Next morning they got up very early and found Mountain Dweller making
ready to hunt, drawing on his leggings and choosing his weapons.
'We will be married to-morrow,' said he, 'but to-day I have a long way
to walk, and I shall not be back till nightfall. And before I go, I want
to warn you not to peep behind the large curtain of skins hanging
over that door. A very bad woman lives on the other side, and she does
not like anyone to see her.'
[Illustration: HOW THE GIRLS FOUND MOUNTAIN-DWELLER]
'No; of course we won't,' answered they, and Mountain Dweller set out.
* * * * *
So the girls stayed in the house all day, and wondered what their
friends were doing in the village, and if they were still seeking them.
'I expect,' said the elder, 'they think we have been eaten by wolves,
and are mourning for us. And mother will have cut off her hair, and
painted her face black.'
'Yes; she is sure to have done that,' answered the little girl; and so
she had.
The days went by in much the same way, except that the big girl was now
married to Mountain Dweller. Every morning he went out to hunt, so the
two sisters had plenty to eat, and if they wanted any food between
meals, they took it. They were quite happy until one unlucky morning
when it was snowing so fast they could not leave the house, and at last
they grew weary, and longed for something new.
'Who can the woman be that lives behind the curtain?' said the elder
sister at last. 'I daresay she is not so very bad after all, and perhaps
she can teach us some fresh games. I have noticed that there is a little
hole in the curtain; I will peep through that, and if she looks kind and
good-natured, I will go in.'
'Yes; that is a good plan,' answered the child, and they both went on
tiptoe to the curtain.
The hole was very small, and it was hardly possible that anyone on the
other side of the curtain should have seen them looking through. Yet the
moment that the wife had fixed her eye on it, the woman threw up her
hands and screamed, and both sisters fell down dead; and that is how
Mountain Dweller found them when he returned from the hunt.
He guessed at once what had happened, and his anger was so great that
the first thing he did was to run behind the curtain and kill the bad
woman who lived there. Then he took some eagle-down and spread it over
the girls' bodies, and walked round them many times, shaking his rattle
all the while. At length slight shivers passed through their limbs; the
colour came back into their faces, and there they stood on their feet,
as well as ever they were.
* * * * *
When they had been in the mountain for many, many months, Mountain
Dweller said one day to his wife:
'Would you not like to see your father and mother once more?'
'Oh, yes, yes!' cried both the girls at once.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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