Adventure Magazine Cover, October 30, 1924 — page 115: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Meekness of Mug-Wa night of need. But the winter was too frozen. Not in twenty years have the Male Otters failed thus on the fur path. Early in the Moon of Flying Frost the ptar- migan and rabbit disappeared; and with them went the fox and marten. We hunted for food and found none. Our fur paths were long; and we traveled them in storm and still cold. But we took few furs. Not the price of one canoe load of food and clothes, though we have given them all to you.” Merne interrupted with raised hand. “That is a lie. If you had secured but three musquash pelts all winter and had brought those three to me, I would have taken your hand a minute ago. I would have said, as I have said to the Male Otters in times before: “‘*Wait until the Manitou sends a good year.’ , “But you did not bring me all your furs, as the promise ran you would do.” ““May I speak?” said Mug-wa with a show of spirit, looking up and meeting his visi- tor’s eye. “You will listen!’ Merne retorted. ‘You are a fool to think you can deceive me. I know your littlest action. I should not deal with you again. I should not take your hand. I should even forget your name and call you ‘The Liar!’ ” ‘“‘We gave you what furs we had,”’ said the -Indian. ‘“That,”’ Merne repeated with emphasis, ‘Is a lie! This morning down the river I passed the tent of man Sharpley. He was preparing to leave and go back down the river again. A Male Otter was helping him.”’ “He was not of my band.”’ ‘‘Another lie. He was one of the men who came with the sleds to me last winter. Now man Sharpley gets his furs and your warrior gets a can of noise and a belly- full of poison. Where did that rattlebox come from, if not the tent of this man Sharpley from the Edmonton City?” Mug-wa was silent for a moment. “It is true,” he said. ‘“The Male Otters have traded some furs to this city man, this Sharpley. I could not stop them. You would not give them conversation water and other things, as other traders do. I spoke to them ‘of the promise we have made to you, but their ears were deaf. I am their chief; but am I so bitterly to blame 105 for their breaking a promise against my command?” Merne’s eyes had been glancing about the teepee. “Another lie. You load the blame upon the shoulders of your warriors. You said not one word to them. Nay, more——” He looked at a wolfskin rug, thrust his hand beneath it and brought out a new long rifle. He turned it over, for Mug-wa’s inspection, and put it under its hiding again. “It was given to me by Piwagasi, my warrior,”’ said the sub-chief lamely. “You are a brother to a jay-bird,’’ Merne retorted. ‘You have a canoe, tricked out in black; the only one on the river. Three times this week that canoe has gone down- stream and stopped at the tent of man Sharpley.” The Indian’s head bowed until he was talking to the ground. “Tt is true,” he confessed after a minute of silence. The words came from deep in his throat. ‘I did visit man Sharpley three times and traded with him. But the furs which he got were worthless fox pelts. He is a city man. He does not know a fisher skin from a dog hide.” “But he knows the skin game,” Merne in English, for better vigor. “ said he didn’t leave the city an’ come up here for his health, did he?” Mug-wa shook his head. “May I speak?” he asked, this fae humbly. “You will listen!” Merne blazed. He continued in the dialect. “You have said that you traded the valuable furs to me and to him the worthless ones. That is a lie, like the other words you have spoken. I got the cheap pelts; he the costly ones.” He waited a moment for the Indian’s denial. “May I speake” humbly. “You will listen!’ Merne reiterated. ‘This week, while the river was still 1 full of ice, you took two black foxes down to the tent of man Sharpley!”’ Mug-wa looked up quickly. “Ho!” he managed to exclaim. “Not only did you trade him your own black foxes,’’ Merne continued, smacking a fist into his palm, ‘‘but you told him that you would send your men to the Antler- Hares who had a black fox; and to the Mug-wa repeated comicbooks.cO inn