The old creature heard this exposure of her true self and fled vowing to return the next day. True to her promise, she came again and held out a delicious looking pudding on the top of which was a singing mocking-bird. The boy ran out from the lodge and stoned the old woman away and in anger she pointed her fingers toward him and screamed, “It does not matter for I will come again!”
The next day she returned and again was driven away by stones. She then departed with the same threatening words. But on one day she exclaimed, “Oh why do you not accept my beautiful gift! Do so now for I am hungry and wish to eat you. Oh, Oh—!”
The boy was frightened by her frank avowal but determined to be rid of the old witch and so drove her away once more.
“Tomorrow I will enter the lodge and eat her before your very eyes. Now remember my promise!” She screamed as she trampled back through the trees.
The boy was aroused and resolved to use every power to save his sister and himself, so that night he carved two dolls from chunks of rotten wood and placed them upright against the walls. Taking his sister he uttered certain magic words and made her very small. He placed her within a horn arrow-tip and then shot the arrow through the smoke hole. Leaping magically after the shaft, he followed and picking up the arrow followed the trail in the darkness.
The next morning the witch came again this time taking the form of a nīa’´gwahē. She tore down the hill and pawed before the lodge door.
“I have come, Oh I have come!” she said. “You cannot escape me now for I am nīa’´gwahē!”
“Oh please stay away, we are afraid,” wailed two tremulous voices inside. “Spare us for we are young. Oh choose some older ones!”
“Oh no!” snorted the witch, “I have been hungering too long for you two,” and bursting into the lodge prepared to seize the baby girl. She then was disappointed when she saw no trace of the children.
“I am nīa’´gwahē!” she screamed, “no one can escape me!”