The young man began to sing the song he had heard the gamblers sing at the swimming place. The song made every [[262]]one happy. It sounded like many persons singing. It was beautiful, but nobody could learn it. Blaiwas had the girl brought on a gambling plate and put down with her face turned to the wall. When she looked over her shoulder at the gamblers, she saw Kalaslákkas and looked at him so long that her eyes ached.
Before midday he had won back half of all Blaiwas and his men had lost. When they stopped to rest, he said: “No one on either side can eat meat or fish till we are through gambling.”
While the gamblers were resting, the young man went home. His grandmother said: “Take some good smelling leaves and put in your nose, so you won’t smell what the women are cooking, for it isn’t long since you were at the swimming places and traveling on the mountains. Every morning, while you are gambling, you must go, before the sun is up, and swim in the lake.”
When they began to gamble again, Ndukis said to the chief: “You should drive Tusasás away. If he makes Kalaslákkas mad, we shall be naked again. You don’t know what kind of a man he is. He has been to all the swimming places on the mountains.”
They gambled all night. Kalaslákkas won every game. The next day he said to Blaiwas: “My swimming place said that just before midday you must say to me: ‘Now be strong. Be like the chief of gamblers’!”
At midday the chief said: “My nephew, you must be strong; you must be like the chief of gamblers at the swimming place.”
Those words frightened Kumal’s people. Tusasás looked through an opening, and called out: “He can’t do more than I can!” Men ran after him, drove him away, and said: “You will lose your life if you meddle with that man. His grandmother can do anything.”
At dark they stopped playing. Kumal’s people were naked; they had lost everything they had.
Old Kletcowas and his five sons were ashamed. The eldest said: “I don’t want any one to have our nice things; we will [[263]]bet our sister. If Kalaslákkas wins her, we will get everything back.”
The old man said: “That is what our girls are for;” then he said to Blaiwas: “I want that young man to play for my daughter. If he wins her he can have her for a wife.”