FOOTNOTES:
[59] Told by Two-Hawks.
59. THE COYOTE AND THE ROLLING STONE.[60]
One time when the Coyote was going along he met a Rabbit. The Coyote said to the Rabbit: “Let us gamble to-night. Let us gather dry limbs and make a big fire, that we may look at one another, and the one who goes to sleep first is to be covered by the other.” The Rabbit agreed to this. So the Coyote and the Rabbit gathered a lot of dried limbs and made a big fire. The Coyote sat on one side and the Rabbit on the other side of the fire, so that they both looked at one another. The Rabbit went to sleep, but he had his eyes wide open. Every time the Coyote looked at the Rabbit he saw that his eyes were wide open, but all this time the Rabbit was asleep. By morning the Coyote went to sleep. The Rabbit went over and covered him and then went his way.
The Coyote woke up and was very mad. Profectus, ventrem facere volebat. Dum defæcavit, multos lepores parvos emisit, qui autem extemplo evanuerunt. Idcirco viatus est. Itaque pallium suum deposuit, ut, cum defæcavisset, eo lepores prehendere posset. Cum igitur in pallio defæcavisset, se lepores eo prehendisse arbitratus, pallium stipite iterum atque iterum feriebat. Cum autem pallium aperuisset, nihil nisi excrementum repperit. He dragged the robe along and gave it to a Stone that was lying near by. When the Coyote turned around to look at the robe that he had given to the Stone, he saw that it was clean and white. So he went and took the robe, and as he dragged it away from the Stone he found that it was as before. Again he gave the robe to the Stone, and said: “It is yours; I did not mean to take it.” The Coyote started off again, but he looked back and he saw that the robe was all painted in colors and was very beautiful. He went and pulled on it to take it away, and again it was as at first. Four times the Coyote gave the robe back to the Stone, and four times he took it away from the Stone.
At last the Stone moved, for it was angry, and the Stone ran after the Coyote. The Coyote ran down a hill, crying: “Father and mother Bull-Bats, this Stone that is running after me called you names! I told him that I would tell you Bull-Bats, and now he is trying to kill me!” The Bull-Bats told the Coyote to climb up a tree, where the young Bull-Bats were. The Bull-Bats expelled flatus on the Stone and broke it all to pieces. The Bull-Bats, as soon as the Stone was broken to pieces, flew up high in the sky, and when they were gone the Coyote saw the young ones in their nest and ate them up; then he came down from the tree. The Bull-Bats missed their young ones and they knew that it must have been the Coyote who had eaten them, for they heard the young ones crying in the Coyote’s belly. They were mad, and they expelled flatus on the Coyote and killed him.
Because the Coyote is up to all kinds of mischief he is often killed, and this is why we so often find a dead Coyote on the prairies.