"At last the Coyote says he have to go and the Snake is pretty cold and
pretty mad, too. So he says good night to the Coyote and crawls right
down into his house quick as the Coyote's body is out, and when he sees
all that big tail rolling out he just holds the end of it over the
fireplace and gets it burning.
"But the Coyote is very pleased with himself and he don't look back but
just goes right along. After a while he notices a fire behind him and
turns around and sees the grass is burning way back there. So he says to
himself, 'Well I better not go into my house for the Hopi have set fire
to the grass to drive me away, and I'll just go on, so they won't find
me at home.'
"But soon the fire got going fast in that cedar bark and before he can
get that tail untied he is burned so bad that he just keeps running till
he gets to Bayupa (Little Colorado River). There was a great flood going
down the river and he was so weak from running that he could not swim,
so he drowned. And that is what he got for trying to get even with
somebody."
Quentin Quahongva, who tells the next story, lives at Shungopovi,
Second Mesa. He is a good-natured, easy-going man of middle age, and
usually surrounded by a troop of children, his own and all the
neighbors'.
[Illustration: Figure 15.--Quahongva, Story-teller of Shungopovi, and
Listeners.]
We had no more than started our first story when the youngsters began to
appear. They squatted about on the floor and covered the door step, and
were good listeners. Their squeals of glee brought other children
scampering, as the story-teller imitated the song and dance steps of the
Eagle, in one of his stories. But the one we have chosen to record here
is a Bear story. Figure 15 shows Quahongva surrounded by those of the
children who had not been called home to supper when the stories ended.
One small girl in the foreground is carrying her doll on her back by
means of her little shawl, exactly as her mother carries her baby
brother.
Quahongva was a good story-teller. Some of his tales were long enough to
occupy an evening. His best story took two and a half days for the
telling and recording, so can not be included here.
=A Bear Story,= as told by Quahongva
"Long ago at Shipaulovi there lived a woman with her husband and two
little children, two and four years old. The husband died. For a long
time the woman stayed alone and had to do all the work herself, bring
wood and make the fire and everything.
"One day she went to a little mesa a good ways off for wood, for there
was dry wood in that place. One of the children wanted to go with her
and cried, but the mother could not take her, she was too little. So she
told her to stay at home and play and watch for her return.
"The two little ones were playing 'slide down' on a smooth, slanting
rock, and from quite a distance the mother looked back and saw them
still playing there. Then she went around a little hill to find her
wood.