Still Wemicus did nothing and the family was again in a starving condition. Then said Wemicus, “I have some more sons-in-law and one is close. I will go and see him; he will help me until open water.[19] I will go and see Skunk.” So he set out to visit Skunk. Wemicus was pretty hungry and Skunk was farther off than the rest of the sons-in-law, but he finally reached his home. Wemicus found Skunk’s water hole[20] and saw a great quantity of oil in it. He knew that Skunk must have killed a great deal of game. So he went into Skunk’s wigwam and saw a great quantity of food. Skunk said, “We don’t have much. It is long since I hunted. But come outside.” There Wemicus saw a piece of ground fenced in. Skunk then produced a little birch bark horn[21] and said, “What will you have?” Skunk now blew on his horn and all kinds of game came inside the enclosure. Skunk deinde pepedit and killed whatever kind Wemicus wanted. They then skinned what he killed and fried it for supper.
In the morning Skunk said to Wemicus, “I’ll give you three shots and a horn. You can make a fence for yourself. This horn will last forever, as long as you don’t lose it. If you do, it will be bad.” Then Skunk gave Wemicus three shots to be used in the future, and he did this urinando super eum to load him up three times. He did not give him any food, because he would be able to get enough for himself. Then Wemicus thought, “Now I am going to do something.” As Wemicus was on his way home he said to himself, “I wonder if it will go off!” So, just as he was passing a tree stump, pepedit at the stump and blew it up. “That’s fine, but I have only two more shots left,” said he. Later he tried the same thing and then only had one [[44]]left. A little while after this he saw a big pine tree, and thought he would try a shot at this. So he blew up the pine tree, and so used up all his shots.
When he reached his wigwam, he showed his wife the horn which Skunk had given him, saying, “Skunk gave me that.” Then he built a large fence of poles. He told his wife to hold the horn and stay near by, while he got a club to kill the game with. Then he blew on the horn and the fence was filled with bear, deer, and all kinds of animals. Although he had no shots left, Wemicus managed to kill one caribou, and his wife was very happy. He cut the fat from the breast of the caribou, made a fire, and got some grease from it. He then spilled the caribou grease in his water hole in order to deceive Skunk and make him believe that he had a great quantity of meat. Not long after this Skunk started out to visit Wemicus and, on his way, he passed the three stumps which Wemicus had blown up and knew that he had no more shots left. When he reached Wemicus’ water hole he said, “I guess he got one any way.” When he came to the wigwam, he found that Wemicus and his family had hardly any meat left, so he said to Wemicus, “Come out and let me see your fence.” They went out and Wemicus blew his horn, and inside the fence it became full of game. Skunk pepedit and killed all of them, and then Wemicus and his family had plenty. Skunk stayed over night and departed the next morning.
Wemicus had another son-in-law who was a man. This man’s wife, the daughter of Wemicus, had had a great many husbands, because Wemicus had put them to so many different tests that they had been all killed off except this one. He, however, had succeeded in outwitting Wemicus in every scheme that he tried on him. Wemicus and this man hunted beaver in the spring of the year by driving them all day with dogs. The man’s wife warned him before they started out to hunt, saying, “Look out for my father; he might burn your moccasins in camp. That’s what he did to my other husbands.”[22] That night in camp Wemicus said, “I didn’t tell you the name of this lake. It is called ‘burnt moccasins lake.’ ” When the man [[45]]heard this, he thought that Wemicus was up to some sort of mischief and was going to burn his moccasins. Their moccasins were hanging up before a fire to dry and, while Wemicus was not looking, the man changed the places of Wemicus’ moccasins and his own, and then went to sleep. Soon the man awoke and saw Wemicus get up and throw his own moccasins into the fire. Wemicus then said, “Say! something is burning; it is your moccasins.” Then the man answered, “No, not mine, but yours.” So Wemicus had no moccasins, and the ground was covered with snow. After this had happened the man slept with his moccasins on.
