Part 50

Once upon a time there were three brothers who set out on a visit to Goose-cap, the wise one, who said that any one might come and see him, and get a wish--just one wish, no more. The three brothers were seven years on the journey, climbing mountains that seemed to have no top, and scrambling through forests full of thorn-bushes, and wading through swamps where the mosquitoes tried to eat them up, and sailing down rivers where the rapids broke up their rafts and nearly drowned them.

At the end of seven years they heard Goose-cap's dogs barking, so then they knew they were on the right road; and they went on for three months more, and the barking got a little louder every day, till at last they came to the edge of the great lake. Then Goose-cap saw them, and sailed over in his big stone canoe and took them to his island.

You never saw such a beautiful island as that was, it was so green and warm and bright; and Goose-cap feasted his visitors for three days and nights, with meats and fruits that they had never tasted before. Then he said: "Tell me what you want, and why you have taken so much trouble to find me."

The youngest brother said: "I want to be always amusing, so that no one can listen to me without laughing."

Then the great wise one stuck his finger in the ground, and pulled up a root of the laughing-plant and said: "When you have eaten this you will be the funniest man in the tribe, and people will laugh as soon as you open your lips. But see that you don't eat it till you get home."

The youngest brother thanked him, and hurried away; and going home was so easy that it only took seven days instead of seven years. Yet the young man was so impatient to try his wish that on the sixth morning he ate the root. All of a sudden he felt so light-headed that he began to dance and shout with fun: and the ducks that he was going to shoot for breakfast flew away laughing into the reeds over the river, and the deer ran away laughing into the woods, and he got nothing to eat all day.

Next morning he came to the village where he lived, and he wanted to tell his friends how hungry he was; but at the first word he spoke they all burst out laughing, and as he went on they laughed louder and louder--it seemed so funny, though they couldn't hear a word he said, they made so much noise themselves. Then they got to laughing so hard that they rolled over and over on the ground, and squeezed their sides, and cried with laughing, till they had to run away into their houses and shut their doors, or they would have been killed with laughing. He called to them to come out and give him something to eat, but as soon as they heard him they began to laugh again; and at last they shouted that if he didn't go away they would kill him. So he went away into the woods and lived by himself; and whenever he wanted to hunt he had to tie a strap over his mouth, or the mock-bird would hear him and begin to laugh, and all the other birds and beasts would hear the mock-bird and laugh and run away.

The second brother said to Goose-cap; "I want to be the greatest of hunters without the trouble of hunting. Why should I go after the animals if I could make them come to me?"

Goose-cap knew why; still, he gave the man a little flute, saying: "Be sure you don't use it till after you have got home."

Then the hunter set off; but on the sixth day he was getting so near home that he said to himself: "I'm sure Goose-cap couldn't hear me now if I blew the flute _very_ gently, just to try it." So he pulled out the flute and breathed into it as gently as ever he could--but as soon as his lips touched it the flute whistled so long and loud that all the beasts in the country heard it and came rushing from north and south and east and west to see what the matter was. The deer got there first, and when they saw it was a man with bow and arrows they tried to run away again; but they couldn't, for the bears were close behind, all round, and pushed and pushed till the deer were all jammed up together and the man was squeezed to death in the middle of them.

The eldest brother, when the other two had set off for home, said to Goose-cap: "Give me great wisdom, so that I can marry the Mohawk chief's daughter without killing her father or getting killed myself." You see, the eldest brother was an Algonquin, and the Mohawks always hated the Algonquins.

Goose-cap stooped down on the shore and picked up a hard clam-shell; and he ground it and ground it, all that day and all the next night, till he had made a beautiful wampum bead of it. "Hang this round your neck by a thread of flax," he said, "and go and do whatever the chief asks you."

The eldest brother thanked him, and left the beautiful island, and traveled seven days and seven nights till he came to the Mohawk town. He went straight to the chief's house, and said to him, "I want to marry your daughter."

