He took two fine ones and cut out their hearts, then started for home. When he arrived there, he climbed the ladder and suspended the two hearts beside that of the Bear and went down into the house, saying, “Well, mother, is dinner ready?”
“There now,” said she, “I know it. I saw you hang those hearts up. You have been down there.”
“Yes,” said he, “they are all gone—every solitary one of them.”
“Oh, you foolish, foolish, disobedient fellow! I am all alone in the world, and if you should go to some of those fearful places some time and not come back, who would hunt for me? What should I do?” said the mother.
“Don’t be troubled, mother, now,” said the boy. “I don’t think I will go any more. There is nothing else of that kind around, is there, mother?”
“No, there is not,” she replied; “not a thing. There may be somewhere in the world, but there is not anywhere here.”
In the evening, as he sat with his mother, the boy kept questioning and teasing her to tell him of some other monsters—pulling on her skirts and repeating his questions.
“I tell you,” she said, “there are no such creatures.”
“Oh, mother, I know there are,” said he, “and you must tell me about them.”
So he continued to bother her until her patience gave out, and she told him of another monster. Said she: “If you follow that cañon down to the southeast, there is a very, very, very high cliff there, and the trail that goes over that cliff runs close by the side of a precipice. Now, that has been for ages a terrible place, for there is a Giant living there, who wears a hair-knot on his forehead. He lies there at length, sunning himself at his ease. He is very good-natured and very polite. His legs stretch across the trail on which men have to go who pass that way, and there is no other way to get by. And whenever a man tries to go by that trail, he says: ‘Pass right along, pass right along; I am glad to see you. Here is a fresh trail; some one has just passed. Don’t disturb me; I am sunning myself.’ Down below is the den where his children live, and on the flesh of these people he feeds them.”