So the old woman hurried up to their doorway as fast as possible and ran in. The old Badger followed, and she said to him: “Where in the world did you get these little children?”
“Why,” replied he, “I had the greatest luck in the world. I was out hunting, you know, and found these two little fellows down in Coyote Canyon, just this side of those men’s houses. They’re boys, both of them. When they grow up, old wife, perhaps they can hunt for us, and then I shall rest myself from the labors of the hunt, with plenty of meat for you and me every day of the year. What are you standing there for?” said he. “Why don’t you go and get them something to eat and make them a bed?”
“Oh, yes!” responded the old woman. “My poor little children!” So she made a little nest at the bottom of the hole and laid them on it. Then she ran and fetched some green-corn ears and, picking the kernels off, made some gruel of them, and fed the little fellows. So the boy babies ate till they kicked their heels with satisfaction, and that night the old Badger-mother took one in her arms and slept with it, and the old Badger-father slept with the other.
Now, every day they grew as much as the children of men do in a year, so that in eight days they were as large and knew as much as children usually do in eight years. There was no little animal that they could not kill unfailingly, for they were the children of the Sun, you know. But, alas! they grew weary of killing birds around their doorway, and their old father kept telling them every morning never to go out of sight of their house; and the old woman kept watching them always for fear that they would run off and get lost, or somebody would find and claim them. Yes, they grew impatient of this. They wanted to kill prairie-dogs and cottontails, but they could not get near enough to them. So one night when the old Badger came home they said to him: “Father, come now; do make us some bows and arrows so that we can hunt rabbits, and you and mother can have all that you want to eat.”
“All right,” replied the old man. And the next day he went off to the Canyon of the Woods, and somehow he managed to cut down a small oak and get a lot of branches for arrows. He brought these home, and that night with a piece of flint, little by little he managed to make each of the boys a bow and some arrows. But when he tried to put feathers on the arrows he was very awkward (for you know badgers don’t have fingers like men), so he had to take a single feather for each arrow and split it and twist it around the butt of the shaft. That very night, do you know, it snowed; yes, a great deal of snow fell, and the little fellows looked out and said to each other and to the old Badgers: “Now then, tomorrow we will go rabbit-hunting.”
“O mother, make a lunch for us!” they exclaimed.
“Where are you going?” asked the old woman.
“We are going out among the hills and down on the plains where the trees grow, to hunt rabbits.”
“O my poor little boys! What will you do?—you will freeze to death, for you have no clothes and no wool grows on your backs.”
“Well, mother, we’re tough. We will get up tomorrow and wait until the sun shines warm—then we can go hunting.”
“How in the world will you carry your food? You have no blanket to wrap it in.”
“Oh, you just make some corn-cakes,” answered the boys, “and string them on a little stick, and we can take hold of the middle of the stick and carry them just as well as not.”
“Hi-ta!” cried the old woman. “Listen, father.” So she made the corn-cakes and strung them on little sticks, and the two boys went to bed. But they couldn’t sleep very well, being so impatient to go hunting rabbits, and they kept waking each other and peeping out to see how long it would be before daylight.
In the morning the old Badger got up early and collected a lot of bark which he rubbed until it was soft, and then he wove the boys each a curious pair of moccasins that would come halfway up to the knees. So the elder brother put on his moccasins and ran out into the snow. “U-kwatchi!” exclaimed he. “First rate!” So the other little boy put on his bark moccasins, and they took their strings of corn-cakes and bows and arrows, and started off as fast as they could. Well, they went off among the hills at the foot of Thunder Mountain. It was only a little while ere they struck a rabbit trail, and the first arrow they shot killed the rabbit. So they kept on hunting until they had a large number of rabbits and began to get tired. Although there was snow on the ground, the sun was very warm, so they soon forgot all about it until they began to grow hungry, and then they looked up and saw that it was noon-time, because the sun was resting in the mid-heavens. So they went up on top of a high hill, and carried their rabbits there one by one, to find a place where the snow was shallow. Here they brushed a space clear of the snow, and, depositing the rabbits, sat down to eat their corn-cakes, which they laid on a bundle of grass. While they sat there eating, the Sun looked down and pitied his two poor little children. “Wait a bit,” said he to himself, “I’ll go down and talk to
