The young man was angry; he scolded Wus for going to the mountain.
Wus said: “I will go away myself, then you can stay here; I will change to an animal, but I will keep a little of my mind.” Wus left his wife and children and wandered off,—a fox.
The wife cried; the brother-in-law felt ashamed; he scolded her, and said: “Throw the children out; I don’t want them around here.” The mother said: “Wus told me to keep the children.”
“I won’t have them here,” said her brother, and he threw them out. The mother screamed. Wus heard her and put his head to the ground to listen. Soon he heard his children coming—they were little foxes. He waited for them, and asked: “What is the trouble?” [[137]]
“Our uncle threw us out.”
Wus didn’t know what to do; he thought a while then said: “You must live with my grandmother, old Wuswelékgăs; she will take care of you. I am going to the end of the world. You mustn’t tell her where I am.” He took the children part way, then pointed out the old woman’s house and left them.
Old Wuswelékgăs was glad to have the boys, for she was lonesome. “Where is your father?” asked she.
“We don’t know,” said the elder boy.
She didn’t believe him and she kept asking the same question till at last he said: “My father has lost his mind and gone off. He said that we would never see him again.” Then the boy told her how his father went to a swimming pond on the mountain and had a bad dream, and their uncle threw them out.
The old woman felt badly; she asked the earth to give her grandson his mind. She roasted mice for the boys and showed them how to play with bows and arrows. One day, when the younger boy was eating, and was crying for his mother, he got choked with a mouse bone. The grandmother tried to get it out of his throat, but she couldn’t, and the child died.