Pretty soon Wiske·djak did wake up, as he had slept enough. He got up and looked about. Nobody was around and things [[12]]looked quiet. “I guess my food is pretty well cooked by this time,” said he. Then he pulled up one of the duck legs from the sand, and ate the meat on the shank. He went all around pulling the fowls’ legs out of the sand and eating them. “They are very well done to pull off so easily. Oh, they must be nice and tender!” thought he. The only thing he noticed was that the legs came very freely from the sand. “They must be very well cooked to come out of the sand so freely.” He took a digging stick and commenced to dig them out. He commenced shovelling away the sand where one of his ducks was, but found the hole empty, and he dug all around in the sand but found they were all taken away. He could not find one bird. At last he got tired of searching and then ano suo dixit, “So I thought I left you to watch for me while I was asleep!” Et anus [5]respondit, “When I was watching for you and woke you up, you were not satisfied. You gave me a scolding. So when the Indians did come, I thought I would leave you to do your own watching.”
Then Wiske·djak grew angry and planned anum suum castigare. He got wood and made another big fire. He got it burning well until there were a lot of red coals. “Now,” ano suo dixit, “I’ll give you a little punishment for letting my ducks and geese go to the Indians.” He went over to the fire and straddled his legs over the fire-place, sitting over the red coals. Anum suum paulum urere incepit ut eum castigaret, but he stood the pain the fire gave him. Soon his flesh commenced sizzling, making a sputtering noise “Tsii!” as it roasted nicely. He heard it squealing. “You can squeal all you like till you get enough of a scorching,” ano suo dixit Wiske·djak. When he thought it was burnt enough, he got up and started walking off. He started off to look for something else to do, ano suo maxime dolente.
He wandered across swamps and mountains and around lakes, suffering with his burns. All at once he came upon a little flock of partridges newly hatched, and their mother was away. “Kwe!” said Wiske·djak, “What are you doing here?” “Nothing,” said the little Partridges, “just staying here.” “Where is your mother?” asked Wiske·djak. “Away hunting,” replied they. “What’s your name?” he asked of one. Each [[13]]little Partridge told him its name until he came to the last, the youngest one. “What’s your name?” he demanded. “Kuckuŋge·′sįs, suddenly frightened!” answered the little Partridge. “Oh you!” said Wiske·djak, “what can you frighten?” Then he took a lump of soft mud and threw it over all the young Partridges, so that he almost covered them with the dirty mud. “What can you frighten now?” said he. Then he left and walked along until he came to a high mountain. He was getting very sore from his burns and anus [6]maxime doluit. When he climbed to the top of the mountain he found a nice breeze blowing across it. He found a high rock swept by the cooling breeze. “Now,” thought he to himself, “if I can find a nice place on the highest of these rocks I can rest myself and let the cool breeze cool my burns.” So he searched around the mountain until he came to a place clear of trees where there was a great chasm below, hundreds of feet deep, with a nice cool breeze coming over. Here he lay down right on the edge where most of the breeze was. He found the wind very good. He got relief from his suffering burns. His pains had been so bad and he had walked so far that he was very tired and sleepy. Soon he was fast asleep on the brink of the cliff.
By this time the old Partridge had got home to his young and found them all covered with black mud. The old Partridge said to his young, “What has happened to you? Where did you go? Anywhere?” “No,” they answered, “nowhere.” “Well, what did this?” he asked. “Well, Wiske·djak came along to-day after you went away. He commenced asking us questions and we answered him as well as we could. He asked us our names and we all told him. But one, our youngest brother, was the last to be asked, and when he told his name Wiske·djak got angry and said, ‘What could you frighten?’ Then he got mud and threw it over us and left us in this mess.” So the old Partridge was angry. He cleaned the young ones up, washed and dried them, and gave them their food which he had brought back for them. Then he asked them which way Wiske·djak went and they showed him the direction. Then the old Partridge took the trail the little ones showed him and followed Wiske·djak across the swamps, over the mountains, and around the lakes. He tracked him to the big high mountains. He [[14]]kept on until he reached the high rock of the cliff, and there he saw Wiske·djak lying on the edge of the rock sleeping soundly. The old Partridge went alongside of him on the upper side of the rock, above him. He spread his wings and went right up close to Wiske·djak’s ears, and shouted, screeched, and clapped his wings. Wiske·djak woke up with a start and jumped up. He saw something above him making a terrible noise and took such a fright that he fell over the edge of the rock. “Now,” said the old Partridge, “you will know better what Kuckuŋge·′sįs is now.”
