the house watching him. He couldn’t wait for daylight; he wanted the
Sun, his father, to rise before his time, and when the Sun did rise he
jumped out of bed, tied his quiver to his belt, took his bow in his
hand, and, with a little luncheon the maiden had prepared for him,
started off.
As he went down the river he saw the maiden was watching him from the
top of the house; so he started forward and ran until he was out of
sight, to show how fine a runner he was and how good a hunter; because
he was reputed to be a very strong and active young man. He hunted and
hunted, but did not find any deer, nor even any tracks.
Meanwhile, the maiden went up the stream as before and kept watch of the
corral; and he fared as the other young man had fared. At night he came
home, not quite so downcast as the other had been, because he was a
young man of more self-reliance.
She asked, as she met him: “Haven’t you got any deer today?”
He answered: “No.”
She said: “I am sorry, but under the circumstances I don’t see how we
can become husband and wife.”
So he carried his bundle home.
The next day there was a young man in the City of Salt who heard of
this,--not all of it, but he heard that day after day young men were
going to the home of this maiden to court her, and she turned them all
away. He said: “I dare say they didn’t take enough with them.” So he
made up two bundles and went to the home of the maiden, and he said to
himself: “This time it will be all right.”
When he arrived, much the same conversation was gone through as before
with the other young men, and the girl said, when she lighted him to the
door of his room: “My young friend, if you will find a deer for me
tomorrow I will become your wife and rest my hope only on you.”
“Mercy on me!” thought the young man to himself, “I have always been
called a poor hunter. What shall I do?”
The next morning he tried, but with the same results.
Now, this girl was keeping the deer and antelope and other animals so
long closed up in the corral that the people in all the villages round
about were ready to die of hunger for meat. Still, for her own
gratification she would keep these animals shut up.
The young man came back at evening, and she asked him if he had found a
deer for her.
“No,” said he, “I could not even find the trail of one.”
“Well,” she said, “I am sorry, for your bundles are heavy.”
He took them up and went home with them.
Finally, this matter became so much talked about that the two small gods
on the top of Thunder Mountain, who lived with their grandmother where
our sacrificial altar now stands, said: “There is something wrong here;
we will go and court this maiden.” Now, these gods were extremely ugly
in appearance when they chose to be--mere pigmies who never grew to
man’s stature. They were always boys in appearance, and their
grandmother was always crusty with them; but they concluded one night
that they would go the next day to woo this maiden.
Said one to the other: “Suppose we go and try our luck with her.” Said
he: “When I look at you, you are very handsome.”
Said the other to him: “When I look at you, you are extremely handsome.”
They were the ugliest beings in human form, but in reality were among
the most magnificent of men, having power to take any form they chose.
Said the elder one: “Grandmother, you know how much talk there is about
this maiden in the Village of the Yellow Rocks. We have decided to go
and court her.”
“You miserable, dirty, ugly little wretches! The idea of your going to
court this maiden when she has refused the finest young men in the
land!”
“Well, we will go,” said he.
“I don’t want you to go,” replied she. “Your names will be in the mouths
of everybody; you will be laughed and jeered at.”
“We will go,” said they. And, without paying the slightest attention to
their grandmother, they made up their bundle--a very miserable bundle it
was; the younger brother put in little rocks and sticks and bits of
buckskins and all sorts of worthless things--and they started off.
“What are you carrying this bundle for?” asked Áhaiyúta, the elder
brother.
“I am taking it as a present to the maiden,” said Mátsailéma, the
younger one.
“She doesn’t want any such trash as that,” said the other. “They have
taken very valuable presents to her before; we have nothing to take
equal to what has been carried to her by others.”
They decided to throw the bundle away altogether, and started out with
absolutely nothing but their bows and arrows.
As they proceeded they began to kill wood-rats, and continued until they
had slaughtered a large number and had a long string of them held up by
their tails.
“There!” exclaimed the younger brother. “There is a fine present for the
girl.” They knew perfectly well how things were, and were looking out
for the interests of their children in the villages round about.
“Oh, my younger brother!” said the elder. “These will not be acceptable
to the girl at all; she would not have them in the house!”
