“E,” said the maidens, so nearly together that it sounded like one voice; but when they both placed the same food before him, the poor young man looked from one to the other, and asked:
“Alas! of which am I to eat?”
Then it was that the maiden suddenly saw her sister, and became hot with anger, for she knew her wicked plans. “Ah, thou foolish sister, why didst thou come?” she said. But the other only replied:
“Ah, thou foolish sister, why didst thou come?”
“Go back, for he is mine-to-be,” said the maiden, beginning to cry.
“Go back, for he is mine-to-be,” said the bad one, pretending to cry.
And thus they quarrelled until they had given one another smarting words four times, when they fell to fighting—as women always fight, by pulling each other’s hair, and scratching, and grappling until they rolled over each other in the sand.
The poor young man started forward to part them, but he knew not one from the other, so thinking that the bad one must know how to fight better than his beautiful maiden wife, he suddenly caught up his stone-weighted hoe, and furiously struck the one that was uppermost on the head, again and again, until she let go her hold, and fell back, murmuring and moaning: “Alas! that thus it should be after all, after all!” Then she forgot, and her eyes ceased to see.
While yet the young man looked, lo! there was only the dying maiden before him; but in the air above circled an ugly black Crow, that laughed “kawkaw, kawkaw, kawkaw!” and flew away to its cave in Thunder Mountain.
Then the young man knew. He cried aloud and beat his breast; then he ran to the river and brought water and bathed the blood away from the maiden’s temples; but alas! she only smiled and talked with her lips, then grew still and cold.