“How can we carry them?” asked they; “for they are heavy.”
Then the Sun-father turned about and passed his hands gently over the heap of dead rabbits. “Lift them now,” said he to the children; and when they tried to lift them, lo! they were as light as dry grass-stalks. So they bade their father farewell and started home. When they had gone a little way they stopped to look around, but their father was nowhere to be seen.
Sure enough, when they neared home there were the two old Badgers running around their hole, and the old Badger-father was just getting ready to go out and search, for fear that they had perished from cold. He had just gone down to get some rabbit-skins and other things with which to wrap them, when the old woman, who was up above, shouted down: “Hurry, come out! Somebody is coming!”
“Look!” said one of the children to the other. “There’s our poor mother waiting for us. Hurry up! Let’s run, or else our father will come out searching for us.”
As they approached they called out: “Poor mother, here you are in the cold waiting for us.” But she did not recognize them, and only hid her face in her paws from shame, for they were too beautiful to look upon—just like the Sun-father.
“Don’t you know us, mother?” asked the Two to the old woman just as the old Badger came out.
“No!” answered she.
“Why, we are your children!”
“Ah! my children did not look like you!”
“We are they! Look here!” said they, and they showed the bark moccasins and the strings of corn-cakes.
“Our poor children!”
“Yes, our father is no other than the Sun-father, and he came down to speak to us today, and he dressed us as you see, just like himself, and he said that our mother used to live over in the Home of the Eagles, that our aunts still live there, and our grandfather, and that our mother used to live there, but the Twain killed her as she was trying to escape on the back of an Eagle. And when she fell into the Canyon of the Coyote we were born, and father here found us and you both reared us.”
“Yes, that is very true,” said the old Badger. “I know it all; and I know, too, that there will be a dance at the Home of the Eagles in eight days. Tomorrow there will be only seven left, and when the eighth day comes you will both go there to see it. Come up and come down,” said he.
So the two entered, but they were ill at ease in their clothes, which they were not used to. And when the old mother had placed soft rabbit-skins on the floor, they doffed their clothing and carefully laid it away. Then the whole family ate their evening meal.
“Keep count for us, father, and when the time comes, let us know,” said the boys.
So the days passed by until the day before the dance, and that morning the old Badger said to the Two: “Tomorrow the dance will come.”
“Very well,” replied they; “let us go out and hunt today, that you and mother may have something to eat.” So they went forth, and in the evening came back with great numbers of rabbits; and the old mother skinned the rabbits and put some of them to cook over night, so that her children might eat before starting for the town under Thunder Mountain.
At sunrise next morning both dressed themselves carefully, put on their plumes, and started on the pathway that leads around the mountain. They passed the village of Kʻyátikʻia on their way, and the people marvelled greatly at their beauty and their magnificent dress. And so they followed the road through the Canyon of the Coyotes, thence by the crooked pathway and the covered road under the house into the court of Kʻiákime. Just as the Sun-father had told them, they found everything there. There was the great house with the tall ladder and the two macaws, and there were the young maidens, their aunts, sitting on the housetop.
And as the dancers came into the court they stepped forward, and then it was that the people first saw and hailed them. The chief of the dance came forward and asked them whither they came and if they would not join in the dance. So they assented and came forward to the center of the plaza, and as they began to dance, the young girls arose and the dance chiefs went and escorted them to the dance plaza.
Although they told them, “Dance here,” they did not obey. They ran right over to where the two young men were dancing, and took hold of their hands just as the Sun-father had told them it would come to pass. And, in fact, everything happened just as he had said. Yes, they all ran down and grasped the two boys’ hands, and when the dance was over and they let go, they said to the two handsome young strangers: “Come up; come in.”
“It is well,” said the two young men. So they all went up into the house and sat down. Now, all these girls were young, and they were very much pleased with the young men. In fact the two youngest were in love with them already; so they smiled and made themselves very pleasant. Then the first brother arose and went over to the eldest one, and said: “Mother-aunt.”
“What is it?” she replied, “for of course throughout the cities of men we, as the daughters of a great priest, are the mothers of children,”—and so on until they came to the last and youngest one, whom they called “little mother-aunt,” and she also replied that, however young they might be, still they might be counted the mothers of the children of men.
“No, verily, ye
