"No, not ash."
"Pine?"
"No, not pine."
"Cedar?"
"No, not cedar."
"Birch?"
The stranger began to yawn, but he kept on guessing. Then his head nodded. By the time he had found out that it was slippery elm he was sound asleep.
"This fellow deserves punishment," remarked the Mischief Maker. "He is an enemy to mankind." Here he adroitly put some sticky clay on the sleeper's eyes, and departed. When the stranger awoke he thought himself still fast asleep in darkness, and then that he was blind.
"If ever I meet with that fellow again," he said, "I'll punish him!"
The Mischief Maker played so many pranks that all the tribes sent out runners to catch him. He heard their whoops in every forest. He knew that he was being hunted down. He hurried on, and once at night hid in a cave under a rock. The runners did not quite overtake him, but they saw that his tracks were fresh, and thought they might catch him in the morning. In the morning he was up and far away long before they awoke. The next night he hid again in a hollow log. In the middle of the afternoon of the next day he heard the whoops of the pursuers very near, and knew that they were gaining fast on him. He climbed a thickly limbed tree, and hid in the top. Here the runners lost his track, because he had broken the weeds and bushes down beyond the tree, as if he had gone further on. They ran for a long distance. Then they returned, and camped and built a fire under the tree.