“Oh, yes, she would,” said the younger; “we will take them along as a
present to her.”
So they went on, and it was hardly noon when they arrived with their
strings of rats at the white cliffs on the southern side of the cañon
opposite the village where the maiden lived.
“Here, let us sit down in the shade of this cliff,” said the elder
brother, “for it is not proper to go courting until evening.”
“Oh, no,” said the younger, “let us go along now. I am in a hurry! I am
in a hurry!”
“You are a fool!” said the elder brother; “you should not think of going
courting before evening. Stay here patiently.”
So they sat down in the shade of the cliff. But the younger kept jumping
up and running out to see how the sun was all the afternoon, and he
would go and smooth out his string of rats from time to time, and then
go and look at the sun again. Finally, when the sun was almost set, he
called out: “Now, come on!”
“Wait until it is wholly dark,” said the other. “You never did have any
patience, sense, or dignity about you.”
“Why not go now?” asked the younger.
So they kept quarrelling, but the elder brother’s wish prevailed until
it was nearly dark, when they went on.
The elder brother began to get very bashful as they approached the
village. “I wonder which house it is,” said he.
“The one with the tallest ladder in front of it, of course,” said the
other.
Then the elder brother said in a low voice: “Now, do behave yourself; be
dignified.”
“All right!” replied the younger.
When they got to the ladder, the elder one said in a whisper: “I don’t
want to go up here; I don’t want to go courting; let’s go back.”
“Go along up,” said the younger.
“Keep still; be quiet!” said the elder one; “be dignified!”
They went up the ladder very carefully, so that there was not a tinkle
from the bells. The elder brother hesitated, while the younger one went
on to the top, and over the edge of the house.
“Now!” cried he.
“Keep still!” whispered the other; and he gave the ladder a little shake
as he went, and the bells tinkled at the top.
The people downstairs said: “Who in the world is coming now?”
When they were both on the roof, the elder brother said: “You go down
first.”
“I will do nothing of the kind,” said the other, “you are the elder.”
The people downstairs called out: “Who comes there?”
“See what you have done, you simpleton!” said the elder brother. Then
with a great deal of dignity he walked down the ladder. The younger one
came tumbling down, carrying his string of rats.
“Throw it out, you fool; they don’t want rats!” said the elder one.
“Yes, they do,” replied the other. “The girl will want these; maybe she
will marry us on account of them!”
The elder brother was terribly disturbed, but the other brought his rats
in and laid them in the middle of the floor.
The father looked up, and said: “You come?”
“Yes,” answered the two odd ones.
“Sit down,” said the old man. So they sat down, and food was placed
before them.
“It seems,” said the father, “that ye have met with luck today in
hunting,” as he cast his eyes on the string of rats.
“Yes,” said the Two.
So the old priest went and got some prayer-meal, and, turning the faces
of the rats toward the east, said a short prayer.
“What did I tell you?” said the younger brother; “they like the presents
we have brought. Just see!”
Presently the old man said: “It is not customary for strangers to come
to a house without something in mind.”
“Quite so,” said the younger brother.
“Yes, my father,” said the elder one; “we have come thinking of your
daughter. We understand that she has been wooed by various young men,
and it has occurred to us that they did not bring the right kind of
presents.”
“So we brought these,” said the younger brother.
“It is well,” said the old man. “It is the custom for maidens and youths
to marry. It rests with my daughter.”
So he referred the matter to his daughter, and she said: “As you think,
my father. Which one?”
“Oh, take us both!” said the younger brother.
This was rather embarrassing to the maiden, but she knew she had a safe
retreat. So when the father admonished her that it was time to lead the
two young men up into the room where the others had been placed, she
told them the same story.
They said, “It is well.”
They lay down, but instead of sleeping spent most of the night in
speculating as to the future.
“What a magnificent wife we will have,” said one to the other.
“Don’t talk so loud; every one will hear you; you will be covered with
shame!”
After a while they went to sleep; but were awake early the next morning.
The younger brother began to talk to the elder one, who said: “Keep
quiet; the people are not awake; don’t disturb them!”
The younger one said: “The sun is rising.”
“Keep quiet,” said the other, “and when they are awake they will give us
some luncheon to take with us.”
