Somewhere in the Wildcat's dreams there presently developed a rhythm in which the cadence of dancing feet punctuated his slumbers. His eyes opened finally, and within the range of his vision passed a parade of leaping figures. To his ears came the regular booming beat of a deerskin tom-tom, punctuated by an occasional blood-curdling yell. His memory failed him. "How come dis voodoo bizness?" He sat up. He got to his feet and instinctively crouched to a running position. The ring of dancing warriors about him tightened up. "Lady Luck, whah is you?" Running Bear lifted a flint-tipped spear over his head and emitted a shriek compared to which the Rebel yell was a chirp from the weakened lungs of the dove of peace. In spite of his fish-distended anatomy, the Wildcat shrivelled to boy's size. Running Bear emitted several mouthfuls of language. "Naw suh, not me." The Wildcat denied everything. "I ain't only a field han'. Lemme by, boy. Whah at's yo' pants? How come you runnin' around nekked?" "Waugh!" Six Indians seized the Wildcat, and a moment later he was seated in the stern of a twenty-foot skiff, which presently embarked upon the surface of the Columbia. Beside the Wildcat sat Running Bear, speaking a fluent mixture of Flathead and Chinook. In time with Running Bear's measured periods, the Wildcat rolled his eyes. Now and then when the Indian's sense of humour got the best of him he varied his Chinook jargon with Wild shrieks of laughter. "Sounds like dem crazy folks in dat car comin' from Chicago. Seems like de whole worl' done got crowded wid fools. What you laffin' at, boy?" In a little while the party landed at Memloose Island. Before them, rising sharply against the evening sky, drooping cottonwoods lifted high above an undergrowth of willows. The party marched down a little trail for half the length of the island, and then, at a point where the trail divided into the sombre interior of the wooded terrain, they left the sunlight. After a march of a hundred yards they came upon a clearing. About the clearing in the fringing woods were fifty rickety structures lifted on poles. On each of these, with its grinning skull lying towards the east, lay a skeleton. The Wildcat began to sweat. He counted a dozen skeletons and added a few dozen prayers to his perspiration. In a green alcove opening from the wider clearing seven skeletons stood erect in a ring about a flat stone. His captors carried the Wildcat to this stone and held him. A little apart from him Running Bear opened the services with a yell which echoed like a chorus from the inferno. The Wildcat gave up hope. "They sho' got me. What dey is I don' know. Lemme go, boys." The smoke from a dozen fires lifted in the clearing. Staggering in from half a dozen paths came as many painted warriors, each bearing on his back a salmon nearly as long as its red-skinned carrier. Running Bear abandoned the vernacular for a moment and dropped into English.