“Look!” said one of the children to the other. “There’s our poor mother waiting for us. Hurry up! Let’s run, or else our father will come out searching for us.”
As they approached they called out: “Poor mother, here you are in the cold waiting for us.” But she did not recognize them, and only hid her face in her paws from shame, for they were too beautiful to look upon—just like the Sun-father.
“Don’t you know us, mother?” asked the Two to the old woman just as the old Badger came out.
“No!” answered she.
“Why, we are your children!”
“Ah! my children did not look like you!”
“We are they! Look here!” said they, and they showed the bark moccasins and the strings of corn-cakes.
“Our poor children!”
“Yes, our father is no other than the Sun-father, and he came down to speak to us today, and he dressed us as you see, just like himself, and he said that our mother used to live over in the Home of the Eagles, that our aunts still live there, and our grandfather, and that our mother used to live there, but the Twain killed her as she was trying to escape on the back of an Eagle. And when she fell into the Cañon of the Coyote we were born, and father here found us and you both reared us.”
“Yes, that is very true,” said the old Badger. “I know it all; and I know, too, that there will be a dance at the Home of the Eagles in eight days. Tomorrow there will be only seven left, and when the eighth day comes you will both go there to see it. Come up and come down,” said he.