Skookum was a partly trained little dog; he would stay in camp when
told, if it suited him; and would not hesitate to follow or lead his
master, when he felt that human wisdom was inferior to the ripe product
of canine experience covering more than thirteen moons of recollection.
But he was now living a life in which his previous experience must often
fail him as a guide. A faint rustling on the leafy ground had sent
him ahead at a run, and his sharp, angry bark showed that some hostile
creature of the woods had been discovered. Again and again the angry
yelping was changed into a sort of yowl, half anger, half distress. The
hunters hurried forward to find the little fool charging again and
again a huge porcupine that was crouched with its head under a log, its
hindquarters exposed but bristling with spines; and its tail lashing
about, left a new array of quills in the dog's mouth and face each time
he charged. Skookum was a plucky fighter, but plainly he was nearly sick
of it. The pain of the quills would, of course, increase every minute
and with each movement. Quonab took a stout stick and threw the
porcupine out of its retreat, (Rolf supposed to kill it when the head
was exposed,) but the spiny one, finding a new and stronger enemy,
wasted no time in galloping at its slow lumbering pace to the nearest
small spruce tree and up that it scrambled to a safe place in the high
branches.
Now the hunters called the dog. He was a sorry-looking object, pawing at
his muzzle, first with one foot, then another, trying to unswallow the
quills in his tongue, blinking hard, uttering little painful grunts and
whines as he rubbed his head upon the ground or on his forelegs. Rolf
held him while Quonab, with a sharp jerk, brought out quill after quill.
Thirty or forty of the poisonous little daggers were plucked from his
trembling legs, head, face, and nostrils, but the dreadful ones were
those in his lips and tongue. Already they were deeply sunk in the soft,
quivering flesh. One by one those in the lips were with-drawn by the
strong fingers of the red man, and Skookum whimpered a little, but he
shrieked outright when those in the tongue were removed. Rolf had hard
work to hold him, and any one not knowing the case might have thought
that the two men were deliberately holding the dog to administer the
most cruel torture.
But none of the quills had sunk very deep. All were got out at last and
the little dog set free.
Now Rolf thought of vengeance on the quill-pig snugly sitting in the
tree near by.
Ammunition was too precious to waste, but Rolf was getting ready to climb
when Quonab said: “No, no; you must not. Once I saw white man climb
after the Kahk; it waited till he was near, then backed down, lashing
its tail. He put up his arm to save his face. It speared his arm in
fifty places and he could not save his face, so he tried to get down,
but the Kahk came faster, lashing him; then he lost his hold and
dropped. His leg was broken and his arm was swelled up for half a year.
They are very poisonous. He nearly died.”
“Well, I can at least chop him down,” and Rolf took the axe.
“Wah!” Quonab said, “no; my father said you must not kill the Kahk,
except you make sacrifice and use his quills for household work. It is
bad medicine to kill the Kahk.”
So the spiny one was left alone in the place he had so ably fought for.
But Skookum, what of him? He was set free at last. To be wiser? Alas,
no! before one hour he met with another porcupine and remembering only
his hate of the creature repeated the same sad mistake, and again had to
have the painful help, without which he must certainly have died. Before
night, however, he began to feel his real punishment and next morning
no one would have known the pudding-headed thing that sadly followed the
hunters, for the bright little dog that a day before had run so joyously
through the woods. It was many a long day before he fully recovered and
at one time his life was in the balance; and yet to the last of his
days he never fully realized the folly of his insensate attacks on the
creature that fights with its tail.
“It is ever so,” said the Indian. “The lynx, the panther, the wolf, the
fox, the eagle, all that attack the Kahk must die. Once my father saw
a bear that was killed by the quills. He had tried to bite the Kahk;
it filled his mouth with quills that he could not spit out. They sunk
deeper and his jaws swelled so he could not open or shut his mouth
to eat; then he starved. My people found him near a fish pond below a
rapid. There were many fish. The bear could kill them with his paw but
not eat, so with his mouth wide open and plenty about him he died of
starvation in that pool.
“There is but one creature that can kill the Kahk that is the Ojeeg the
big fisher weasel. He is a devil. He makes very strong medicine; the
Kahk cannot harm him. He turns it on its back and tears open its smooth
belly. It is ever so. We not know, but my father said, that it is
because when in the flood Nana Bojou was floating on the log with Kahk
and Ojeeg, Kahk was insolent and wanted the highest place, but Ojeeg was
respectful to Nana Bojou, he bit the Kahk to teach him a lesson and got
lashed with the tail of many stings. But the Manito drew out the quills
and said: 'It shall be ever thus; the Ojeeg shall conquer the Kahk and
the quills of Kahk shall never do Ojeeg any harm.'”