So poor Wiske·djak tumbled down the cliff, banging and sliding on his hind-quarters, and scraped all the scabs off his burns. When he fell to the bottom of the rocky cliff, he lay stunned for some time, but after a while he arose. He started to crawl away on his hands and knees. Soon he saw a lake at the bottom of the cliff. His sores pained him very badly. Thought he to himself, “There’s a nice lake; now I’ll go down there and cool myself in the water.” He started crawling toward the shore. Before he came to the edge of the water there were a lot of low willows he had to crawl through. As he went over them, he looked back where he had come and saw all his blood from the sores stuck on to the willow twigs. Then said he, “Now you young willows will be called ‘red willows’ from this time on. And when the Indians get short of tobacco they will cut you and scrape the bark off you and dry you and use you to smoke for their tobacco.” He looked up higher toward the rocks where he fell down. There he saw his scabs sticking to the rocks where he had stuck, some large, some small. Said he to the rocks, “You will hold on to these scabs. Don’t ever let go. And when the Indians are hard put to it for something to eat, you will give them some of my scabs and tell them to wash them in cold water and boil them with rabbit meat or any kind of meat or fish. It will furnish them with fine soup, those small ones. And now the biggest scabs—you can tell them that if they have any kind of oil they can oil them a little and roast them before the fire and that it will give them good nourishment when they are hard put to it for something to eat.” So from that time the Indians have used red willow bark to smoke and the “rock weed” to eat when they have needed [[15]]them.[7] By this time anus Wiske·djaki magnopere doluit and he thought he would go into the water for a while and cool his burns.
So I had some travelling to do and I left him there, and I don’t know where he went.
(5) Wiske·djak Disguises himself as a Lynx.
One time in winter Wiske·djak was going along and fell upon an Indian’s trail. He followed the tracks of the snowshoes and soon came to a place where the Indian had set his rabbit snares. Wiske·djak saw the rabbits in the snares. He followed on and finally came to where a Lynx was caught in a snare. He thought it was a very curious looking creature. The Lynx’s eyes were bulging out from being choked in the snare, and his teeth showed. Now Wiske·djak admired the Lynx’s bulging eyes. “Don’t you think your eyes are very pretty?” he asked the Lynx. “No, not very,” answered the Lynx, because every thing living or dead had to reply when Wiske·djak asked it a question. Wiske·djak was very eager to get pretty eyes like the Lynx’s, so he made a fire and roasted the poor Lynx to get its skin off. Then Wiske·djak took out his own eyes and pulled the Lynx’s skin on over his own head, so that the bulging eyes of the Lynx fitted into his own eye sockets.
Then Wiske·djak went on his travels, very well pleased with his looks. But he found out that with the Lynx’s eyes he could only see well at night. So after a while he became dissatisfied with the new eyes, but he had thrown his own away, so he had to make the best of it. He could only travel at night on account of his new eyes. So he had to make his living on rabbits, stealing them from the Indians’ snares. They were all he could get. One day, as he was going along, he stopped and looked at his tracks. Then he discovered that his paws were big and broad and so spread out when he walked that they resembled snowshoes. They were so broad that he could walk over the snow without snowshoes. So he went on. [[16]]
One day he decided to watch the Indians, so he sat down on a log near a hunter’s path and waited for someone to come along. He waited all night and part of the day. Finally some Indians came along the path to visit their rabbit snares. As they passed they found the rabbits stolen from all their snares, but they did not mind it very much. Some time after, one of the Indians’ little children came along the trail and saw Wiske·djak with his big face and bulging eyes sitting on the stump. The child ran back to camp and told his parents that he saw a big wildcat with bulging eyes staring at him from a stump. Then the father of the child took his “arrow-head club,”[8] and went to where the child said he saw the wildcat. Then he started clubbing Wiske·djak to kill him. The fight was getting pretty bad, when Wiske·djak cried out, “Hold on, hold on! it isn’t a lynx, it is Wiske·djak that you are pounding to death!” And Wiske·djak tore off the lynx skin, and pitched it away. Then he took to the bush. That’s the last I saw of him.