dance. It was a difficult dance for the curious folk.
At length one of the dancers could close his eyes no longer! It was a Skiska who peeped the least tiny blink at Iktomi within the center of the circle. 'Oh! oh!' squawked he in awful terror! 'Run! fly! Iktomi is twisting your heads and breaking your necks! Run out and fly! fly!' he cried. Hereupon the ducks opened their eyes. There beside Iktomi's bundle of songs lay half of their crowd - flat on their backs.
Out they flew through the opening Skiska had made as he rushed forth with his alarm.
But as they soared high into the blue sky they cried to one another: 'Oh! your eyes are red-red!' 'And yours are red-red!' For the warning words of the magic minor strain had proven true. 'Ah-ha!' laughed Iktomi, untying the four corners of his blanket, 'I shall sit no more hungry within my dwelling.' Homeward he trudged along with nice fat ducks in his blanket. He left the little straw hut for the rains and winds to pull down.
Having reached his own teepee on the high level lands, Iktomi kindled a large fire out of doors. He planted sharp-pointed sticks around the leaping flames. On each stake he fastened a duck to roast. A few he buried under the ashes to bake. Disappearing within his teepee, he came out again with some huge seashells. These were his dishes. Placing one under each roasting duck, he muttered, 'The sweet fat oozing out will taste well with the hard- cooked breasts.'
Heaping more willows upon the fire, Iktomi sat down on the ground with crossed shins. A long chin between his knees pointed toward the red flames, while his eyes were on the browning ducks.
Just above his ankles he clasped and unclasped his long bony fingers. Now and then he sniffed impatiently the savory odor.
The brisk wind which stirred the fire also played with a squeaky old tree beside Iktomi's wigwam.
From side to side the tree was swaying and crying in an old man's voice, 'Help! I'll break! I'll fall!' Iktomi shrugged his great shoulders, but did not once take his eyes from the ducks. The dripping of amber oil into pearly dishes, drop by drop, pleased his hungry eyes. Still the old tree man called for help. 'He! What sound is it that makes my ear ache!' exclaimed Iktomi, holding a hand on his ear.
He rose and looked around. The squeaking came from the tree. Then he began climbing the tree to find the disagreeable sound. He placed his foot right on a cracked limb without seeing it. Just then a whiff of wind came rushing by and pressed together the broken edges. There in a strong wooden hand Iktomi's foot was caught.
'Oh! my foot is crushed!' he howled like a coward. In vain he pulled and puffed to free himself.
While sitting a prisoner on the tree he spied, through his tears, a pack of gray wolves roaming over the level lands. Waving his hands toward them, he called in his loudest voice, 'He! Gray wolves! Don't you come here! I'm caught fast in the tree so that my duck feast is getting cold. Don't you come to eat up my meal.'
The leader of the pack upon hearing Iktomi's words turned to his comrades and said:
'Ah! hear the foolish fellow! He says he has a duck feast to be eaten! Let us hurry there for our share!' Away bounded the wolves toward Iktomi's lodge.
From the tree Iktomi watched the hungry wolves eat up his nicely browned fat ducks. His foot pained him more and more. He heard them crack the small round bones with their strong long teeth and eat out the oily marrow. Now severe pains shot up from his foot through his whole body. 'Hin-hin-hin!' sobbed Iktomi. Real tears washed brown streaks across his red-painted cheeks. Smacking their lips, the wolves began to leave the place, when Iktomi cried out like a pouting child, 'At least you have left my baking under the ashes!'
'Ho! Po!' shouted the mischievous wolves; 'he says more ducks are to be found under the ashes! Come! Let us have our fill this once!'
Running back to the dead fire, they pawed out the ducks with such rude haste that a cloud of ashes rose like gray smoke over them.
'Hin-hin-hin!' moaned Iktomi, when the wolves had scampered off. All too late, the sturdy breeze returned, and, passing by, pulled apart the broken edges of the tree. Iktomi was released. But alas! he had no duck feast.
