"'Of course I love you! I have been happy here! This is a good country! But oh, I want to see my father and mother!' "'Well, sleep now. In the morning you will likely feel that you are glad to be here, instead of down on the people's earth,' Thunder Man told her. But she would not sleep; she cried all night; would not eat in the morning, and kept on crying for her people. "Then said Thunder Man: 'I cannot bear to see--to hear such distress. Because I love her, she shall have her way. Go, you hunters, kill buffalo, kill many of them, and bring in the hides. And you, all you women, take the hides and cut them into long, strong strips and tie them together.' "This the hunters and the women did, and Thunder Man himself made a long, high-sided basket of a buffalo bull's hide and willow sticks. This and the long, long one-strand rope of buffalo hide were taken to the hole that Mink Woman had torn in the sky earth, and then Thunder Man brought her to the place and laid her carefully in the basket, which he had lined with soft robes: 'Because I love you so dearly, I am going to let you down to your people,' he told her. 'But we do not part forever. Tell your father that I shall soon visit him, and give him presents. I know that I did wrong, taking you from him without his consent. Say to him that I will make amends for that.' "'Oh, you are good, and I love you more than ever. But I must, I must see my people; I cannot rest until I do,' Mink Woman told him, and kissed him. "The people then swung the woman in the basket down into the hole she had torn in the earth, and began to pay out the long rope, and slowly, little by little, the woman, looking up, saw that she was leaving the land of the sky gods. Below, the people, looking up, saw what they thought was a strange bird slowly floating down toward them from the sky. But after a long time they knew that it was not a bird. Nothing like it had ever been seen. It was coming down straight toward the center of the big camp. Men, women, children, they all fled to the edge of the timber, the dogs close at their heels, and from the shelter of thick brush watched this strange, descending object. It was a long, long time coming down, twirling this way, that way, and swaying in the wind, but finally it touched the ground in the very center of the camp circle, and they saw a woman rise up and step out of it. They recognized her: Mink Woman! And as they rushed out from the timber to greet her, the basket which had held her began to ascend and soon disappeared in the far blue of the sky. "All the rest of that day and far into the night, Mink Woman told her parents and her people about the sky gods and the sky earth, and even then did not tell it all. Days were required for the telling of all that she had seen and done.