In the high desert country back in the time when there were no horses the people fought back and forth along many boundaries. The mountain people of the north had invaded the country long held by the lake people, but now a new threat appeared in the form of raiders who took children into slavery and drove the buffalo from their hunting grounds.
These raiders could travel long and fast and hidden. They crossed mountain ranges with no difficulty and soon they were moving freely in country that the lake people and the mountain people had thought of as their own safe place.
One day leaders from the three peoples were traveling together. They had with them a boy. A slave who spoke in a way that none of them understood. The three leaders were arguing about who was chief of all the people. They were walking beside a lake covered with water fowl.
``If the water fowl call your name when you call out to them, then you are leader of all this country,'' one said to another.
Each of the three called out and each time the water fowl did not respond. They continued diving and preening and admiring the world from their safe place on the water.
Then joking, the oldest leader said to the boy ``It's your turn now.''
The boy did not quite understand the words said to him, so he called loud his name to the cold grey sky. His name was Aark.
``Aark, Aark,'' the boy called.
``Aark, Aark,'' the birds answered and they arose from the lake in a great flock and they circled the boy as he stood alone on the shore.
The leaders looked at the boy and said nothing. In a slightly surly silence they continued on their way.
The boy said nothing also, but throughout his life he knew in his heart what the birds had told him. That all the land was his as much as anyone's.