As Bill ran to pick up his game, the trapper called to him, “Look out, Bill; he isn’t dead!”
But Bill was too eager to take warning. The bird suddenly straightened out his long neck and shot his sharp beak right into Bill’s face.
The young hunter staggered and cried out with pain and surprise. The crane had cut a deep gash in Bill’s cheek and the blood ran freely down his face.
At first his three friends laughed at him, but when they saw how badly Bill was wounded, Tatanka quickly chewed a handful of choke-cherry twigs and put them on the wound to stop the bleeding.
Thus ended the crane-hunt near Inspiration Point.
Inspiration point was the first camp at which the lads had enjoyed the magnificent panoramic view of the great river and its valley and where they had tasted the joy of roaming about freely through upland forests and fields.
Some camps one finds so attractive that it is hard to break away, and after one has at last rolled up tents and blankets, memory involuntarily returns to the scene.
The lads enjoyed the camp at Inspiration Point so much that they begged Mr. Barker to stay there at least another night.
“I don’t know, boys,” the old man objected mildly. “It may not be so pleasant to-night. I think we are going to have rain.”
“Where can the rain come from?” the boys questioned. “There isn’t a cloud in the sky.”
“Not yet,” the old trapper admitted, “but clouds will come soon enough. I sort of feel and smell rain in the air.”
The boys laughed, “Ah, you’re just fooling us,” they insisted. “You can’t smell rain like you smell flowers or skunks.”
They ran over to Tatanka who, leaning against an old oak, was gazing down the valley where a large, high, rocky island arose like a flat-topped mountain.
“I climbed to an eagle’s nest on that mountain when I was a boy,” he told the lads. “The eagle was the totem of our village. I brought down a big young eagle and the other boys and I caught fish for him and he grew very tame. When he grew older and could fly well he flew away, but he often came back and sat on our tepee poles.”
“Tatanka,” the boys questioned, “is it going to rain to-night? Mr. Barker says he can feel and smell rain. Do you believe he can smell rain?”
Tatanka smiled and gazed into the hazy distance. “Yes, I think it will rain,” he answered, “after a while.”