which would take him to the mountain's summit, the fear in Koe Ishto's eyes became an agony of terror.
This terror clutched him now. Never before had the thing which he dreaded most seemed so imminent. Early that spring torrential rains had drenched Unaka Kanoos. Through some obscure cranny water had found its way into the high cave which Koe Ishto and his mate had used for years. Hating moisture, like all the cat tribe, the mother puma had removed the cubs to another cave, dryer but in other respects much less secure, a cave situated some distance farther down the mountain.
The move had scarcely been made when disaster befell, a mischance so strange as to be almost incredible. Salali the Squirrel, the chief conjurer of the Raven's town, had climbed to the top of Unaka Kanoos to gather certain roots and herbs which grew above the clouds. At the edge of the huge precipice near the mountain's summit the conjurer stood in rapture, shaking like a man with fever, chanting the praises of the Thunder God. Then, when the frenzy had passed, an idle impulse moved him to pick up a heavy rounded stone, as big as a man's head, and hurl it into the abyss.
The stone fell into the tree-tops far below and bounded on and on down the steep slope. No trunk of oak or poplar arrested its progress. Instead, it crashed like a cannon ball into the ribs of Koe
