to wait, but he would not hear of it. After they had started, the second brother kept looking back as they proceeded, hoping to see his little brother coming after them; but he still slept by the fire and made no effort to follow them. And now suddenly there arose a great flood, and the waters spread rapidly over the land. The two brothers made for some rising ground close by, the second one looking anxiously back from time to time in the direction of their late camp. "Our brother will surely be drowned. Let us hasten back and wake him," said he; but as he spoke they both saw from the higher ground that the waters were raging and roaring along the path by which they had just come, and that a return to the camp was now impossible. As they stood watching the rising waters, they were surprised to see the smoke still ascending from the camp fire and the outlines of their brother's form lying peacefully by its side. Wondering how this could be, as the camp lay in the valley by the side of the lake, they perceived that a strange and wonderful thing had happened. They saw that the water, instead of burying the fire and their brother several feet beneath it, surrounded the spot like a circular wall standing straight up over their brother's sleeping form and the fire, and wetting neither. As they watched the strange sight, they saw the waters subside as suddenly as they arose and retire to the lake again. Immediately following this, the little brother awoke, and seeing his brother's trail took it and soon caught them up. From that time onward, the "medicine" of the youngest brother was acknowledged and reverenced by the other two, who ever afterwards did what he bade them and regarded him as their leader.
From this place they travelled on, till they came to a small village, where there lived only one man and his wife. As they neared the place, they observed the man sitting on the roof of his keekwilee house,[1] crying and lamenting as he sharpened a knife which he held in his hand. "Why do you cry so bitterly, old man, and why are you sharpening that knife?" asked the youngest. The man made no reply, only wept and sobbed the more. The boy repeated his question, and then the old man answered: "I
- ↑ "Keekwilee" is the Jargon term for the native winter, semi-subterranean dwellings of the interior tribes, full descriptions of which will be found in the 6th Report of Dr. Boas on the North-western Tribes of Canada (Trans. British Association, 1890), or in Notes on the Shuswap People of British Columbia, by Dr. G. M. Dawson, referred to above (p. 195).
