“A coal fell on the deerskin, and burned it.”
The brothers laughed and made fun of Wus, said: “A man shouldn’t cry for such a thing; you will never be of much account. You will be poor and always be hunting for something to eat. Take the skin and make moccasins for yourself.”
Wus was glad to get the skin, for the brothers didn’t give him much. The next day he said: “I left my mother a long time ago, I must go and see her.”
The brothers gave him dried meat to carry to her, and told him to come back soon, and chew skins for them.
On the way home, Wus forgot about the Kaiutois brothers. His mother was almost starved; the dried meat didn’t last long; Wus and his mother were soon poor and hungry. Wus [[211]]hunted mice, but he gave only the smallest ones to his mother; sometimes he gave her only the heads.
One day, when Wus was hunting, a Pakol girl came to the house to borrow grass to make a cap.
Old woman Wus said to the house: “Grow small!”
The girl asked: “Why is the house getting small?”
The old woman said: “That is always the way it does when a stranger comes; you can creep out backwards.” She made the awl over the door grow long. It stuck in the girl’s head and killed her. The old woman cut up the body; then she thought: “I will pay my son for feeding me mouse heads.” She took a dry old piece of an intestine and talked to it; said: “Go out there on the flat and when it is dark burn like a camp fire, and talk as if there were a lot of people sitting by a fire. When you see Wus coming, go farther and farther, draw him away as far as the great water.”
The old woman cleaned up the blood, so Wus wouldn’t see that anything had been killed in the house; then she cooked a piece of meat and hid it under her blanket.