"'If,' I said, 'it hadn't been for this fog! If we could only have seen them better!' "Of a sudden White exclaimed: "'Where's Sklokoyum?' "'Not far,' I told him. 'Say--he was up there, up there where they came from. Come, let's look into this.' "I sprang up the bank. They followed. A moment, and we were in that very spot where the woman and the thing had stood so brief a space before. "'It was no dream, at any rate,' observed Long, pointing to the crushed purple flowers--a species, I believe, of aster. "'No,' I returned; 'it was not a dream.' "'Maybe,' said White, peering about, 'we'll wish, before this business is ended, that it all had been a dream.' "Came a loud scream from above. Silence. And then the crash of some heavy body through the branches and shrubs. "'Sklokoyum!' I cried. "White's hand closed on my arm with the grip of a vice. "'Hear that?' "I heard it. It was the voice of a woman or a girl. "'She's calling,' said Long, 'calling to _it_.' "'Great Heaven!' I exclaimed. 'It's after the Indian! Come!' "I started up, but I had taken only a half-dozen springs or so when Sklokoyum came leaping, plunging into view. I have seen fear, horrible fear, that of cowards and the fear of brave men; but never had I, never have I, seen anything like that fear which I saw now. And Sklokoyum, whatever his faults, has a _skookum tumtum_--in other words, is no coward. "Down the Indian came plunging. There was a glimpse of a blood-covered visage; then he was past. The next instant a shock, a savage oath from White, and he and the Siwash fell in a heap, went over the edge and rolled down the bank and clean to the fire. "Long and I followed, keeping a sharp lookout behind us, and, indeed, in every direction. But no glimpse was caught of any moving thing, nor did the faintest sound come to us from out that cursed vapor, settling on the trees and dripping, dripping, dripping. "Sklokoyum's right cheek was slashed as though by some great talon, and he had been terribly bitten in the throat. "'A little more,' observed Long, 'and it would have been the jugular, and that would have meant _klahowya_, Sklokoyum.' "The Indian declared that he had been attacked by a demon, a _klale tamahnowis_, a winged fiend from the white man's hell itself. What was it like? Sklokoyum could not tell us that. All he knew was that the demon had wings, teeth a foot in length and that fire shot out of its eyes and smoke belched from its nostrils. And surely it would have killed him (and I have no doubt that it would have) if an angel, an angel from the white man's Heaven, had not come and driven it off. What was the angel like? Sklokoyum could not describe her, so wonderful was the vision. And her voice--why, at the very sound of her voice, that horrible _tamahnowis_ flapped its wings and slunk away into the fog and the gloom of the trees.