“Mercy, mercy! what are you doing?” exclaimed the Coyote.
“Nothing—feeling of your vitals,” was the reply. “What is it?”
“Oh, what is it like?” said the Coyote.
“Shaped like a pine-nut,” said the Horned-toad, “as nearly as I can make out; it keeps leaping so.”
“Leaping, is it?” howled the Coyote. “Mercy! my friend, get away from there! That is the very heart of my being, the thread that ties my existence, the home of my emotions, and my knowledge of daylight. Go away from there, do, I pray you! If you should scratch it ever so little, it would be the death of me, and what would my wife and children do?”
“Hey!” said the Horned-toad, “you wouldn’t be apt to insult me and my people any more if I touched you up there a little, would you?” And he hooked one of his horns into the Coyote’s heart. The Coyote gave one gasp, straightened out his limbs, and expired.
“Ha, ha! you villain! Thus would you have done to me, had you found the chance; thus unto you”—saying which he found his way out and sought the nearest water-pocket he could find.
So you see from this, which took place in the days of the ancients, it may be inferred that the instinct of meddling with everything that did not concern him, and making a universal nuisance of himself, and desiring to imitate everything that he sees, ready to jump into any trap that is laid for him, is a confirmed instinct with the Coyote, for those are precisely his characteristics today.
Furthermore, Coyotes never insult Horned-toads nowadays, and they keep clear of Burrowing-owls. And ever since then the Burrowing-owls have been speckled with gray and white all over their backs and bosoms, because their ancestors spilled foam over themselves in laughing at the silliness of the Coyote.
Thus shortens my story.