“Ah!” exclaimed the Gopher.
“He almost got me,” said the boy.
“Sit still a moment and rest, my grandson,” said the Gopher. “He didn’t catch you. I will go and see whether he is dead.”
So the Gopher stuck his nose out of the hole and saw there a great heap of flesh lying. He went out, nosed around, and smelt, jumped back, and went forward again until he came to the end of the creature, and then he took one of his nails and scratched out an eye, and there was no sign of life. So he ran back to the boy, and said: “Yes, he breathes no more; you need not fear him longer.”
“Oh, thank you, my grandfather!” said the boy. And he climbed out, and laid himself to work to skin the beast. He took off its great thick skin, and cut off a suitable piece of it, for the whole pelt was so large and heavy that he could not carry it; then he took out the animal’s great heart, and finally one of the large intestines and filled it with blood, then started for home. He went slowly, because his load was so heavy, and when he arrived he hung the heart on the ladder by the side of the others, and dragged the pelt to the sky-hole, and nearly scared the wits out of his mother by dropping it into the room.
“Oh, my child, now, here you are! Where have you been?” cried she. “I warned you of the place where the fourfold Bison was; I wonder that you ever came home.”
“Ah, the poor creature!” said the boy; “he is dead. Just look at this. He isn’t handsome any more; he isn’t strong and large any more.”
“Oh, you wretched, wretched boy! You will be the death of me, as well as of yourself, some time,” said the mother.
“No, mother,” said the boy; “that is all nonsense.”
That evening the boy said to his mother: “Now, mother, is there anything else of this kind left? If there is, I want to know it. Now, don’t disappoint me by refusing to tell.”
“Oh, my dear son,” said she, “I wish you wouldn’t ask me; but indeed there is. There are terrible birds, great Eagles, fearful Eagles, living over on Shuntekia. In the very middle of an enormous cliff is a hollow place in the rocks where is built their nest, and there are their young ones. Day after day, far and near, they catch up children and young men and women, and carry them away, never more to be seen. These birds are more terrible than all the rest, because how can one get near to slay them? My son, I do hope and trust that you will not go this time—but, you foolish little boy, I see that you will go.”
“Well, mother, let us go to sleep, and never mind anything about it,” said the boy.
But after his mother had gone to sleep, he took the piece of rawhide he had skinned from the fourfold Bison, and, cutting it out, made himself a suit—a green rawhide suit, skintight almost, so that it was perfectly smooth. Then he scraped the hair off, greased it all over, and put it away inside a blanket so that it would not dry. In the morning, quite early, he took his weapons, and taking also his rawhide suit, and the section of the fourfold Bison’s intestine which he had filled with blood, he ran into the inlet, and across it, and climbed the mesa near the Shuntekia cliff. When he came within a short distance of the nest of the Eagles, he stopped and slipped on his rawhide suit, and tied the intestine of blood round his neck, like a sausage.
Then he began to cry and shake his head, and he cried louder than there was any need of his doing in reality; for presently the old father of the Eagles, who was away up in the sky, just a mere speck, heard and saw him and came swishing down in a great circle, winding round and round the boy, and the boy looked up and began to cry louder still, as if frightened out of his wits, and finally rolled himself up like a porcupine, and threw himself down into the trail, crying and howling with apparent fear. The Eagle swooped down on him, and tried to grasp him in his talons, and, kopo kopooo, his claws simply slipped off the rawhide coat. Then the Eagle made a fiercer grab at him and grew angry, but his claws would continually slip off, until he tore a rent in the intestine about the boy’s neck, and the blood began to stream over the boy’s coat, making it more slippery than ever. When the Eagle smelt the blood, he thought he had got him, and it made him fiercer than ever; and finally, during his struggling, he got one talon through a stitch in the coat, and he spread out his wings, and flew up, and circled round and round over the point where the young Eagles nest was, when he let go and shook the boy free, and the boy rolled over and over and came down into the nest; but he struck on a great heap of brush, which broke his fall. He lay there quite still, and the old Eagle swooped down and poised himself on a great crag of rock near by, which was his usual perching place.
“There, my children, my little
