One night in the early spring, as the man slept, his first wife
appeared to him in a dream, and said, "Hang a large spider web across
the trail in the forest where the animals pass and you will get plenty
of food. But be good to my children. Their cruel stepmother is
planning to kill them." And she told him where to look for the magical
spider web. The next day the man found the large spider web, and he
went far away into the forest and hung it from the trees over the
trail where the animals passed. That evening when he went back to the
web he found many animals entangled in its meshes, for it had magical
power. He killed the animals and brought them home, and that night
they had a good fat supper of roast deer meat. Day after day the
magical spider web gave him great numbers of rabbits and deer, as the
vision of his dead wife had told him in the night, and from that time
on the family did not want for food.
But the man's success in hunting only angered his witch-wife. She had
now no cause for complaint against the little children, and she could
no longer scold them and say that because of them there was no food in
the house. Her hatred for them grew stronger each day, and at last
she decided to kill them and to kill their father as soon as she
could. Their father was going away on the morrow in search of wood to
make arrows for his bows, and she thought she would have a good chance
to kill them while he was gone. Then she would kill their father when
he returned. So she laid her plans. But that night the vision of his
first wife came again to the man as he slept, and it said, "Your
present wife is a witch-woman. She plans to kill the children
to-morrow when you are away, and when you come home she will kill you,
too. You must kill her while there is yet time. Remember my little
children."