him and yell, or lain him with a rock at long range, he'd jump like a
skittish colt and tremble all over. Then he'd pull out on the run, tail
and trunk waving stiff, head over one shoulder and wicked eyes blazing,
and the way he'd swear at me was something dreadful. A most immoral
beast he was, a murderer, and a blasphemer.

"But towards the end he quit all this, and fell to whimpering and crying
like a baby. His spirit broke and he became a quivering jelly-mountain
of misery. He'd get attacks of palpitation of the heart, and stagger
around like a drunken man, and fall down and bark his shins. And then
he'd cry, but always on the run. O man, the gods themselves would have
wept with him, and you yourself or any other man. It was pitiful, and
there was so I much of it, but I only hardened my heart and hit up the
pace. At last I wore him clean out, and he lay down, broken-winded,
broken-hearted, hungry, and thirsty. When I found he wouldn't budge, I
hamstrung him, and spent the better part of the day wading into him with
the hand-axe, he a-sniffing and sobbing till I worked in far enough to
shut him off. Thirty feet long he was, and twenty high, and a man could
sling a hammock between his tusks and sleep comfortably. Barring the
fact that I had run most of the juices out of him, he was fair eating,
and his four feet, alone, roasted whole, would have lasted a man a
twelvemonth. I spent the winter there myself."

"And where is this valley?" I asked

He waved his hand in the direction of the north-east, and said: "Your
tobacco is very good. I carry a fair share of it in my pouch, but I
shall carry the recollection of it until I die. In token of my
appreciation, and in return for the moccasins on your own feet, I will
present to you these _muclucs_. They commemorate Klooch and the seven