“Our house is too small,” said Skóŭks.
“Go out and walk around it in a big circle,” said Tcûskai. “Each time you take a step, put your foot down hard.” Skóŭks did so, and when she got around there was a large house instead of the small one.
Skóŭks cooked plenty of deer meat. Tcûskai lay down on one side of the house and wrapped himself in a panther skin blanket.
When the people came, the girl stopped a good way from the house. Skóŭks brought her in and seated her by Tcûskai. The girl’s mother had two small bones; she tied one in each side of Tcûskai’s hair. Skóŭks fed the people deer meat, then she put a Shasta cap on each woman’s head, and said to Tskel: “Tcûskai must give these people nice things.”
Tskel took a buckskin shirt and pounded it to powder, rolled [[152]]the powder in a deer skin, and wet the skin. Then he thought hard, and said: “I want many buckskin shirts,” and he drew out of the skin a buckskin shirt for each man. Now they all had a plenty of nice things to carry home. The mother-in-law’s sister was the last one to go, and she said to her niece, “I haven’t enough to carry home. I am ashamed of you; you gave yourself away for nothing.”
Tcûskai was mad; he began to break off little bits of the bones his mother-in-law had tied in his hair; soon he had a great pile of beautiful beads. Then he took five bites out of his panther skin blanket, and he had five beautiful blankets. He gave the beads and the blankets to the aunt, and she went home.
After a day or two, Tcûskai’s wife said: “I’m lonesome here; I wasn’t made to live in the mountains. I want to go home.”
Tcûskai and Tskel were mad. Tcûskai said: “Go home and never think of me again. I hope our women won’t be like you and get tired of their husbands so soon.”
Skóŭks asked: “Is she going to stay always?”
“She will not live long,” said Tcûskai, “and I will not live always; I don’t want a wife.”