All huddled together in great fear. The water began to lower, for the hunters had broken down the dam, and they soon heard them on the roof of the lodge, breaking it up. Out jumped all the beavers into the water, and so escaped.
Paup-puk-keewiss tried to follow them, but, unfortunately, to gratify his ambition they had made him so large that he could not creep out at the hole. He tried to call them back, but either they did not hear or would not attend to him; he worried himself so much in searching for a door to let him out that he looked like a great bladder, swollen and blistering in the sun, and the sweat stood out upon his forehead in knobs and huge bubbles.
Although he heard and understood every word that the hunters spoke—and some of their expressions suggested terrible ideas—he could not turn himself back into a man. He had chosen to be a beaver, and a beaver he must be. One of the hunters, a prying little man, with a single lock dangling over one eye, put his head in at the top of the lodge. “Ty-au!” cried he. “Tut ty-au! Me-shau-mik—king of beavers—is in.” Whereupon the whole crowd of hunters began upon him with their clubs, and knocked his skull about until it was no harder than a morass in the middle of summer. Paup-puk-keewiss thought as well as ever he did, although he was a beaver; and he felt that he was in a rather foolish scrape, inhabiting the carcass of a beaver.
Presently seven or eight of the hunters hoisted his body upon long poles, and marched away home with him. As they went, he reflected in this manner: “What will become of me? My ghost or shadow will not die after they get me to their lodges.”
Invitations were immediately sent out for a grand feast; but as soon as his body got cold, his soul, being uncomfortable in a house without heat, flew off.
Having reassumed his mortal shape, Paup-puk-keewiss found himself standing near a prairie. After walking a distance, he saw a herd of elk feeding. He admired their apparent ease and enjoyment of life, and thought there could be nothing more pleasant than the liberty of running about and feeding on the prairies. He had been a water animal, and now he wished to become a land animal, to learn what passed in an elk’s head as he roved about. He asked them if they could not turn him into one of themselves.
“Yes,” they answered, after a pause. “Get down on your hands and feet.”
He obeyed their directions, and forthwith found himself to be an elk.
“I want big horns, big feet,” said he; “I wish to be very large,” for all the conceit and vainglory had not been knocked out of Paup-puk-keewiss, even by the sturdy thwacks of the hunters’ clubs.
“Yes, yes,” they answered. “There,” exerting their power, “are you big enough?”