Page:War Drums (1928).pdf/252

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

the boy down. That was the beginning. Aganuntsi made me his blood-brother then, and since then the bond has tightened. He was a hunter as well as a wizard until he grew too old to hunt, and I hunted with him often and a strong friendship grew between us."

Almayne rose, walked to the edge of the precipice and pointed downward with his pipe.

"Down there," he said, "right under us in a deep valley is a Cherokee town that they call Sequilla. You will see it when the clouds lift. That is where Aganuntsi lives. He is now the Chief Conjurer of all the mountain tribes, and we owe our lives to his rascality."

The hunter laughed and came and sat beside them again.

"I will tell you why," he said, as he refilled his pipe.

"Long ago Aganuntsi made up his mind that he needed a mountain of his own where he could concoct his deviltries in secret. In the Cherokee myths, the stories that the old men had handed down, Sani'gilagi was the home of the Thunder God, the Red Man of the Lightning. Aganuntsi said that Sani'gilagi was the home also of Tsulkalu, the Master of Game, a slant-eyed invisible giant who strides about over the mountains and of whom all the Cherokees are afraid. And he said that Tsulkalu had told him to warn all the Indian hunters not to kill game on Sani'gilagi because the game there was his. Two Cherokee hunters who did not believe him were