"Very well," said the chief, "you can marry my daughter if you bring me the head of the great dragon that lives in the pit outside the gate."

The eldest brother promised he would, and went out and cut down a tree and laid it across the mouth of the pit. Then he danced round the pit, and sang as he danced a beautiful Algonquin song, something like this: "Come and eat me, dragon, for I am fat and my flesh is sweet and there is plenty of marrow in my bones." The dragon was asleep, but the song gave him beautiful dreams, and he uncoiled himself and smacked his lips and stretched his head up into the air and laid his neck on the log. Then the eldest brother cut off the head; snick-snack, and carried it to the chief.

"That's right," said the chief; but he was angry in his heart, and next morning, when he should have given away his daughter, he said to the Algonquin: "I will let you marry her if I see that you can dive as well as the wild duck in the lake."

When they got to the lake the wild duck dived and stayed under water for three minutes, but then it had to come up to breathe. Then the eldest brother dived, and turned into a frog, and stayed under water so long that they were sure he was drowned; but just as they were going home, singing for joy to be rid of him, he came running after them, and said: "Now I have had my bath and we can go and get married."

"Wait till the evening," said the chief, "and then you can get married."

When the evening came, the Northern Lights were dancing and leaping in the sky, and the chief said: "The Northern Lights would be angry if you got married without running them a race. Run your best and win, and there will be no more delay."

The Northern Lights darted away at once to the west, and the eldest brother ran after them; and the chief said to his daughter: "They will lead him right down to the other side of the world, and he will be an old man before he can get back, so he won't trouble us any more." But just as the chief finished speaking, here came the Algonquin running up from the east. He had turned himself into lightning and gone right round the world; and the night was nearly gone before the Northern Lights came up after him, panting and sputtering.

"Yes, my son," said the chief; "you have won the race; so now we can go on with the wedding. The place where we have our weddings is down by the river at the bottom of the valley, and we will go there on our toboggans."

Now the hillside was rough with rocks and trees, and the river flowed between steep precipices, so nobody could toboggan down there without being broken to pieces. But the eldest brother said he was ready, and asked the chief to come on the same toboggan.

"No," said the chief, "but as soon as you have started I will."

Then the Algonquin gave his toboggan a push, and jumped on, and didn't even take the trouble to sit down. The chief waited to see him dashed to pieces; but the toboggan skimmed down the mountain side without touching a rock or a tree, and flew across the ravine at the bottom, and up the hillside opposite; and the Algonquin was standing straight up the whole time. When he got to the top of the mountain opposite he turned his toboggan round and coasted back as he had come. And when the chief saw him coming near and standing up on his toboggan, he lost his temper and let fly an arrow straight at the young man's heart; but the arrow stuck in Goose-cap's bead, and the Algonquin left it sticking there and took no notice. Only when he got to the top he said to the chief, "Now it's your turn," and put him on the toboggan and sent him spinning down into the valley. And whether the chief ever came up again we don't know; but at any rate his daughter married the Algonquin without any more fuss, and went home with him.

THE JOKER

This story is about Lox. He called himself the joker, and he was very proud of his jokes; but nobody else could see anything in them to laugh at.

One day he came to a wigwam where two old Indians were taking a nap beside the fire. He picked out a burning stick, held it against their bare feet, and then ran out and hid behind the tent. The old men sprang up, and one of them shouted to the other:

"How dare you burn my feet?"

"How dare _you_ burn _my_ feet?" roared the other, and sprang at his throat.

When he heard them fighting Lox laughed out loud, and the old men ran out to catch the man who had tricked them. When they got round the tent they found nothing but a dead coon. They took off its skin, and put its body into the pot of soup that was boiling for dinner. As soon as they had sat down, out jumped Lox, kicking over the pot and putting out the fire with the soup. He jumped right into the coon's skin and scurried away into the wood.

In the middle of the forest Lox came upon a camp where a party of women were sitting round a fire making pouches.

