“What sayest my nána?” said the old woman; for, like grandmothers nowadays, she was very soft and gentle to her grandson.
“I have seen the maiden of Mátsaki and my thoughts kill me with longing, for she is passing beautiful and wisely slow. I do not wonder that she asks hard tasks of her lovers; for it is not of their bundles that she thinks, but of themselves. Now, I strengthen my thoughts with my manliness. My heart is hard against weariness, and I would go and speak to the beautiful maiden.”
“Yo á! my poor boy,” said the grandmother. “She is as wonderful as she is wise and beautiful. She thinks not of men save as brothers and friends; and she it is, I bethink me, who sends the mayflies and gnats and mosquitoes, therefore, to drive them away. They are but disguised beings, and beware, my grandson, you will only cover yourself with shame as a man is covered with water who walks through a rainstorm! I would not go, my poor grandchild. I would not go,” she added, shaking her head and biting her lips till her chin touched her nose-tip.
“Yes, but I must go, my grandmother. Why should I live only to breathe hard with longing? Perhaps she will better her thoughts toward me.”
“Ah, yes, but all the same, she will test thee. Well, go to the mountains and scrape bitter bark from the finger-root; make a little loaf of the bark and hide it in your belt, and when the maiden sends you down to the cornfield, work hard at the hoeing until sunrise. Then, when your body is covered with sweat-drops, rub every part with the root-bark. The finger-root bark, it is bitter as bad salt mixed in with bad water, and the ‘horn-wings’ and ‘long-beaks’ and ‘blue-backs’ fly far from the salt that is bitter.”
“Then, my gentle grandmother, I will try your words and thank you,”—for he was as gentle and good as his grandmother was knowing and crafty. Even that day he went to the mountains and gathered a ball of finger-root. Then, toward evening, he took a little bundle and went up the trail by the riverside to Mátsaki. When he climbed the ladder and shouted down the mat door: “Shé! Are ye within?” the people did not answer at once, for the old ones were angry with their daughter that she had sent off so many fine lovers. But when he shouted again they answered:
“Hai, and Ée, we are within. Be yourself within.”
Then without help he went down the ladder, but he didn’t mind, for he felt himself poor and his bundle was small. As he entered the firelight he greeted the people pleasantly and gravely, and with thanks took the seat that was laid for him.
Now, you see, the old man was angry with the girl, so he did not tell her to place cooked things before him, but turned to his old wife.
“Old one,” he began—but before he had finished the maiden arose and brought rich venison stew and flaky héwe, which she placed before the youth where the fire’s brightness would fall upon it, with meat broth for drink; then she sat down opposite him and said, “Eat and drink!” Whereupon the young man took a roll of the wafer-bread and, breaking it in two, gave the girl the larger piece, which she bashfully accepted.
The old man raised his eyebrows and upper lids, looked at his old wife, spat in the fireplace, and smoked hard at his cigarette, joining the girl in her invitation by saying, “Yes, have to eat well.”
Soon the young man said, “Thanks,” and the maiden quickly responded, “Eat more,” and “Have eaten.”
After brushing the crumbs away the girl sat down by her mother, and the father rolled a cigarette for the young man and talked longer with him than he had with the others.
After the old ones had stretched out in the corner and begun to “scrape their nostrils with their breath,” the maiden turned to the young man and said: “I have a cornfield in the lands of the priest-chief, down by the river, and if you truly love me, I would that you should hoe the whole in a single morning. Thus may you prove yourself a man, and to love me truly; and if you will do this, happily, as day follows day, will we live each with the other.”
“Hai-í!” replied the young man, who smiled as he listened; and as the young maiden looked at him, sitting in the fading firelight with the smile on his face, she thought: “Only possibly. But oh! how I wish his heart might be strong, even though his bundle be not heavy nor large.
“Come with me, young man, and I will show you where you are to await the morning. Early take my father’s hoe, which stands by the doorway, and go down to the cornfield long before the night shadows have run away from Thunder Mountain”—with which she bade him pass a night of contentment and sought her own place.
When all was still, the young man climbed to the sky-hole and in the starlight asked the gods of the woodlands and waters to give strength to his hands and power to his prayer-medicine, and to meet and bless him with the light of their favor; and he threw to the night-wind meal of the seeds of earth and the waters of the world with which those who are wise fail not to make smooth their trails of life. Then he slept till the sky of the day-land grew yellow and the shadows of the night-land grew gray, and then shouldered his hoe and went down to the cornfield. His task was not great, for the others
