NORTHERN INTERIOR OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

immediately made for the woods and travelled for some distance on the snow, cutting or bending as he went the bush tops, with the object of drawing to his movements the attention of bands of congenerous huntsmen possibly roaming in the vicinity. He then returned to his original camp, where the easterners were still to be seen, enjoying the hospitality of his own people.

Several parties of nomadic Sekanais noticed the silent signals left on the frozen snow and through the bush, and, unable to read them to their own satisfaction, followed the freshest tracks of the Indian to solve the enigma. These led them to the Sekanais camp, where the Beavers were now in an insignificant minority.

This gradual grouping of natives who could not bear them any possible goodwill seems to have given the alarm to the strangers, who thenceforth never went about with- out being armed to the teeth. One day, when one of them was conversing with the inmates of a Sekanais tepee, squatting on the ground with one of his feet hard on the handle of an iron dagger, the Indian who had so cleverly brought in such a concourse of his fellow-tribesmen pro- fessed admiration for the beautiful weapon and asked to be allowed to examine it. But the Beaver would not even momentarily part with it, so that the Sekanais had to forcibly wrench it from under his foot, and, plunging it into the stranger’s breast, thereby gave the signal for the massacre which ensued. The Beavers were taken by surprise and, unable to seek and drop under the hammer of their guns the few grains of powder which at that time did duty as a percussion cap, they were overcome and annihilated by their hosts.