But the younger one jumped up and went rushing about the house, calling
out: “The sun is rising; Get up!”
The luncheon was provided, and when they started off the maiden went out
on the house-top and asked them which direction they would take.
Said they: “We will go over to the south and will get a deer before
long, although we are very small and may not meet with very good luck.”
So they descended the ladder, and the maiden said to herself: “Ugly,
miserable little wretches; I will teach them to come courting me in this
way!”
The brothers went off to the cliffs, and, while pretending to be
hunting, they ran back through the thickets near the house and waited to
see what the maiden would do.
Pretty soon she came out. They watched her and saw that she went down
the valley and presently ran into the river, leaving no trail behind,
and took her course up the stream. They ran on ahead, and long before
she had ascended the river found the path leading out of it up the
mountain. Following this path, they came to the corral, and, looking
over it, they saw thousands of deer, mountain-sheep, antelope, and other
animals wandering around in the enclosure.
“Ha! here is the place!” the younger brother exclaimed. “Let us go at
them now!”
“Keep quiet! Be patient! Wait till the maiden comes,” said the elder
one. “If we should happen to kill one of these deer before she comes,
perhaps she has some magic power or knowledge by which she would deprive
us of the fruits of our efforts.”
“No, let us kill one now,” said the other. But the elder one kept him
curbed until the maiden was climbing the cliff, when he could restrain
him no longer, and the youth pulled out his bow and let fly an arrow at
the largest deer. One arrow, and the deer fell to the ground, and when
the maiden appeared on the spot the deer was lying dead not far away.
The brothers said: “You come, do you? And here we are!”
She looked at them, and her heart went down and became as heavy as a
stone, and she did not answer.
“I say, you come!” said the younger brother. “You come, do you?”
She said, “Yes.” Then said she to herself: “Well, I suppose I shall have
to submit, as I made the arrangement myself.” Then she looked up and
said: “I see you have killed a deer.”
“Yes, we killed one; didn’t have any difficulty at all,” said the
younger brother. “Come, and help us skin him; we are so little and
hungry and tired we can’t do it. Come on.”
So the girl went slowly forward, and in a dejected way helped them skin
the deer. Then they began to shoot more deer, and attempted to drag them
out; but the men were so small they could not do it, and the girl had to
help them. Then they cut up the meat and made it into bundles. She made
a large one for herself, and they made two little ones for themselves.
“Now,” said they, wiping their brows, “we have done a good day’s work,
haven’t we?” and they looked at the maiden with twinkling eyes.
“Yes,” said she; “you are great hunters.”
“Shall we go toward home?” asked the younger brother of the maiden. “It
would be a shame for you to take such a bundle as that. I will take it
for you.”
“You little conceited wretch!” cried the elder brother. “Haven’t I tried
to restrain you?--and now you are going to bury yourself under a bundle
of meat!”
“No,” said the younger brother, “I can carry it.”
So they propped the great bundle of meat against a tree. The elder
brother called on the maiden to help him; the younger one stooped down
and received it on his back. They had no sooner let go of it than it
fell on the ground and completely flattened the little man out.
“Mercy! mercy! I am dying; help me out of here!” cried he.
So they managed to roll the thing off, and he got up and rubbed his
back, complaining bitterly (he was only making believe), and said: “I
shall have to take my little bundle.”
So he shouldered his little bundle, and the maiden took the large one;
but before she started she turned to the animals and said, “Oh, my
children! these many days, throwing the warm light of your favor upon
me, you have rested contented to remain away from the sight of men. Now,
hereafter you shall go forth whithersoever you will, that the earth may
be covered with your offspring, and men may once more have of your flesh
to eat and of your pelts to wear.” And away went the antelope, the deer,
the mountain-sheep, the elk, and the buffalo over all the land.
Then the young Gods of War turned to the maiden and said: “Now, shall we
go home?”
“Yes,” said she.
“Well, I will take the lead,” said the younger brother.
“Get behind where you belong,” said the other; “I will precede the
party.” So the elder brother went first, the maiden came next, and the
younger brother followed behind, with his little bag of meat.
So they went home, and the maiden placed the meat to dry in the upper
rooms of the house.
