I don't know why, unless it was because he could
out-run and out-wrestle the best of us; and yet he was never pleased
with himself unless the rest of us were satisfied to have it that way.
"Ongyatasse was what his mother called him. It means something very
pretty about the colored light of evening, but the name that he earned
for himself, when he was old enough to be Name-Seeking, was
Young-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Back.
"He was the arrow laid to the bow, and he could no more take himself
back from the adventure he had begun than the shaft can come back to the
bowstring.
"Before we were old enough to go up to the god-house and hear the sacred
Tellings, he had half the boys in our village bound to him in an
unbreakable vow never to turn back from anything we had started. It got
us into a great many difficulties, some of which were ridiculous, but it
had its advantages. The time we chased a young elk we had raised, across
the squash and bean vines of Three Towns, we escaped punishment on the
ground of our vow. Any Tallega parent would think a long time before he
expected his son to break a promise."
Oliver kept to the main point of interest.
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