Her daughter said: “I don’t know,” and she told the children not to tell their grandmother anything about the weather. It rained and hailed. Every night the mother and children cried. Each morning they stamped on the ground to find out if it were soft. One day the mother went off, and when she came back she brought a few roots. The children were sitting out of doors, and she heard the old woman ask them: “Where is your mother?”
“She has gone for wood,” said the boy.
The mother put away some of the roots and gave the rest to the children.
The old woman asked: “Does it snow yet?”
The little boy said: “There is so much snow that I can’t see the tops of the trees.”
The grandmother put more gum on her eyes, rolled herself up tight, and lay still.
The mother made two pairs of straw moccasins, and the next morning started for roots. It was spring now, and she [[206]]found plenty for her children to eat. While she was gone, the old woman asked: “Which way is the wind?”
“From the southwest,” said the boy. His mother had told him to fool his grandmother, and let her lie there all summer. The mother could make the wind blow—the wind was her medicine. Every time she found a fly in the house, she killed it with a porcupine quill, so the old woman wouldn’t know it was spring.
There were a good many of the Lok people around the place where the mother dug roots; she left some roots for them to take care of, and said: “In two days I will come back and bring my children.”
When she got home, she made moccasins for the children, and in the morning, when she was ready to start, she said to her mother: “It snows. I am tired of packing wood; I am going to take the children to the woods and keep a fire there; you never stay by the fire.”