While she was doing this, it was yet early in the day. The two brothers
were sitting together, and whispering: “And what will she say for
herself now?”
“I don’t see what she can say for herself.”
“Of course, nothing can she say for herself.”
And when the meat was all packed away in the house and the sun had set,
they sat by themselves talking this over: “What can she say for
herself?”
“Nothing whatever; nothing remains to be done.”
“That is quite so,” said they, as they went in to the evening meal and
sat with the family to eat it.
Finally the maiden said: “With all your hunting and the labors of the
day, you must be very weary. Where you slept last night you will find a
resting-place. Go and rest yourselves. I cannot consent to marry you,
because you have not yet shown yourselves capable of taking care of and
dressing the buckskins, as well as of killing deer and antelope and such
animals. For a long time buckskins have been accumulating in the upper
room. I have no brothers to soften and scrape them; therefore, if you
Two will take the hair off from all my buckskins tomorrow before sunset,
and scrape the underside so that they will be thin and soft, I will
consent to be the wife of one of you, or both.”
And they said: “Oh mercy, it is too bad!”
“We can never do it,” said the younger brother.
“I don’t suppose we can; but we can try,” said the elder.
So they lay down.
“Let us take things in time,” said the elder one, after he had thought
of it. And they jumped up and called to the maiden: “Where are those
buckskins?”
“They are in the upper room,” said she.
She showed them the way to the upper room. It was packed to the rafters
with buckskins. They began to make big bales of these and then took them
down to the river. When they got them all down there they said: “How in
the world can we scrape so many skins? There are more here than we can
clean in a year.”
“I will tell you what,” said the younger brother; “we will stow away
some in the crevices of the rocks, and get rid of them in that way.”
“Always hasty, always hasty,” said the elder. “Do you suppose that woman
put those skins away without counting every one of them? We can’t do
that.”
They spread them out in the water that they might soak all night, and
built a little dam so they would not float away. While they were thus
engaged they heard some one talking, so they pricked up their ears to
listen.
Now, the hill that stands by the side across from the Village of the
Yellow Rocks was, and still is, a favorite home of the Field-mice. They
are very prolific, and have to provide great bundles of wool for their
families. But in the days of the ancients they were terrible gamblers
and were all the time betting away their nests, and the young Mice being
perfectly bare, with no wool on them at all, died of cold. And still
they kept on betting, making little figures of nests and betting these
away against the time when they should have more. It was these Mice
which the two gods overheard.
Said the younger brother: “Listen to that! Who is talking?”
“Some one is betting. Let us go nearer.”
They went across the river and listened, and heard the tiny little
voices calling out and shouting.
“Let us go in,” said the younger brother. And he placed his foot in the
hole and descended, followed by the other. They found there an enormous
village of Field-mice in human form, their clothes, in the shape of
Mice, hanging over the sides of the house. Some had their clothing all
off down to their waists, and were betting as hard as they could and
talking with one another.
As soon as the two brothers entered, they said: “Who comes?”
The Two answered: “We come.”
“Come in, come in,” cried the Mice,--they were not very polite. “Sit
down and have a game. We have not anything to bet just now, but if you
trust us we will bet with you.”
“What had you in mind in coming?” said an old Field-mouse with a broken
tail.
They answered that they had come because they heard voices. Then they
told their story.
“What is this you have to do?” asked the Mice.
“To clean all the hair off those pelts tomorrow.”
The Mice looked around at one another; their eyes fairly sparkled and
burned.
“Now, then, we will help you if you will promise us something,” said
they; “but we want your solemn promise.”
“What is that?” asked the brothers.
“That you will give us all the hair.”
“Oh, yes,” said the brothers; “we will be glad to get rid of it.”
“All right,” said they; “where are the skins?” Then they all began to
pour out of the place, and they were so numerous that it was like water,
when the rain is falling hard, running over a rock.
When they had all run out the two War-gods drew the skins on the bank,
and the Field-mice went to nibbling the hair and cleaning off the
underside. They made up little bundles of the flesh from the skins for
their food, and great parcels of the hair. Finally they said: “May we
have them all?”
