“But down in the States,” said Rod, “the Indians steal.”

The words slipped from him.  The next instant he would have given anything to have been able to recall them.  Mukoki had grown a little more tense in his attitude.

“That’s because white men have lived so much among them, white men who are called civilized,” answered the young scion of Wabinosh House, his eyes growing bright.  “White blood makes thieves.  Pardon me for saying it, Rod, but it does, at least among Indians.  But our white blood up here is different from yours.  It’s the same blood that’s in our Indians, every drop of it honest, loyal to its friends, and it runs red and strong with the love of this great wilderness.  There are exceptions, of course, as you have seen in the Woongas, who are an outlaw race.  But we are honest, and Mukoki there, if he were dying of cold, wouldn’t steal a skin to save himself.  An ordinary Indian might take it, if he were dying for want of it, but not unless he had a gun to leave in its place!”

“I didn’t mean to say what I did,” said Rod.  “Oh, I wish I were one of you!  I love this big wilderness, and everything in it, and it’s glorious to hear you say what you do!”

“You are one of us,” cried Wabi, gripping his hand.

That evening, after they had finished their supper and the three were gathered about the fire, Wabigoon said: 

“Muky could tell you one reason why the Indians of the North are honest if he wanted to, Rod.  But he won’t, so I will.  There was once a tribe in the country of Mukoki’s fore-fathers, along the Makoki River, which empties into the Albany, whose men were great thieves, and who stole from one another.  No man’s snare was safe from his neighbor, fights and killings were of almost daily occurrence, and the chief of the tribe was the greatest thief of all, and of course escaped punishment.  This chief loved to set his own snares, and one day he was enraged to find that one of his tribe had been so bold as to set a snare within a few inches of his own, and in the trail of the same animal.  He determined on meting out a terrible punishment, and waited.

“While he was waiting a rabbit ran into the snare of his rival.  Picking up a stick he approached to kill the game, when suddenly there seemed to pass a white mist before his eyes, and when he looked again there was no rabbit, but the most wonderful creature he had ever beheld in the form of man, and he knew that it was the Great Spirit, and fell upon his face.  And a great voice came to him, as if rolling from far beyond the most distant mountains, and it told him that the forests and streams of the red man’s heaven were closed to him and his people, that in the hunting-grounds that came after death there was no place for thieves.

“‘Go to your people,’ he said, ’and tell them this.  Tell them that from this day on, moon upon moon, until the end of time, must they live like brothers, setting their snares side by side without war, to escape the punishment that hovers over them.’