Now the chief in the camp missed this poor young man, and he asked the people where he had gone.  No one knew.  They said that the last that had been seen of him he was travelling toward the lake where the beaver dam was.

Api-k[)u]nni had a friend, another poor young man named Wolf Tail, and after a while, Wolf Tail started out to look for his friend.  He went toward this lake, looking everywhere, and calling out his name.  When he came to the beaver house, he kicked on the top and called, “Oh, my brother, are you here?” Api-k[)u]nni answered him, and said:  “Yes, I am here.  I was brought in while I was asleep, and I cannot give you the secret of the door, for I do not know it myself.”  Wolf Tail said to him, “Brother, when the weather gets warm a party is going to start from camp to war.”  Api-k[)u]nni said:  “Go home and try to get together all the moccasins you can, but do not tell them that I am here.  I am ashamed to go back to the camp.  When the party starts, come this way and bring me the moccasins, and we two will start from here.”  He also said:  “I am very thin.  The beaver food here does not agree with me.  We are living on the bark of willows.”  Wolf Tail went back to the camp and gathered together all the moccasins that he could, as he had been asked to do.

When the spring came, and the grass began to start, the war party set out.  At this time the beaver talked to Apikunni a long time, and told him many things.  He dived down into the water, and brought up a long stick of aspen wood, cut off from it a piece as long as a man’s arm, trimmed the twigs off it, and gave it to the young man.  “Keep this,” the beaver said, “and when you go to war take it with you.”  The beaver also gave him a little sack of medicine, and told him what he must do.

When the party started out, Wolf Tail came to the beaver house, bringing the moccasins, and his friend came out of the house.  They started in the direction the party had taken and travelled with them, but off to one side.  When they stopped at night, the two young men camped by themselves.

They travelled for many days, until they came to Bow River, and found that it was very high.  On the other side of the river, they saw the lodges of a camp.  In this camp a man was making a speech, and Api-k[)u]nni said to his friend, “Oh, my brother, I am going to kill that man to-day, so that my sweetheart may count coup on him.”  These two were at a little distance from the main party, above them on the river.  The people in the camp had seen the Blackfeet, and some had come down to the river.  When Api-kunni had said this to Wolf Tail, he took his clothes off and began to sing the song the beaver had taught him.  This was the song:—­

I am like an island,
For on an island I got my power. 
In battle I live
While people fall away from me.

While he sang this, he had in his hand the stick which the beaver had given him.  This was his only weapon.