“Dogĕs! Is that very true?” asked small voices on opposite sides of the lodge.
The witch-beast looked about, and then seeing the wooden dolls trampled down the entire lodge. Then, running in an ever increasing circle she found the boy’s tracks and following them with furious speed she screamed, “I am nīa’´gwahē, no one can escape me!”
A short distance behind him the boy heard her voice and unable to withstand her speed he planned to outwit her by changing his form. He took the guise of an old man. He kicked off his moccasins and bade them run on and make tracks to the end of the earth or until a hole appeared in the soles. Standing with his arrow fixed he gazed upward at an old robin’s nest that stuck upon a dead branch.
The witch-beast came crashing through the bushes.
“Kwē!” she screamed.
“Cii!” whispered the boy, “do you not see I am watching for game? Agē! I have been waiting three years for the bird to perch back on its nest and now you have warned it away with your yells. Oh now you must stay and help me kill it for I am very hungry.”
“Oh nonsense!” exclaimed the beast. “I am hungry too. Tell me now old man, did you see a boy running by here?”
“Cii!” whispered the boy, “you will frighten my bird. Go away. See those tracks? Follow them and leave me to my bird!”
The nīa’´gwahē struck the trail and followed the tracks of the moccasins through the forests and swamps and when many days had been spent she came to a log and on it were two moccasins with holes in the soles and no tracks beyond or around save those she had followed.
“Agī!” screamed the beast, overwhelmed with chagrin. “He has deceived me. Now I know he was the old man who gazed at the old nest and sent me away! Oh he shall not escape me for I am nīa’´gwahē!”