The little Coyote started. He trembled and was unsteady on his legs, but managed to get half way. “Is it here?” he called, turning round and looking back.
“No, a little farther,” said the Turtle.
So he cautiously stepped a little farther. The branch was swaying dreadfully. He turned his head, and just as he was saying, “Is it here?” he lost his balance and fell plump to the ground, striking so hard on the tough earth that he was instantly killed.
“There, you wretched beast!” said the old Turtle with a sigh of relief and satisfaction. “Ingenuity enabled me to kill a deer. Ingenuity enabled me to retain the deer.”
It must not be forgotten that one of the little Coyotes ran away. He had numerous descendants, and ever since that time they have been characterized by pimples all over their faces where the mustaches grow out, and little blotches inside of their lips, such as you see inside the lips of dogs.
Thus shortens my story.
THE COYOTE AND THE LOCUST
IN the days of the ancients, there lived south of Zuñi, beyond the headland of rocks, at a place called Suski-ashokton (“Rock Hollow of the Coyotes”), an old Coyote. And this side of the headland of rocks, in the bank of a steep arroyo, lived an old Locust, near where stood a piñon tree, crooked and so bereft of needles that it was sunny.
One day the Coyote went out hunting, leaving his large family of children and his old wife at home. It was a fine day and the sun was shining brightly, and the old Locust crawled out of his home in the loam of the arroyo and ascended to one of the bare branches of the piñon tree, where, hooking his feet firmly into the bark, he began to sing and play his flute. The Coyote in his wanderings came along just as he began to sing these words: