“Yes,” said she.
“Well, I will take the lead,” said the younger brother.
“Get behind where you belong,” said the other; “I will precede the party.” So the elder brother went first, the maiden came next, and the younger brother followed behind, with his little bag of meat.
So they went home, and the maiden placed the meat to dry in the upper rooms of the house.
While she was doing this, it was yet early in the day. The two brothers were sitting together, and whispering: “And what will she say for herself now?”
“I don’t see what she can say for herself.”
“Of course, nothing can she say for herself.”
And when the meat was all packed away in the house and the sun had set, they sat by themselves talking this over: “What can she say for herself?”
“Nothing whatever; nothing remains to be done.”
“That is quite so,” said they, as they went in to the evening meal and sat with the family to eat it.
Finally the maiden said: “With all your hunting and the labors of the day, you must be very weary. Where you slept last night you will find a resting-place. Go and rest yourselves. I cannot consent to marry you, because you have not yet shown yourselves capable of taking care of and dressing the buckskins, as well as of killing deer and antelope and such animals. For a long time buckskins have been accumulating in the upper room. I have no brothers to soften and scrape them; therefore, if you Two will take the hair off from all my buckskins tomorrow before sunset, and scrape the underside so that they will be thin and soft, I will consent to be the wife of one of you, or both.”
And they said: “Oh mercy, it is too bad!”
“We can never do it,” said the younger brother.
“I don’t suppose we can; but we can try,” said the elder.
So they lay down.
“Let us take things in time,” said the elder one, after he had thought of it. And they jumped up and called to the maiden: “Where are those buckskins?”
“They are in the upper room,” said she.
She showed them the way to the upper room. It was packed to the rafters with buckskins. They began to make big bales of these and then took them down to the river. When they got them all down there they said: “How in the world can we scrape so many skins? There are more here than we can clean in a year.”
“I will tell you what,” said the younger brother; “we will stow away some in the crevices of the rocks, and get rid of them in that way.”
“Always hasty, always hasty,” said the elder. “Do you suppose that woman put those skins away without counting every one of them? We can’t do that.”
They spread them out in the water that they might soak all night, and built a little dam so they would not float away. While they were thus engaged they heard someone talking, so they pricked up their ears to listen.
Now, the hill that stands by the side across from the Village of the Yellow Rocks was, and still is, a favorite home of the Field-mice. They are very prolific, and have to provide great bundles of wool for their families. But in the days of the ancients they were terrible gamblers and were all the time betting away their nests, and the young Mice being perfectly bare, with no wool on them at all, died of cold. And still they kept on betting, making little figures of nests and betting these away against the time when they should have more. It was these Mice which the two gods overheard.
Said the younger brother: “Listen to that! Who is talking?”
“Someone is betting. Let us go nearer.”
They went across the river and listened, and heard the tiny little voices calling out and shouting.
“Let us go in,” said the younger brother. And he placed his foot in the hole and descended, followed by the other. They found there an enormous village of Field-mice in human form, their clothes, in the shape of Mice, hanging over the sides of the house. Some had their clothing all off down to their waists, and were betting as hard as they could and talking with one another.
As soon as the two brothers entered, they said: “Who comes?”
The Two answered: “We come.”
“Come in, come in,” cried the Mice—they were not very polite. “Sit down and have a game. We have not anything to bet just now, but if you trust us we will bet with you.”
“What had you in mind in coming?” said an old Field-mouse with a broken tail.
They answered that they had come because they heard voices. Then they told their story.
“What is this you have to do?” asked the Mice.
“To clean all the hair off those pelts tomorrow.”
The Mice looked around at one another; their eyes fairly sparkled and burned.
“Now, then, we will help you if you will promise us something,” said they; “but we want your solemn promise.”
“What is that?” asked the brothers.
“That you will give us all the hair.”
“Oh, yes,” said the brothers; “we will be glad to get rid of it.”
“All right,” said they; “where are the skins?” Then they all began to pour out of the place, and they were so numerous that it was like water, when the rain is falling hard, running over a rock.
When they had all run out the two War-gods drew the skins on the bank, and the Field-mice went to nibbling the hair and cleaning off the underside. They made up little bundles of the flesh from the skins for their food, and great parcels of the hair. Finally they said: “May we have them all?”
“No,” said the brothers, “we must have eight reserved, four for each, so that we will be hard at work all day tomorrow.”
“Well,” said the Mice, “we can’t consent
