"The Gods of the waters have sent the salmon. The black man can feast with his red brothers." "Them words sure sounds noble. How come you pester me talkin' voodoo talk?" "After the feast the fires of sacrifice will be lighted. It is written that one of our number shall be burned at the stake." To the Wildcat's ears this sounded homelike, but not reassuring. "Lemme go! Lemme go!" He leaped from the rock and plunged through the fringing skeletons. Running Bear and a dozen of his companions loped along after the Wildcat. The galloping party covered the length of the island. Running Bear and his companions deployed in open order, to permit the Wildcat to double on his trail; but that panic-stricken individual had fixed his course, and he sailed true to it. He headed for a twenty-foot bank, and his racing legs did not stop until the swirling waters of the Columbia had closed heavily over them. Running Bear, who had followed as swiftly as his civilized muscles would permit, gazed anxiously at the swimming Wildcat for a moment, to reassure himself of his victim's safety. "Go to it," he commented. "You'll make the mile in nothing flat with that panic crawl." He watched the Wildcat until the current swept him around the bend downstream. "He's safe," Running Bear commented. "On with the dance." He resumed the redskin role of a distant yesterday. "Waugh!" 4. In the gathering dusk the Wildcat swam and floated for a mile downstream in the currents of the Columbia; then under the insistent drag of a wide-swinging eddy he headed for the leading fences of a great salmon wheel whose plunging buckets dived into the black currents and lifted with their gamble of fifty-pound salmon. Now and then a heavier fish would punctuate the monotony of the catch. Flopping among their more substantial companions a fleet of leaping steel heads added splashes of silver to the Chinook background. The swimming Wildcat saw above him the descending framework of the fish wheel. He tried vainly to escape from the cage of wire netting falling from the sky upon him, but he was captured like a moth lost in a butterfly net. "Lady Luck, good-bye." The Wildcat dragged in a deep lungful of air as he went under. Five seconds later, preceded by three heavy-set salmon, he slithered down a trough into the storage bin in the hull of the fish wheel. About him were plunging fish. He looked at the square of evening light which glimmered through the hatch. "Whah at is I?" A fifty-pound salmon, sliding down the trough, struck fairly against the Wildcat's stomach. "Fish, how come?" Another leaping salmon slapped the Wildcat with his tail. "Don't kick me wid yo' tail. I'll bust you in de haid." The Wildcat struck wildly at the offending salmon. He slipped and fell into a vast fighting mass of lively fish. He wrestled with fins and tails.