When Kana'ti came home at last, he looked around, but could not see
Selu anywhere, and asked the boys where was their mother. "She was
a witch, and we killed her," said the boys; "there is her head up
there on top of the house." When he saw his wife's head on the roof,
he was very angry, and said, "I won't stay with you any longer; I am
going to the Wolf people." So he started off, but before he had gone
far the Wild Boy changed himself again to a tuft of down, which fell
on Kana'ti's shoulder. When Kana'ti reached the settlement of the
Wolf people, they were holding a council in the townhouse. He went
in and sat down with the tuft of bird's down on his shoulder, but he
never noticed it. When the Wolf chief asked him his business, he said:
"I have two bad boys at home, and I want you to go in seven days from
now and play ball against them." Although Kana'ti spoke as though he
wanted them to play a game of ball, the Wolves knew that he meant for
them to go and kill the two boys. They promised to go. Then the bird's
down blew off from Kana'ti's shoulder, and the smoke carried it up
through the hole in the roof of the townhouse. When it came down on
the ground outside, the Wild Boy took his right shape again and went
home and told his brother all that he had heard in the townhouse. But
when Kana'ti left the Wolf people he did not return home, but went
on farther.
The boys then began to get ready for the Wolves, and the Wild Boy--the
magician--told his brother what to do. They ran around the house in
a wide circle until they had made a trail all around it excepting on
the side from which the Wolves would come, where they left a small
open space. Then they made four large bundles of arrows and placed
them at four different points on the outside of the circle, after
which they hid themselves in the woods and waited for the Wolves. In
a day or two a whole party of Wolves came and surrounded the house to
kill the boys. The Wolves did not notice the trail around the house,
because they came in where the boys had left the opening, but the
moment they went inside the circle the trail changed to a high brush
fence and shut them in. Then the boys on the outside took their arrows
and began shooting them down, and as the Wolves could not jump over the
fence they were all killed, excepting a few that escaped through the
opening into a great swamp close by. The boys ran around the swamp,
and a circle of fire sprang up in their tracks and set fire to the
grass and bushes and burned up nearly all the other Wolves. Only two
or three got away, and from these have come all the wolves that are
now in the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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