Now, it was at their bidding that he sat there motionless, except for his lips, which recited in a tone as regular and as loud as a tree-toad’s the words of an incantation they had taught him.  And all the time he, who had never trembled before an enemy, was trembling from fear of the unknown.  Of course, it was wise for the shamans to make this trial, but he wished it had been possible for one of them to have taken his place.  But they knew they would never have got the chance to slip unnoticed as he had done into the lodge of the white man’s Okee.

He wondered how this strange Okee would answer his call, for answer he knew he must.  The incantation was such strong medicine that no spirit could resist it, especially when he shook the rattle as he did now, rising to his feet and lifting his foot higher and higher, as bending over, he went round and round on his tiptoes, always within the confines of the tobacco circle.  The shamans had been determined to find out what kind of an Okee protected the white men, and it was only in this spot they could do so.  The palefaces knew so many things the Indian had never learned and which he must learn if he was to hold his own against the terrible medicine of the strangers.

Catanaugh was afraid he might forget some of the magic words the Okee would speak, which the shamans had told him he must hold fast in his mind as he would hold a slippery eel in his hand.  Even if he didn’t understand them he must just remember them, because they would be wise enough to interpret them.  He meant, too, if he only had the courage, to try to make the Okee prevent the wedding.

He had been shaking the rattle gently for fear it might be heard outside the church; but now, anxious to bring this dreadful task to an end, he began to shake it with all his might in one last challenge to the strange spirit.

Bim!  Bam!  Boum!  BOUM!  Bim!

Catanaugh jumped like a deer that hears the crackle of a twig behind it.  Here in the deep brazen voice of the marriage bells ringing out in the belfry above him he thought he heard the answer his incantation had forced from the white man’s Okee.  But the voice was so terrible, so loud, that, forgetting the shaman’s injunctions, forgetting everything but his need to escape, he rushed to the door, unbolted it frantically and ran, still pursued by the “him, barn, boum” till he reached the fort, where the frightened sentries, who had no orders to keep any Indian from leaving the town, let the masked figure through the gates.

Dr. James Buck, who with Dr. Whitaker, was to perform the ceremony, arrived at the church just as the wedding party was starting from the other end of the town.  His foot hit against something.  He stooped and picked up a rattle and his fingers were covered with brown dust.  Hastily seizing a broom which stood in the vestry-room, he swept the tobacco down the aisle and into a corner.  The curious rattle he