“I wouldn’t walk so slowly,” said Wus, “if they had said they would come. The father and brother are willing, but those girls hate you.”
“I wonder why they hate me. I can be a man. See.”
He pulled off two blankets and became a nice-looking man.
“I am a man. I shall never stay old; each year I shall be young again. They will grow old and die, but I shall always be young.” He stuck his flutes up in the ground and hung on them the blankets he had taken off.
Wus said in his heart: “He is awful mad. It is too bad to kill such nice-looking girls. I am sorry for them.”
The girls grew sleepy; they wanted to sleep all the time. Old Djáudjau said to them: “You haven’t done as your brother asked you to. Now trouble is coming to us. Go off and sleep in the bushes. Stay by yourselves.”
When the girls were asleep, Wus made lots of Wámanik’s kin and hung them on the bushes where the girls were sleeping. He had power and he did this by wishing hard. The eldest sister dreamed of snakes; when she woke up and saw them, she screamed.
Her brother called out: “Why don’t you keep still? What do you make such a noise for? You don’t let us sleep. If dreams frighten you, go off into the woods and jump around [[237]]and scream. You have had your own way; now when trouble comes you must show us what you can do.”
Every time the sisters fell asleep, they dreamed of snakes, and when they woke up there were snakes all around them. They were terribly scared.
The next morning the young man said to his father: “I want to go and see my cousin, Wûlkûtska. I don’t want to stay where my sisters are. I don’t like them any longer.”