“No,” said the brothers, “we must have eight reserved, four for each, so
that we will be hard at work all day tomorrow.”
“Well,” said the Mice, “we can’t consent to leaving even so many, unless
you promise that you will gather up all the hair and put it somewhere so
that we can get it.”
The Two promised that, and said: “Be sure to leave eight skins, will
you? and we will go to bed and rest ourselves.”
“All right, all right!” responded the Field-mice.
So the brothers climbed up the hill to the town, and up the ladder, and
slept in their room.
The next morning the girl said: “Now, remember, you will have to clean
every skin and make it soft and white.”
So they went down to the river and started to work. The girl had said to
them that at midday she would go down and see how they were getting
along. They were at work nearly all the forenoon on the skins. While the
elder brother shaved the hair off, the younger one scraped them thin and
softened them.
When the maiden came at noon, she said: “How are you getting along?”
“We have finished four and are at work on the fifth.”
“Remember,” said she, “you must finish all of them today or I shall have
to send you home.”
So they worked away until a little before the sun set, when she appeared
again. They had just finished the last. The Field-mice had carefully
dressed all the others (they did it better than the men), and there they
lay spread out on the sands like a great field of something growing,
only white.
When the maiden came down she was perfectly overcome; she looked and
looked and counted and recounted. She found them all there. Then she
got a long pole and fished in the water, but there were none.
Said she: “Yes, you shall be my husbands; I shall have to submit.”
She went home with them, and for a long time they all lived together,
the woman with her two husbands. They managed to get along very
comfortably, and the two brothers didn’t quarrel any more than they had
done before.
Finally, there were born little twin boys, exactly like their fathers,
who were also twins, although one was called the elder and the other the
younger.
After a time the younger brother said: “Now, let us go home to our
grandmother. People always go home to their own houses and take their
families with them.”
“No,” said the elder one, “you must remember that we have been only
pretending to be human beings. It would not do to take the maiden home
with us.”
“Yes,” said the other; “I want her to go with us. Our grandmother kept
making fun of us; called us little, miserable, wretched creatures. I
want to show her that we amount to something!”
The elder brother could not get the younger one to leave the wife
behind, and like a dutiful wife she said: “I will go with you.” They
made up their bundles and started out. It was a very hot day, and when
they had climbed nearly to the top of Thunder Mountain, the younger
brother said: “Ahem! I am tired. Let us sit down and rest.”
“It will not do,” said the elder brother. “You know very well it will
not do to sit down; our father, the Sun, has forbidden that we should be
among mortals. It will not do.”
“Oh, yes, it will; we must sit down here,” said the younger brother; and
again his wish prevailed and they sat down.
At midday the Sun stood still in the sky, and looked down and saw this
beautiful woman, and by the power of his withdrawing rays quickly
snatched her from them while they were sitting there talking, she
carrying her little children.
The brothers looked around and said: “Where is our wife?”
“Ah, there she is,” cried the younger; “I will shoot her.”
“Shoot your wife!” cried the elder brother. “No, let her go! Serves you
right!”
“No,” said the younger, “I will shoot her!” He looked up and drew his
arrow, and as his aim was absolutely unerring, _swish_ went the arrow
directly to her, and she was killed. The power of life by which the Sun
was drawing her up was gone, the thread was cut, and she fell over and
over and struck the earth.
The two little children were so very small, and their bones so soft,
that the fall did not hurt them much. They fell on the soft bank, and
rolled and rolled down the hill, and the younger brother ran forward and
caught them up in his arms, crying: “Oh, my little children!” and
brought them to the elder brother, who said: “Now, what can be done
with these little babies, with no mother, no food?”
“We will take them home to grandmother,” said the younger brother.
“Your grandmother cannot take care of these babies,” said the elder
brother.
“Yes, she can, of course,” said the younger brother. “Come on, come on!
I didn’t want to lose my wife and children, too; I thought I must still
have the children; that is the reason why I shot her.”
So one of them took one of the children, and the other one took the
other, and they carried them up to the top of Thunder Mountain.
“Now, then,” said the elder brother, “we went off to marry; we come home
with no wife and two little children and with nothing to feed them.”
“Oh, grandmother!” called out the younger brother.