Djákalips lived on the west side of Klamath Lake. He had eyes as red as
blood and he always looked down; he wouldn’t look up at any time. When
he ate, he closed his eyes, and when fishing he shaded them with his
arm.
Two sisters went to live with Djákalips and be his wives. He said to
them: “When you clean fish, you must not break the gall; if you do
trouble will come.”
One day one of the sisters said to the other: “Did you ever see
Djákalips’ face?”
“No, I don’t lie as near him as you do; you must know how he looks.”
“I don’t, for I never see his eyes; he always covers them with his arm,
or turns his face away from me.”
“I want to see his eyes,” said the younger sister; “I don’t want a man
who won’t look at me.”
“Maybe if we saw his eyes we would die,” said the elder sister.
“Why do we stay here?” asked the younger sister. “Every woman has to
look at her husband and every man at his wife. I feel as if something
would happen to us, but I am going to see Djákalips’ eyes.”
They tried in every way to make Djákalips look up. Sometimes they told
him that people were coming; sometimes they called out: “There is a
deer!” But no matter what they said, he didn’t look up.
One morning Djákalips went fishing. At midday he had a basketful of
nice fish. The elder wife cooked some of the fish in the coals and gave
them to her husband to eat; she spoke to him, but he didn’t answer. He
kept his arm over his eyes. The two sisters sat down in front of their
straw house to dress fish and watch Djákalips. They were mad at him.
They didn’t like him any longer. The younger sister thought: “I will
make him look up!” She broke the gall of a fish and screamed: “Oh! I’ve
broken a gall!”
Djákalips looked up. His eyes were balls of fire, and his face was as
red as blood.
The sisters were terribly frightened; they wanted to get away. The
elder sister said: “We have no wood, you must come and help me get
some.” They ran off to the river and began to twist reeds to make a
rope long enough to reach from the ground to the sky. They worked fast.
When the rope was finished, they made it into a ball and threw the ball
up till it caught in the sky; then they climbed on the rope that hung
from the ball. As they climbed, they said: “We will leave the rope, and
if Djákalips follows us, we will come down again.” They left a little
animal sitting on the ground near the end of the rope, and told him not
to tell where they had gone.
Djákalips wondered why his wives didn’t come. At last he tracked them
to the place where they had made the ball; he saw the little animal,
and asked: “Where are my wives?” It wouldn’t tell. Djákalips pulled its
hair, took out a handful; still it wouldn’t tell. He looked everywhere
for tracks; then he came back to the same place and asked again: “Where
are my wives?” He got no answer. He pulled out another handful of the
little animal’s hair, then he went to hunt for tracks again. The tracks
always led him back to the animal.
When he had pulled all of the animal’s hair out, it said: “They have
gone to the sky.”
“How did they go?” asked Djákalips.
“On a rope made of reeds. Here is the end of it. Look up and you will
see where they are.”
Djákalips climbed the rope. The sisters went far west, but he tracked
them. They ran north and south, then they ran back to the rope and came
down. As they touched the ground, the elder sister called to Djákalips:
“You will never come back to this earth; you will always stay there in
the sky. You will stay where the sun goes down, and in later times,
when you look up and people see your red eyes, they will say:
‘Djákalips is going to make water freeze.’”
Djákalips followed his wives north and south, but couldn’t find them;
then he went back to where the sun sets and stayed there. He turned
into the red clouds which we see in the fall of the year. When
Djákalips is seen in the west, water freezes.