“Ho! who cares for a little hurt?” said the Demon.
“Oh! but it hurts terribly,” said the Coyote, “and I am afraid you won’t have the pluck to go through with it.”
“Do you think I am a baby?” said the old Demon, getting up,—“or a woman, that I should be afraid to pound my legs and arms?”
“Well, I only thought I’d tell you how much it hurts,” said the Coyote; “but if you want to try it yourself, why, go ahead. There’s one thing certain: when you make yourself as swift as I am, there’s no deer in all the country that can get away from us two.”
“What shall I do?” said the Demon.
“You just sit right down there, and I’ll show you how,” said the Coyote. So the Demon sat down by the rock.
“There, now, you just lay your leg right over that stone and take the other rock and strike your leg just as hard as you can; and as soon as you have done, bathe it in the medicine-water. Then do just the same way to the other.”
“All right,” said the Demon. So he laid his leg over the rock, and picking up the other stone, brought it down with might and main across his thigh—so hard, indeed, that he crushed the bone into splinters.
“Oh, my! Oh, my! what shall I do?” shouted the Demon.
“Be patient, be patient; it will get well,” said the Coyote, and he splashed it with the medicine-fluid.