“What have you been crying about?” asked Kówe.
“I have lost my arrow.”
“You shouldn’t cry about that. I can make you all the arrows you want.”
The next morning, when the boy was going off to play, Kówe said: “You must not go far, or stay long; I am lonesome when you are gone.”
The boy didn’t like Kówe now. He felt sorry for his father and mother; he didn’t want to play. He went where the Kówe people were gambling with sticks and watched them. He grew fast. After a while men taught him to gamble; then he wanted to gamble all the time.
Kówe said: “You should stay at home. It isn’t right to gamble every day.”
But the boy wouldn’t listen to her; he was thinking: “When I win enough, I will go away from here.”
Kówe sat by and boasted: “You can’t beat my son; you can’t beat my son! He is the best gambler in the world!”
Soon Swaiä won all the beads and shells the people had; then he stole away in the night, left the Kówe people. While he was going along the river, he saw Tcoóks. The old man sat by the water trying to catch fish with a flint-pointed spear. Swaiä shouted to him; called him “Uncle.” Just as he shouted, a big fish got away from the spear.
“You are not my nephew,” said Tcoóks. He was cross, for he had lost the fish. He wouldn’t talk with Swaiä; he got up and went off toward the hill.