They all came. Wámanik gave nice things to the youngest boy. “Are you afraid of me now?” asked Wámanik. “I heard what you said. I can hear what people say when they are far away. I like you and I want you to like me.” The children ate lots. They felt glad.
One day old Wískäk said: “My girls are tired of digging roots, I want to dig sometimes.”
“They’ll never get tired,” said Wámanik, “they’ll always work. You are old and you must rest; you’ll die soon.”
Kékina said to Wámanik: “Your wives don’t love you. There is a young man after them all the time. They wanted to marry Ndúkis.” [[201]]
That made Wámanik feel badly. In the evening, when he went to his mother-in-law’s house, he asked the elder sister: “Is any one in love with you and your sister?”
“No,” said the woman. “Why do you ask that?”
“I don’t like the way you talk. You don’t tell me the truth,” said Wámanik. “The first time I saw you, your eyes stuck out, as if you had seen somebody; you looked scared. I won’t keep you if somebody else wants you.”
Old Wískäk had been after red bark to color roots; when she came home she found her younger daughter crying. The girl told her what Wámanik had said. The old woman was angry, but she didn’t know what to do.
Kékina went to Ndúkis, and said: “Wámanik is saying bad things about you.”
Ndúkis listened and heard what Wámanik said to his wife. The next morning he went early, before anybody was up in the world, and sat on a rock where he could see old Wískäk’s house; he looked awful ugly. Ygiak, a man who never slept, was out hunting for sticks; when he saw Ndúkis, he was so scared that he dropped his sticks and ran home.