At first Nahvahchoo was greatly excited by all this dancing, for all these people seemed to do nothing else but sing and dance, and make the rods and notched sticks and stand them up in bunches; but after a few days he began to think of game, for he was a great hunter, and he went out and found the tracks of a deer.
And measuring these with his arrow he laughed, covering his mouth with his hand, and said: “This deer will not run very fast, I could catch him myself.” For a deer that measures a good way between his tracks is long-bodied, and cannot run fast, while a deer that measures short between tracks has a short body, and jumps quicker.
And he followed the deer, which heard him coming, and began to run, and when Nahvahchoo saw by its tracks that it was running, he ran, too, and getting on a hill saw the dust of its running away off; and he ran after it, and when he came to the next hill it was close, and he ran down, and killed it, and took it back to the singers, and they fell ravenously upon it and ate it all up, not leaving him even the bones.
Nahvahchoo sat off a little way and watched them, and one of their speakers addressed him, and said: “We know you, who you are. You are a great doctor, and a great hunter, and a great farmer, and a powerful man every way. And maybe you expected us to join in your hunt and help you carry the game. But we want you to join us, and become a singer, and you will have plenty of corn and beans to eat, and you will find that such food will last, while, as you see, the game, when you bring it in, lasts but a little while.”
So Nahvahchoo staid with them and became a singer, and after a while the people told him to go to a certain vahahkkee, and said: “You will find something there with which you will be pleased. And then go to the opposite one, and you will find that with which you will be still more pleased.
And one of these vahahkkees was called See-pook (Red-bird) Vahahkkee and the other was named Wah-choo-kook-kee (Oriole) Vahahkkee.—But tho they told him to go to these they did not allow him to do so, but one day he slipped away, when they were not looking, and opened one, and saw in it many wonderful things, clouds forming and sprinkling all the time; and in the other it was the same.
And one was covered with red flowers, and the other with yellow flowers, and where they came together the mingling of red and yellow was very pretty.
At the door of each vahahkkee was a corn-mill. And he stole one of these and went west. But after a while he stopped and said: “I wonder what is going to happen, for the east is all green and the west is of the same color.”
But he ran on, and the clouds came over him, and it began to sprinkle, and then to rain, and then the water began to run, and get deeper and deeper, and he said: “This is happening to me because I stole this mill, but I am not going to let it go, I am going to keep it.”
And he ran on and came to where he had separated from Weeheekeenee, and went on and over Cosovahtawupkih, the Twisted Neck Mountain.