“Do you believe in him?” asked Jesse. “I thought you went to church, Alex?”
“The Company likes us all to go to church when we’re in the settlements,” said Alex, “and I do regularly. But you see, my mother was Injun, and she kept to the old ways. It’s hard for me to understand it, about the old ways and the new ones both. But my mother and her people all believed in Wiesacajac, and thought he was around all the time and was able to play jokes on the people if he felt like it. Usually he was good-natured. But, Moise, go on and tell about how the fox got his mark.”
Moise, assuming a little additional dignity, as became an Indian teller of stories, now went on with his tale.
“Listen, I speak!” he began. “One tam, long ago, Wiesacajac, he’ll be sit all alone by a lake off north of this river. Wiesacajac, he’ll been hongree, but he’ll not be mad. He’ll be laugh, an’ talk by heemself an’ have good tam, because he’ll just keel himself some nice fat goose.
“Now, Wiesacajac, he’ll do the way the people do, an’ he’ll go for roast this goose in the sand, under the ashes where he’ll make his fire. He’ll take this goose an’ bury heem so, all cover’ up with ashes an’ coals—like this, you see—but he’ll leave the two leg of those foots stick up through the ground where the goose is bury.
“Wiesacajac he’ll feel those goose all over with his breast-bone, an’ he’ll say, ‘Ah, ha! he’ll been fat goose; bimeby he’ll be good for eat.’ But he’ll know if you watch goose he’ll not get done. So bimeby Wiesacajac he’ll walk off away in the wood for to let those goose get brown in the ashes. This’ll be fine day—beau temps—an’ he’ll be happy, for he’ll got meat in camp. So bimeby he’ll sit down on log an’ look at those sky an’ those wind, an’ maybe he’ll light his pipe, I don’t know, me.
“Now about this tam some red fox he’ll be lie down over those ridge an’ watch Wiesacajac an’ those goose. This fox he’ll be hongree, too, for he’ll ain’t got no goose. He’ll been thief, too, all same like every fox. So he’ll see Wiesacajac walk off in woods, an’ he’ll smell aroun’ an’ he’ll sneak down to the camp where those goose will be with his feet stick out of ashes.
“Those thief of fox he’ll dig up the fat goose of Wiesacajac, an’ tase’ it, an’ find it ver’ good. He’ll ron off in the woods with the goose an’ eat it all up, all ’cept the foots an’ the leg-bones. Then the fox he’ll sneak back to the fire once more, an’ he’ll push the dirt back in the hole, an’ he’ll stick up these foots an’ the leg-bones just like they was before, only there don’t been no goose under those foots now, because he’ll eat up the goose.
“‘Ah, ha!’ says Mr. Fox then, ‘I’m so fat I must go sleep now.’ So he’ll go off in woods a little way an’ he’ll lie down, an’ he’ll go to sleep.