Coming home from Gilford one warm afternoon, Mark found a splendid, large American yacht tied at the float in the inlet. There was no one aboard, and when he and Jim moored their own boat and climbed into the speed boat, they could see through the portholes the rich polished helm, the gleaming mahogany of the main cabin with its elaborate bar.
When they came up the river to the village, a shabby speed boat was pulled up on the beach and a young logger in a plaid shirt perched on the bank, who explained that the yacht owner had paid him to bring his party here.
There were three women and four men, and as he walked up the path to the vicarage, Mark could hear chatter and gay laughter, and when he passed the vicarage, he could see them—the women in their tailored slacks and cashmere sweaters, the yacht owner in his white jacket and gold braided cap.
They were swatting mosquitoes and horse flies, gawking in the windows of the church, and the voices of the women had a shrill quality he had almost forgotten.
“Look—look at the funny man at the bottom of the totem.”
When he approached and introduced himself, they were most affable.
“What are you doing here?” asked the yacht owner, and Mark said he belonged here; he lived here. And one of the women said, “How do you tell the Indians apart?” and Mark said, the same way she told her friends apart, because she knew them.
He showed them the village and he answered their questions, and, when they were ready to go, he went with them to the river bank. When the yacht owner saw his speed boat, he said, “I wonder if you would take us to the yacht in your boat? The mosquitoes are eating us alive, and the logger’s tub is too slow. It would mean a little money in your collection plate.” And Mark said, no, they would have to return the way they had come, and he noticed that Jim had picked up a stick and was drawing on the sands the picture of a dollar bill.
“If you come to southern California, you must look us up,” said the wife of the yacht owner. “We will show you our big parish,” and he knew he would never see it, and that she knew it also.
They climbed into the logger’s boat and pushed off, and the river took them. They were on their way back to a life he no longer knew, as distant as another planet, and he was glad to see them go—and a little ashamed of it.
He looked at the picture in the sand.
“What does it mean?” he asked, and Jim answered, “It means an American stood here.”

In the latter third of the month, an English woman anthropologist came to visit the village, housed, by arrangements of the Indian Agent with a couple who were among the very few of the tribe who were not Christians and did not attend church. When Mark went to call on her and offer any help he could, he was at once rebuked.
She was a large, mannish, gray-haired woman who informed him that her visit here was a fulfillment of a wish of many years standing.
“Since I was a girl” she announced, “I have been interested in the culture of the Quackadoodles.”
Mark said hastily, “I had trouble with that word too. It took me a month to learn it. The Indians pronounce it Kwacutals.”
“Young man, for the past century in England this band has been known as the Quackadoodles and as the Quackadoodles, it will be known forever.”
“I beg your pardon.”
Mark asked if she would like to see the church, and when they entered, she saw at once the new insulated sidings which had caused him so many blisters.
“How much better it would have been to have left the rude studding,” she said sadly, and he told her that even with the plywood the flowers on the altar at Christmas had frozen solid in the water that held them.
She did not hear him. What a shame that Christianity had come here! If the white man had not intruded where he was not wanted, where he did not belong, even now, protected by the mountains and the river, the village would have remained a last stronghold of a culture which was almost gone.
Mark tried to say that no village, no culture, can remain static.
“I have often thought that if this lovely and magnificent land belongs to anyone, it is to the birds and the fish. They were here long before the first Indian, and when the last man is gone from the earth, it will be theirs again.”

“Caleb, why are you telling me this?”
“Because it is going to happen to Kingcome and sooner than we think. The long trek down the lonely coast is not yet over. The young will follow Gordon. Very soon only the old will be left and a very few others, and when the old die, the others will leave. The tribe is going to trade its simplicity for the shiny gadgetry of our complex world, and it will not be so content, because there is one thing it does not anticipate. The outside world will not accept it easily.”
There was a long silence.
“And now it’s my turn, Caleb,” said Mark. “You’re right. In the end they will all leave, and the wrong people will use them for the wrong reasons. For publicity, for politics, for egotism, even for greed. But you have forgotten something. They have one splendid friend who understands them and will stand by them. They have men like you, Caleb. Don’t you know yet that in life you have been to this tribe what the Cedar-man was to them in the myth?”
The old priest looked abashed.
“I hope it’s a little bit true, Mark,” he said humbly. “And if it is true of me, it is true of you also.”

While Mark built the fire, Jim sent out an emergency on the radio-telephone, but the hospital ship was too far away to come and the gale warnings were out and the straits too rough to cross. But it didn’t matter. It was too late for help and Mark knew it, and Calamity knew it also.
Mark sat beside the cot.
“I ain’t much of a church man, Mark. Guess you might say I’m an agnostic. I don’t know.”
“There’s a good bit of agnostic in all of us, Calamity. None of us knows much—only enough to trust to reach out a hand in the dark.”

He went up the path and the steps, through the living room and into the kitchen. The lights were on. At the stove Marta was preparing his dinner.
“Marta, something strange happened tonight. On the bank of the river I heard the owl call my name,” and it was a question he asked, an answer he sought.
She did not say, “Nonsense, it was my name the owl called, and I am old and with me it does not matter.” She did not say, “It’s true you’re thin and white, but who is not? It has no importance.”
She turned, spoon still in her hand, lifting her sweet, kind face with its network of tiny wrinkles, and she answered his question as she would have answered any other.