straight up over their brother’s sleeping form and the fire, and wetting neither. As they watched the strange sight, they saw the waters subside as suddenly as they arose, and retire to the lake again. Immediately following this, the little brother awoke, and seeing his brothers’ trail took it and soon caught them up. From that time onward, the medicine of the youngest brother was acknowledged and reverenced by the other two, who ever afterwards did what he bade them and regarded him as their leader.
From this place they travelled on, till they came to a small village, where there lived only one man and his wife. As they neared the place, they observed the man sitting on the roof of his keekwilee house,5 crying and lamenting as he sharpened a knife which he held in his hand. "Why do you cry so bitterly, old man, and why are you sharpening that knife?” asked the youngest. The man made no reply, only wept and sobbed the more. The boy repeated his question, and then the old man answered: “I am crying because I am so miserable and wretched. Once again a child is about to be born to me at the cost of its mother’s life. When my first wife — for I have had many — was about to be delivered, she was unable to bring the child to the birth; and I was forced to deliver her at the cost of her life with this knife I am sharpening. The child was a girl whom, when she had grown to womanhood, I took to wife; and when she bore her first child I had to do the same for her as I had done for her mother. And thus it has been ever since with all my wives; for as soon as my daughters were old enough they became my wives, and thus it is at this present time with my present wife, and I was just preparing myself to do for her as I have had to do for all the others; and my heart aches, and I am sorrowful at the thought of the task before me.” “Your case is indeed a sad one,” observed the lad, “and I am sorry for you. But don’t grieve any more. I will help you, and your wife shall not die this time. Tell me, have you any strong cherry-bark string in the house?” The old man replied that he had, and gave the lad a piece. The boy immediately entered the house and found the woman in the throes of childbirth. Taking the cherry-bark string, he threw one end of it between the woman’s legs. The string became attached to the child, and he pulled upon the other end. It held for a moment, then broke in his hand before the babe was born. This failure seemed to distress him; and the old man, who had followed him into the house, seeing his ill-success, burst out crying again. “Don’t cry, old man,” said the lad, “all will be well; only get me a stronger cord. Give me some neck-sinew, if you can find any.” The old man brought the lad what he asked for; and he spent a little time in first moistening and stretching and working it, till he got it into the condition he wanted. When it was ready for use, he did with it as he had done with the cherry-bark string, only this time it bore the strain and did not break; and by its help a moment later the child was born. This time it was a male child. The lad then told the old man that his wife would bear him many more children, and that never again would he need to use his knife.6
Leaving the old man and his wife rejoicing, the lads went on their way, and after travelling a long way came at length to a house where lived a man called Coyote, who said he was a great medicine-man and could do great things. “What can you do?” said the youngest lad, who knew him to be an idle boaster. “Oh, I am a very great man,” said Coyote, “and I eat nothing but the bodies of men. I have just finished eating a man.” “If that be so,” answered the lad, “you can easily prove it by disgorging your dinner.” “Oh! that is quite easy,” said Coyote. “Shut your eyes and I will vomit you up a piece of a man.” “But if I shut my eyes, I cannot see you do it,” said the boy. “If you are such a great man, surely it will make no difference whether I shut my eyes or not.” “Oh, well! I must shut mine if you don’t; now, look, I am going to show you,” and with that he began to work his stomach violently up and down in his efforts. After a great deal of exertion and fuss, he brought up a little saliva. “Where is your man’s flesh?” scornfully asked the boy, as he pointed to the saliva on the ground. Coyote, having opened his eyes, was a little abashed at the results of his efforts, but still keeping up the character of a man-eater, replied that he could do nothing because the other kept his eyes open. “Very well,” said the boy, “I will shut my eyes now, and you try again.” Coyote consented, and tried once more. Thinking he wanted to trick him, the boy kept the corner of his eye open as the man tried again to produce his dinner of man-flesh. After many violent efforts and contortions, all he was able to disgorge was a little frothy swamp-grass. At the sight of this, the boy called to him to desist from his efforts, saying that he knew him to be only an empty boaster. He then transformed him into the animal which now bears his name, taking his human nature from him as a punishment for his deception and boasting.
Passing on from there, they at length came to the Thompson River, where two old witch-women were spearing salmon. They had made a strong wicker dam across the stream, which, being too high for the salmon to leap, prevented the fish from ascending the river, the consequence of which was that all who lived above got no salmon. The boys stopped awhile to watch the women at work, and after observing their tactics, the youngest, who by this time was known by his name of Sqaktktquaclt, or Benign-face, asked the women why they kept all the salmon from going up the river beyond them. “We do not care about the people up the river; we want the salmon for ourselves,” said they. “We have medicine here which enables us to keep off all who would interfere with us.” “What sort of medicine have you?” asked the second lad. “This,” replied the woman, pointing to five boxes which they had with them. “These contain great medicine. In these are wasps and flies and mosquitos, and wind and smoke. We have only to open these boxes to drive off anybody,” and as they spoke one of the two opened the wasp box a little, into which Clatkeq, or Funny-boy, the second youth, was peering, and a wasp came out and stung him on the face. “You will let us have a salmon for supper, won’t you?” now asked Benign-face. But the witches answered him angrily, and bade them be off. Benign-face took no notice of this, but told his elder brother to take a spear and catch a salmon below the weir or dam. While the brother was doing this, Benign-face took a piece of wood and made a dish from it for the salmon, which they placed upon it when cooked. They ate every morsel of the fish. Then Benign-face took the dish and, transferring some of his own mystic power into it, threw it into the middle of the stream above the barrier which the witches had erected. Immediately the waters began to boil and rage, and the dish was carried down against the barrier, which it struck with such force that it broke a large hole in the middle of it, and the salmon at once began to pass through. The witches now tried to mend the gap and keep the salmon back; but while they were thus employed Funny-boy opened the boxes and let out all their contents. Seeing this, the two women left the dam and tried to imprison their medicine again. But it was too late; for the smoke and the wind and the wasps and the flies and the mosquitos were scattered all over the country, and the escaped wind had agitated the river so much that it swept away the remainder of the witches’ barrier, and thus they lost both medicine and dam. But before they had time to do more than realise that they had been out-witted, Benign-face transformed them into two rocks. The scene of these events was at a spot a few miles above Spence’s Bridge; but the two rocks have since been so badly cut away by the action of the water that little if any of them is now to be seen there.
Going on from here, they came some time after to a solitary keekwilee house, and finding no one to ask them in, they entered and made themselves at home. The remains of a small fire burned in the fire-hole, round which, as the weather was cold, they sat and tried to warm themselves. “I wish there were some wood in the place,” said Funny-boy presently, as he looked round for some and found none. “I wonder who lives here and where they are. That’s a fine blanket,” he added, as his eye fell upon the bed. “I should like a blanket like that.” And he moved over to admire it. As he held the blanket up a piece of wood fell from it. It was just an ordinary piece of wood with a hole in it. “I wonder what this is doing in the bed?” he said, as he picked it up. “It can’t be of any great value, I’ll throw it on the fire; it will keep us warm for a little while.” As he spoke, he threw the piece of wood on the fire. His brother Benign-face chid him for doing so, saying it might have been valued by the people of the house for some reason or other. The wood, being dry, soon burnt itself out, leaving an outline of its original form in the embers. The sound of a man’s voice was now heard at the smoke-hole. He seemed to be talking to some one within. “Take care, little wife,” he said. “Get back from
