“I have caught something. I don’t know what it is. I am terribly afraid of it.”
“I told you yesterday not to go to that mountain. I knew that trouble would come if you went there. I will go myself and see what you have caught.”
Tsuwalkai Marimi was ready to run to the mountain and look at the trap. She wanted to know what was in it.
“You, my grandson, stay here at home,” said she; “perhaps the thing that you have caught is not dead yet. I will look at it.”
The old woman started, but as she was going out she said: “Maybe Hehku is in your trap. If she is, she will get out, run here and kill us both perhaps; kill you, surely, if she finds you. Save yourself, my grandson. If you see her coming, run west, run very hard, run till you come to a great river. On the other side of it is Mipka’s house; shout to him, call him uncle, tell him to take you over; say that you are running for your life, that he must save you.”
While the old woman was talking, she looked and saw Hehku far off at the mountain.
“My grandson,” cried she, “Hehku is coming! She will kill you. Run! I will stay here and stop her a while.”
Tsanunewa looked and saw Hehku. Then he ran west; ran till he reached the great river. He stopped at the edge of it and shouted.
Hehku had made herself small the night before, and gone into Tsanunewa’s trap purposely. The boy thought that she was angry because he had trapped her. She wanted him to think so. She went into the trap to have an excuse to kill him as she had killed all his kindred. When Tsanunewa ran home to his grandmother, frightened because he had seen Hehku, Hehku went out of the trap, crushed red rottenstone, painted her face, made it blood color. She had a big cap made of skulls, skulls of people she had killed. She put the cap on her head then, and started. She started, ran quickly, singing as she went,—
“I am following Tsanunewa; I am on his track.
I am following Tsanunewa; I am on his track.”