THE WOODEN WIFE
Once there was a young man newly married who was very fond of his wife. She was not only a pretty woman, but she wove the most beautiful dancing-blankets of any one in the tribe.
One day this young man went into the mountains to hunt wild goats, from whose hair his wife might weave more of her much-prized blankets, and she went with him to keep his hut and to cook for him. While they were yet far from the village, the girl fell sick, and although he did all that he could for her, the young husband soon saw that she was dying.
“Tell me, my dear, what can I do for you?” he begged, as he hung over her.
“Only do not leave me soon, my husband! Do not soon forget our love,” sighed the wife, and she died.
The goat-hunter mourned her truly, and he did as she had asked him to do. He remained on the spot where he had lost her and seemed to have no thought of going back to the village. He kept her body with him in the hut as long as he could, and when at last he was forced to lay it away, he carved an image out of cedar wood and set it up in front of her loom, so that as one entered the hut it seemed that a woman sat there, weaving a dancing-blanket. Every morning he went out hunting goats, and when he returned in the evening he would call out as he came near the hut, saying:
“Come out, my wife, and see what I have brought you!”
Then he would answer himself in a woman’s voice, “I cannot come just now, my husband. I am weaving, and the wool may become snarled if I leave my loom.”
Presently he would enter the wigwam, come up behind his wooden wife, and kiss her lovingly.
After a time, the story of these strange doings spread to the village, and two young girls, sisters, being filled with curiosity, decided to come and find out for themselves what truth there might be in the rumors that were about. When they reached his lonely hut, the hunter was away as usual, so they raised the door-flap and peeped in. There sat the wooden wife in front of the loom, with her back to them, exactly like a woman weaving.