"Dear me," said Lox, looking very kind. (He had put on his own skin by this time.) "That's very slow work! Now, when I want to make a pouch I do it in two minutes, without sewing a stitch."

"I should like to see you do it!" said one of the women.

"Very well," said he. So he took a piece of skin, and a needle and twine, and a handful of beads, and stuffed them in among the burning sticks. In two minutes he stooped down again and pulled a handsome pouch out of the fire.

"Wonderful!" said the women; and they all stuffed their pieces of buckskin and handfuls of beads into the fire.

"Be sure you pull the bags out in two minutes," said Lox. "I will go and hunt for some more buckskin."

In two minutes the women raked out the fire, and found nothing but scraps of scorched leather and half-melted glass. Then they were very angry, and ran after the joker; but he had turned himself into a coon again and hidden in a hollow tree. When they had all gone back to their ruined work he came down and went on his mischievous way.

When he came out of the wood he saw a village by the side of a river. Outside one of the wigwams a woman was nursing a baby, and scolding it because it cried.

"What a lot of trouble children are," said Lox. "What a pity that people don't make men of them at once, instead of letting them take years to grow up."

The woman stared. "How can a baby be turned into a man?" she asked.

"Oh, it's easy enough," said he. So she lent him her baby, and he took it down to the river and held it under the water for a few minutes, saying magical words all the time; and then a full-grown Indian jumped out of the water, with a feather head-dress, and beaded blankets, and a bow and quiver slung over his back.

"Wonderful! Wonderful!" said his mother, and she hurried back to the village to tell her friends the secret. The last thing Lox saw as he hurried away into the wood was a score of mothers drowning their children.

On the path in front of him Lox spied a couple of maidens, and they were trying to reach the fruit that grew on a wild plum-tree. The joker stepped on one side and broke a twig off another plum-tree and stuck it in his hair. The twig sprouted fast, and grew into a little plum-tree with big plums hanging from its twigs. He went along the path, picking and eating the plums as he walked, till he came up with the girls.

"Wonderful!" said they. "Do you think we could get plums like that?"

"Easily," said he and he broke off two little twigs. "Stick these in your hair, and you will have head-dresses like mine."

As soon as the twigs were stuck in their hair the little plum-trees began to grow, and the maidens danced with joy, and picked the juicy plums and ate them. But the trees went on growing, and the roots twisted in among the maidens' hair and clutched their heads like iron fingers. The girls sat down, for they couldn't carry all that weight standing. And still the trees grew, till the girls lay down on the ground and screamed for some one to come and rescue them. Presently their father came along, and he pulled his axe out of his belt and chopped off the trees, and tugged at the roots till they came off--but all the maidens' hair came off too. By this time Lox took care to be scampering away through the wood in the shape of a coon.

When he came near the next village Lox put on a terrified face and began to run; and he rushed into the middle of the village, shouting: "The plague is coming! The plague is coming!"

All the people flocked out of their wigwams, crying: "Where is it coming from? Which way shall we fly?"

"Stay where you are and make your minds easy," said Lox. "I have a charm that will keep off all the plagues under the sun. As soon as I have spoken the words, every man must kiss the girl nearest him." Then he stretched up his hands toward the sun and said some gibberish; and when he stopped and let his arms fall, each man made a rush and kissed the girl who happened to be nearest.

But there were not quite as many girls as there were men, and one old bachelor was so slow and clumsy that every girl had been kissed before he could catch one.

"Never mind," said Lox cheerfully. "You go to the next village and try again."

So the old bachelor set out, plod, plod, plodding through the woods. But Lox turned himself into a coon again, and scampered from tree to tree, and got first to the village. When he told the people the plague was coming, and they asked how they could avoid it, he said: "When I have spoken my charm, all the girls must set upon any stranger that comes to the village, and beat him." Then he flung his arms up and began talking his gibberish. Presently the old bachelor came up, hot and panting, and stood close to the handsomest girl he could see, all ready to kiss her as soon as the charm ended. But as soon as Lox finished, the maidens all set upon the stranger, and beat him till he ran away into the woods.

