“Go on, my brother,” said Winishuyat. “Let him carry you, though this is one of the places where they killed many of our people who escaped the old man on the rock. But this man cannot kill us. Let him carry us.”
“Very well!” said Tulchuherris to the old man. “Carry me over, take me across this river.”
The old man came up and took him on his back. Tulchuherris had a pointed bone in his bosom where he could get at it quickly. He had brought this bone from Eli Tsarauton. The old man started into the river. At first it was not deep, but in the middle of the stream the water was up to his breast, and was growing deeper. Then it reached his neck, and was rising. The dogs made a leap from one side of the river to the other. The water was at the man’s eyes now.
“Be careful, my brother,” said Winishuyat, “be careful. This man kills people in this way,—he drowns them, he will drown you right away if you let him.”
Tulchuherris took out his sharp bone, stabbed the man’s breast two or three times with it, wounded him, stopped him. Then he leaped from the man’s head to the other bank, where his dogs were. Tulchuherris stood a moment looking at the wounded man. Then he said,—
“Hereafter you will not be what you have been. You will be nothing but an eel. You will be a person no longer. You will be only an eel, the people to come will call you hawt and will eat you.”
Tulchuherris walked forward quickly after this. Sas’s two daughters heard every step he took, as though he had been near, though he was far, very far away from them. They always heard men coming from the west,—always knew when they were coming.
Tulchuherris walked quickly till almost evening, when he came to a high ridge near Sas’s house. Just as he reached the ridge he heard a sort of clinking noise on the other side. He stopped and looked, but saw no one. He was right at the spot where the noise was, but there was no one in sight. The ridge was like a straight wall reaching north and south farther than he could see, and high up out of sight, and down into the ground. No one could go through, or go around, or dig under that wall or climb over it. In the middle of the ridge was an opening in which stood a great sugar pine, and in the pine was a cleft large enough to let a person pass easily. When any one was passing, and half-way through the cleft, the pine closed and crushed him. The noise was made by a person hammering just beyond the wall. Tulchuherris looked through and saw an arm, and while he was looking his dogs sprang through the opening to the other side.
“What’s this?” called the man, and he walked to the opening. “Ah, are you there? Is that you, my son-in-law?”
Tulchuherris said nothing, but looked and saw piles of bones inside.