The next morning the man started on and left Wemicus there with no shoes. Wemicus started to work. He got a big boulder, made a fire, and placed the boulder in it until it became red hot. He then wrapped his feet with spruce boughs and pushed the boulder ahead of him in order to melt the snow. In this way he managed to walk on the boughs. Then he began to sing, “Spruce is warm, spruce is warm.” When the man reached home he told his wife what had happened. “I hope Wemicus will die,” she said. A little while after this, they heard Wemicus coming along singing, “Spruce is warm, spruce is warm.” He came into the wigwam and, as he was the head man, they were obliged to get his meal ready.
The ice was getting bad by this time, so they stayed in camp a while. Soon Wemicus told his son-in-law, “We’d better go sliding.” He then went to a hill where there were some very poisonous snakes. The man’s wife warned her husband of these snakes and gave him a split stick holding a certain kind of magic tobacco, which she told him to hold in front of him so that the snakes would not hurt him. Then the two men went sliding. At the top of the hill Wemicus said, “Follow me,” for he intended to pass close by the snakes’ lair. So when they slid, Wemicus passed safely and the man held his stick with the tobacco in it in front of him, thus preventing the snakes from biting him. The man then told Wemicus that he enjoyed the sliding.
The following day Wemicus said to his son-in-law, “We had better go to another place.” When she heard this, the wife told her husband that, as it was getting summer, Wemicus had in [[46]]his head many poisonous lizards instead of lice. She said, “He will tell you to pick lice from his head and crack them in your teeth. But take low-bush cranberries and crack them instead.” So the man took cranberries along with him. Wemicus took his son-in-law to a valley with a great ravine in it. He said, “I wonder if anybody can jump across this?” “Surely,” said the young man, “I can.” Then the young man said, “Closer,” and the ravine narrowed and he jumped across easily. When Wemicus tried, the young man said “Widen,” and Wemicus fell into the ravine. But it did not kill him, and when he made his way to the top again, he said, “You have beaten me.” Then they went on.
They came to a place of hot sand and Wemicus said, “You must look for lice in my head.” “All right father,” replied the son-in-law. So Wemicus lay down and the man started to pick the lice. He took the cranberries from inside his shirt and each time he pretended to catch a louse, he cracked a cranberry and threw it on the ground, and so Wemicus got fooled a second time that day. Then they went home and Wemicus said to his son-in-law, “There are a whole lot of eggs on that rocky island where the gulls are. We will go get the eggs, come back, and have an egg supper.” As Wemicus was the head man, his son-in-law had to obey him.
So they started out in their canoe and soon came to the rocky island. Wemicus stayed in the canoe and told the man to go ashore and to bring the eggs back with him and fill the canoe. When the man reached the shore, Wemicus told him to go farther back on the island, saying, “That’s where the former husbands got their eggs, there are their bones.” He then started the canoe off in the water by singing, without using his paddle. Then Wemicus told the gulls to eat the man, saying to them, “I give you him to eat.” The gulls started to fly about the man, but the man had his paddle with him and he killed one of the gulls with it. He then took the gulls’ wings and fastened them on himself, filled his shirt with eggs, and started flying over the lake by the aid of the wings.
When he reached the middle of the lake, he saw Wemicus going along and singing to himself. Wemicus, looking up, saw his son-in-law but mistook him for a gull. Then the man flew [[47]]over him and defecated in his face, and Wemicus said, “Gull’s excrement always smells like that when they have eaten a man.” The man flew back to camp and told his wife to cook the eggs, and he told his children to play with the wings. When Wemicus reached the camp, he saw the children playing with the wings and said, “Where did you get those wings?” “From father,” was the reply. “Your father? Why, the gulls ate him!” Then he went to the wigwam and there he saw the man smoking. Then Wemicus thought it very strange how the man could have gotten home, but no one told him how it had been done. Thought he, “I must try another scheme to do away with him.”