IKTOMI'S BLANKET
ALONE within his teepee sat Iktomi. The sun was but a handsbreadth from the western edge of land.
'Those, bad, bad gray wolves! They ate up all my nice fat ducks!' muttered he, rocking his body to and fro.
He was cuddling the evil memory he bore those hungry wolves. At last he ceased to sway his body backward and forward, but sat still and stiff as a stone image.
'Oh! I'll go to Inyan, the great-grand- father, and pray for food!' he exclaimed.
At once he hurried forth from his teepee and, with his blanket over one shoulder, drew nigh to a huge rock on a hillside.
With half-crouching, half-running strides, he fell upon Inyan with outspread hands.
'Grandfather! pity me. I am hungry. I am starving. Give me food. Great-grand- father, give me meat to eat!' he cried. All the while he stroked and caressed the face of the great stone god.
The all-powerful Great Spirit, who makes the trees and grass, can hear the voice of those who pray in many varied ways. The hearing of Inyan, the large hard stone, was the one most sought after. He was the great- grandfather, for he had sat upon the hillside many, many seasons. He had seen the prairie put on a snow-white blanket and then change it for a bright green robe more than a thousand times.
Still unaffected by the myriad moons he rested on the everlasting hill, listening to the prayers of Indian warriors. Before the finding of the magic arrow he had sat there.
Now, as Iktomi prayed and wept before the great-grandfather, the sky in the west was red like a glowing face. The sunset poured a soft mellow light upon the huge gray stone and the solitary figure beside it. It was the smile of the Great Spirit upon the grandfather and the wayward child.
The prayer was heard. Iktomi knew it. 'Now, grandfather, accept my offering; 'tis all I have,' said Iktomi as he spread his half-worn blanket upon Inyan's cold shoulders. Then Iktomi, happy with the smile of the sunset sky, followed a foot- path leading toward a thicketed ravine. He had not gone many paces into the shrubbery when before him lay a freshly wounded deer!
'This is the answer from the red western sky!' cried Iktomi with hands uplifted.
Slipping a long thin blade from out his belt, he cut large chunks of choice meat. Sharpening some willow sticks, he planted them around a wood-pile he had ready to kindle. On these stakes he meant to roast the venison.
While he was rubbing briskly two long sticks to start a fire, the sun in the west fell out of the sky below the edge of land. Twilight was over all. Iktomi felt the cold night air upon his bare neck and shoulders. 'Ough!' he shivered as he wiped his knife on the grass. Tucking it in a beaded case hanging from his belt, Iktomi stood erect, looking about. He shivered again. 'Ough! Ah! I am cold. I wish I had my blanket!' whispered he, hovering over the pile of dry sticks and the sharp stakes round about it. Suddenly he paused and dropped his hands at his sides.
'The old great-grandfather does not feel the cold as I do. He does not need my old blanket as I do. I wish I had not given it to him. Oh! I think I'll run up there and take it back!' said he, pointing his long chin toward the large gray stone.
Iktomi, in the warm sunshine, had no need of his blanket, and it had been very easy to part with a thing which he could not miss. But the chilly night wind quite froze his ardent thank-offering.
Thus running up the hillside, his teeth chattering all the way, he drew near to Inyan, the sacred symbol. Seizing one corner of the half-worn blanket, Iktomi pulled it off with a jerk.
'Give my blanket back, old grandfather! You do not need it. I do!' This was very wrong, yet Iktomi did it, for his wit was not wisdom. Drawing the blanket tight over his shoulders, he descended the hill with hurrying feet.
He was soon upon the edge of the ravine. A young moon, like a bright bent bow, climbed up from the southwest horizon a little way into the sky.
In this pale light Iktomi stood motionless as a ghost amid the thicket. His wood- pile was not yet kindled. His pointed stakes were still bare as he had left them. But where was the deer - the venison he had felt warm in his hands a moment ago? It was gone. Only the dry rib bones lay on the ground like giant fingers from an open grave. Iktomi was troubled. At length, stooping over the white dried bones, he took hold of one and shook it. The bones,
