Part 11

When the widow’s daughter found herself forsaken, she wept bitterly. After a day or two she took her little brother in her arms and went to the tepee of an old woman who lived at one end of the village. The old woman’s tumble down tepee was of bark and her dress and clothing was of old smoke-dried tent cover. But she was kind to the two waifs and took them in willingly.

The little girl was eager to find her mother. The old woman said to her: “I suspect your mother has painted her face red. Do not try to find her. If the chief’s son marries her she will not want to be burdened with you.”

The old woman was right. The girl went down to the river, and sure enough found a hole cut in the ice and about it lay the filth that the mother had washed from her body. The girl gathered up the filth and went on. By and by she came to a second hole in the ice. Here too was filth, but not so much as at the previous place. At the third hole the ice was clean.

The girl knew now that her mother had painted her face red. She went at once to the chief’s tepee, raised the door flap and went in. There sat her mother with the chief’s son at their wedding feast.

The girl walked up to her mother and hurled the filth in her mother’s face.

“There,” she cried, “you who forsake your helpless children and forget your husband, take that!”

And at once her mother became a hideous old woman.

The girl then went back to the lodge of the old woman, leaving the camp in an uproar. The chief soon sent some young warriors to seize the girl and her brother, and they were brought to his tent. He was furious with anger.

“Let the children be bound with lariats wrapped about their bodies and let them be left to starve. Our camp will move on,” he said. The chief’s son did not put away his wife, hoping she might be cured in some way and grow young again.

Everybody in camp now got ready to move; but the old woman came close to the girl and said:

“In my old tepee I have dug a hole and buried a pot with punk and steel and flint and packs of dried meat. They will tie you up like a corpse. But before we go I will come with a knife and pretend to stab you, but I will really cut the rope that binds you so that you can unwind it from your body as soon as the camp is out of sight and hearing.”

And so, before the camp started, the old woman came to the place where the two children were bound. She had in her hand a knife bound to the end of a stick which she used as a lance. She stood over the children and cried aloud:

“You wicked girl, who have shamed your own mother, you deserve all the punishment that is given you. But after all I do not want to let you lie and starve. Far better kill you at once and have done with it!” and with her stick she stabbed many times, as if to kill, but she was really cutting the rope.

The camp moved on; but the children lay on the ground until noon the next day. Then they began to squirm about. Soon the girl was free, and she then set loose her little brother. They went at once to the old woman’s hut where they found the flint and steel and the packs of dried meat.

The girl made her brother a bow and arrows and with these he killed birds and other small game.

The boy grew up a great hunter. They became rich. They built three great tepees, in one of which were stored rows upon rows of parfleche bags of dried meat.

One day as the brother went out to hunt, he met a handsome young stranger who greeted him and said to him:

“I know you are a good hunter, for I have been watching you; your sister, too, is industrious. Let me have her for a wife. Then you and I will be brothers and hunt together.”

The girl’s brother went home and told her what the young stranger had said.

“Brother, I do not care to marry,” she answered. “I am now happy with you.”

“But you will be yet happier married,” he answered, “and the young stranger is of no mean family, as one can see by his dress and manners.”

“Very well, I will do as you wish,” she said. So the stranger came into the tepee and was the girl’s husband.

One day as they were in their tent, a crow flew overhead, calling out loudly,

“Kaw, Kaw,

“They who forsook the children have no meat.”

The girl and her husband and brother looked up at one another.

“What can it mean?” they asked. “Let us send for Unktomi (the spider). He is a good judge and he will know.”

“And I will get ready a good dinner for him, for Unktomi is always hungry,” added the young wife.