Then the people made a great feast for Lox; and when he had eaten his fill of deer-meat and honey, he marched off to play his tricks somewhere else. He had not gone very far when he came to the Kulloo's nest. Now the Kulloo was the biggest of the birds, and when he spread his wings he made night come at noonday; and he built his nest of the biggest pine-trees he could find, instead of straws. The Kulloo was away, but his wife was at home trying to hatch her eggs. Lox was not hungry; but he turned himself into a serpent, and crept into the nest and under Mrs. Kulloo's wing, and bit a hole in every egg and ate up the little Kulloos. When he had done this, he was so heavy and stupid that he couldn't walk very far before he had to lie down and go to sleep.

Presently the Kulloo came home.

"How are you getting on, my dear?" he said.

"Not very well, I'm afraid," she said. "The eggs seem to get cold, no matter how close I sit."

"Let me take a turn while you go and stretch your wings," said the Kulloo. But when he sat down on the empty eggs they all broke with a great crash.

The Kulloo flew off in a terrible rage to find the wretch who had eaten up the eggs, and very soon he spied Lox snoring on the grass.

"Now I've caught him," said the Kulloo; "it's Lox, the mischief-maker."

He pounced down, and caught hold of Lox by the hair and carried him a mile up into the sky, and then let go. Of course, Lox was broken into pieces when he struck the earth, but he just had time as he fell to say his strongest magic:

"Backbone! Backbone! Save my backbone!"

So as soon as the Kulloo was out of sight the arms and legs and head began to wriggle together round the backbone, and then in a twinkling Lox was whole again.

"I shouldn't like that to happen very often," he said, looking himself over to see if every piece had joined in the right place. "I think I'll go home and take a rest."

But he had traveled so far that he was six months' journey from his home; and he had made so many enemies, and done so much mischief, that whenever he came into a village and asked food and shelter the people hooted and pelted him out again. The birds and the beasts got to know when he was coming, and kept so far out of his way that he couldn't get enough to eat, not even by his magic. Besides, he had wasted his magic so much that scarcely any was left. The winter came on, and he was cold as well as hungry, when at last he reached a solitary wigwam by a frozen river. The master of the wigwam didn't know him, so he treated him kindly, and said, when they parted next morning:

"You have only three days more to go; but the frost-wind is blowing colder and colder, and if you don't do as I say you will never get home. When night comes, break seven twigs from a maple-tree and stand them up against each other, like the poles of a wigwam, and jump over them. Do the same the next night, and the night after that if you are not quite home; but you can only do it thrice."

Away went the joker, swaggering through the woods as if nothing had happened to him, for now he was warm and full. But soon the wind began to rise, and it blew sharper and sharper, and bit his face, and pricked in through his blanket.

"I'm not going to be cold while I know how to be warm," said he; and he built a little wigwam of sticks, and jumped over it. The sticks blazed up, and went on burning furiously for an hour. Then they died out suddenly. Lox groaned and went on his way. In the afternoon he stopped again, and lit another fire to warm himself by; but again the fire went out. When night came on he made his third fire wigwam; and that one burned all night long, and only went out when it was time for him to begin the day's march.

All day he tramped over the snow, never daring to stop for more than a few minutes at a time for fear of being frozen to death. At night he built another little wigwam; but the twigs wouldn't light, however often he jumped over them. On he tramped, getting more and more tired and drowsy, till at last he fell in his tracks and froze. And that was the end of Lox and his jokes.

LITTLE MOCCASIN'S RIDE ON THE THUNDER-HORSE

BY COLONEL GUIDO ILGES

"Little Moccasin" was, at the time we speak of, fourteen years old, and about as mischievous a boy as could be found anywhere in the Big Horn mountains. Unlike his comrades of the same age, who had already killed buffaloes and stolen horses from the white men and the Crow Indians, with whom Moccasin's tribe, the Uncapapas, were at war, he preferred to lie under a shady tree in the summer, or around the camp-fire in winter, listening to the conversation of the old men and women, instead of going upon expeditions with the warriors and the hunters.

