"'Said I not you were a beast of a bad heart!' he scolded. But how should I know he would care to hear about a lot of silly Mammoths. 'Also,' he said, 'you are my Medicine. You shall find me the trail of the Talking Stick, and I, Taku, son of Long-Hand, shall lead the people.' "'In six moons,' I told him, 'the Grass-Eaters go to the Islands to calve--' "'In which time,' said Taku, 'the chiefs will have quarreled six times, and Opata will have eaten me. Drive them, Arrumpa, drive them!' "Umph, uh-ump!" chuckled the old beast reminiscently. "We drove; we drove. What else was there to do? Taku-Wakin was my man. Besides, it was great fun. One-Tusk helped me. He was one of our bachelor herd who had lost a tusk in his first fight, which turned out greatly to his advantage. He would come sidling up to a refractory young cow with his eyes twinkling, and before anybody suspected he could give such a prod with his one tusk as sent her squealing.... But that came afterward. The Mammoth herd that fed on our edge of the Great Swamp was led by a wrinkled old cow, wise beyond belief. Scrag we called her. She would take the herd in to the bedding-ground by the river, to a landing-point on the opposite side, never twice the same, and drift noiselessly through the canebrake, choosing blowy hours when the swish of cane over woolly backs was like the run of the wind. Days when the marsh would be full of tapirs wallowing and wild pig rootling and fighting, there might be hundreds feeding within sound of you and not a hint of it except the occasional _toot-toot_ of some silly cow calling for Scrag, or a young bull blowing water. "They bedded at the Grass Flats, but until Scrag herself had a mind to take the trail to the Squidgy Islands, there was nobody but Saber-Tooth could persuade her. "'Then Saber-Tooth shall help us,' said my man.