“Tulchuherris, you are nobody. I have finished you now. I am wiser than you, stronger than you. You were brought up in your grandmother’s apron.”
Tulchuherris heard him. When Sas was outside the door, he stood a while and talked on,—
“You were dug out of the ground, Tulchuherris,” said he. “You are nobody. I have beaten you. You’ll never trouble me again.”
He started to go into the house, looked around, and saw Tulchuherris sitting with his two daughters.
“Father-in-law, were you talking of me? What were you saying?” asked Tulchuherris, when Sas had come in and sat down.
“Oh, my son-in-law, I cannot tell what I said, but I was thinking, ‘Oh, I am so old, I know nothing. I am weak, I am blind. Sometimes I do not know what I am doing. I think that I have done wrong to my son-in-law, my poor son-in-law.’”
Soon after Sas went out, and at one side near the door he dug a grave for the old woman, his wife. When he had dug it, he buried her and with her all the bears and snakes, and said, “These are my children.” He put them in the same grave, and cried, singing as he cried,—
“Koki, koki, koki nom,
Koki, koki, koki nom.”
(Creeping, creeping, creeping west,
Creeping, creeping, creeping west.)
While he was burying his wife and the bears and the snakes, he had beaver teeth hanging on strings at the back of his head and on each side of his face. After he had cried awhile he danced and sang, and these teeth rattled as his head swayed from side to side. Then he went into the house, sat down, looked at Tulchuherris, and said,—
“Tulchuherris, you are my son-in-law; your wives, those two women, are my daughters. There are some things which they have wanted to play with this long time, and they have begged me to go for them, but I am old and blind; if I were to go I could not get what they ask for. My daughters want pets. My son-in-law, on a small tree, not far from this house, is a nest, and young woodpeckers chirp every day in it. Your wives want these red-headed woodpeckers, but I am blind and old; I cannot climb the tree, but you can get the woodpeckers. I will show the nest.”