The Uncapapas were a very powerful and numerous tribe of the great Sioux Nation, and before Uncle Sam's soldiers captured and removed them, and before the Northern Pacific Railroad entered the territory of Montana, they occupied the beautiful valleys of the Rosebud, Big and Little Horn, Powder and Redstone rivers, all of which empty into the grand Yellowstone Valley. In those days, before the white man had set foot upon these grounds, there was plenty of game, such as buffalo, elk, antelope, deer, and bear; and, as the Uncapapas were great hunters and good shots, the camp of Indians to which Little Moccasin belonged always had plenty of meat to eat and plenty of robes and hides to sell and trade for horses and guns, for powder and ball, for sugar and coffee, and for paint and flour. Little Moccasin showed more appetite than any other Indian in camp. In fact, he was always hungry, and used to eat at all hours, day and night. Buffalo meat he liked the best, particularly the part taken from the hump, which is so tender that it almost melts in the mouth.

When Indian boys have had a hearty dinner of good meat, they generally feel very happy and very lively. When hungry, they are sad and dull.

This was probably the reason why Little Moccasin was always so full of mischief, and always inventing tricks to play upon the other boys. He was a precocious and observing youngster, full of quaint and original ideas--never at a loss for expedients.

But he was once made to feel very sorry for having played a trick, and I must tell my young readers how it happened.

"Running Antelope," one of the great warriors and the most noted orator of the tribe, had returned from a hunt, and Mrs. Antelope was frying for him a nice buffalo steak--about as large as two big fists--over the coals. Little Moccasin, who lived in the next street of tents, smelled the feast, and concluded that he would have some of it. In the darkness of the night he slowly and carefully crawled toward the spot, where Mistress Antelope sat holding in one hand a long stick, at the end of which the steak was frying. Little Moccasin watched her closely, and seeing that she frequently placed her other hand upon the ground beside her and leaned upon it for support, he soon formed a plan for making her drop the steak.

He had once or twice in his life seen a pin, but he had never owned one, and he could not have known what use is sometimes made of them by bad white boys. He had noticed, however, that some of the leaves of the larger varieties of the prickly-pear cactus-plant are covered with many thorns, as long and as sharp as an ordinary pin.

So when Mrs. Antelope again sat down and looked at the meat to see if it was done, he slyly placed half-a-dozen of the cactus leaves upon the very spot of ground upon which Mrs. Antelope had before rested her left hand.

Then the young mischief crawled noiselessly into the shade and waited for his opportunity, which came immediately.

When the unsuspecting Mrs. Antelope again leaned upon the ground, and felt the sharp points of the cactus leaves, she uttered a scream, and dropped from her other hand the stick and the steak, thinking only of relief from the sharp pain.

Then, on the instant, the young rascal seized the stick and tried to run away with it. But Running Antelope caught him by his long hair, and gave him a severe whipping, declaring that he was a good-for-nothing boy, and calling him a "coffee-cooler" and a "squaw."

The other boys, hearing the rumpus, came running up to see the fun, and they laughed and danced over poor Little Moccasin's distress. Often afterward they called him "coffee-cooler"; which meant that he was cowardly and faint-hearted, and that he preferred staying in camp around the fire, drinking coffee, to taking part in the manly sports of hunting and stealing expeditions.

The night after the whipping, Little Moccasin could not sleep. The disgrace of the whipping and the name applied to him were too much for his vanity. He even lost his appetite, and refused some very nice prairie-dog stew which his mother offered him.

He was thinking of something else. He must do something brave--perform some great deed which no other Indian had ever performed--in order to remove this stain upon his character.

But what should it be? Should he go out alone and kill a bear? He had never fired a gun, and was afraid that the bear might eat him. Should he attack the Crow camp single-handed? No, no--not he; they would catch him and scalp him alive.