1940s, her adventure SF
has enthralled readers young and old. With series such as Time
Traders, Solar Queen, Forerunner, Beast Master, Crosstime, and
Janus, as well as many stand-alone novels, her tales of action and
adventure throughout the galaxy have drawn countless readers to
science fiction. Ms. Norton's fantasy, including the best-selling
Witch World series, her Magic series, and many other novels, has
been popular with readers for decades. Lauded as a Grand Master
by the Science Fiction Writers of America, she is the recipient of a
Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention.
  Ms. Norton has inspired several generations of SF and fantasy
writers, especially many talented women writers who have followed
in her footsteps.
                           --«»--«»--«»--
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