THE WOLF, THE MUSKRAT, THE CROW
289
"Well.... I dort't think I'll go there anymore."
"No?"
"No."
That negative seemed to both of them to be a turning point,
like a battle that marks the beginning of the end of a war.
"I don't think I
will
either," cried the Wolf. "Shake!"
They pressed hands warmly until they discovered that they
had given the Tribal Secret Handshake to each .other: at that they
drew their hands away as if they had both touched an unexpected
lizard in each other's palm. They shook all over again with a plain
handclasp.
"We're too old for that crap," said the Crow. "It's all a fake.
Besides, old Ginsberg drives me nuts. And a fire with red paper
for flames! Its all a fake."
"He's an awful pain, Ginsberg. Seymour too sometimes,"
said the Wolf. "Tonka Kewoo!"
They screamed and chuckled, punching each other.
"Its no good," said the Wolf. "We ought to go and bust it all
up. Most of it is our stuff anyway."
"And paint it up with that red paint there!" yelled the Crow.
"Yeh! Its kid stuff!"
They jumped up and raced crazily out into the street and
down toward Ginsberg's. The cellar-door was unlocked; they ran
down into the Council Room and knocked peacepipe and totem to
the floor, where they stamped them to bits. The Wolf opened the
red paint and smeared it all over the walls: they turned over the
benches and.tore the Sachem's chair apart.
"Tonka Kewoo," the Wolf cried. "The Iroquois have come!"
When they were done they climbed out into the nighttime
again undetected, and staggered wearily down the street half in
laughter and half in tears. They had done nothing but break a few
things, but when they stood again in front of the Wolf's house they
were weak and trembling as after a fever. But this is the way con–
verts feel when they have just burned the images that last year they
supplicated with wheat and with animals: this is the way the young
Cheyenne felt when he spent the night of his thirteenth birthday
alone in the mountains waiting for the voices of spirits that the
srown men knew.
