“Go on, if you want to,” said Wus.
When the girls started, Wus watched them till they went out of sight; he was saying things in his mind. As they traveled, they became old women, with humps on their backs; their bodies shriveled up, there was no flesh on their bones, they could scarcely move; their hair turned white, and their teeth fell out. Their beautiful clothes turned to dirty straw; their strings of beads were twisted bark; their baskets looked old and broken and the roots in them turned to moldy skins; the shells and porcupine quills were bits of bark.
The younger sister said: “We didn’t go the way our mother told us to. That man was Wus; he has done this. If we had gone on the east side of the lake, we shouldn’t have met him. We should have done as our mother told us; she is old, and she knows more than we do.” After a long time, they got to the chief’s house. The five brothers were out hunting. The chief didn’t know what to give the women to eat; he thought they were too old to eat roasted liver (old people’s food). When he gave them some, they pushed it away. They lay down to sleep, and while they were sleeping the five brothers came. They knew Máidikdak’s daughters and knew who had made them old. [[127]]
The youngest brother asked: “Did you give these women anything to eat?”
“I gave them liver,” said the old man, “but they couldn’t eat it; they haven’t any teeth.”
The young man was glad they had come; he sat down and watched them. About midnight they turned to beautiful girls. In the morning, when they woke up, they were old women again.
The chief said to himself: “What kind of a man is my son? Why does he stay by those dirty old women?”
The young women heard his thoughts and they felt badly. At last they crawled up and went out to wash in the river. The elder sister said: “If we swim, maybe it will make us young again.”
They took off their dirty, ragged clothes and old torn moccasins and began to swim. Right away they turned to beautiful girls; their long hair floated on the top of the water. As they swam, they talked and laughed, for they were glad to be young again. They made sport of their father-in-law, and said: “That big chief thought we were old women; he fed us liver!”
The young man heard this and said to his father: “You fed those girls dirty liver. Did you think they were old women?”