Not far from Knekuks lived a woman and her little grandson, the last one left of her kin. The boy often wanted to go to the village, but his grandmother said: “You are too small; you might get lost, or those people might kill you. They killed your father and mother.”
One day the boy started off without saying anything to his grandmother. When she found that he had gone, she cried and felt badly. Tusasás lived in the village; he saw the boy and said: “I will take that little fellow for a servant; he can bring water for me.”
“Keep still,” said Blaiwas; “you talk too much.”
The man who killed the boy’s father was there; he said: “That boy has come to see me. Maybe he wants to kill me.” He was making fun of him.
The boy went into each house to find out what people would say to him. Some were sorry for him; others drove him away. When he went home, his grandmother said: “Those people are waiting for you to grow up a little; then they will kill you.”
After the first time, he went away every evening. One evening he saw, on the trail, an old dry spear of tula grass. He stepped on it and broke it; the spear screamed out, just as a person does when hurt. The boy stepped off from it quickly, and said: “Well, well, I never heard anything of this kind scream before.” He picked up the pieces of grass. That minute he fell down. The grass made him fall; it was the spirit of a skoks. [[367]]
The boy lost his mind and was almost dead. He thought the spirit said: “You have broken my back; now I want you to fix me and use me for a cane. If you meet enemies, use me against them.”
When the boy got back his mind, his mouth was bloody. It is always that way when a child is going to be a doctor. (Medicines sometimes travel evenings to meet young boys.) He got up and went home.
When his grandmother saw him, she was scared; she said: “I don’t like to see you this way. Doctors are killed as well as men who fight; you won’t live long if you are this kind.”
That night the boy dreamed that the tula cane told him how to make a regular medicine cane. He made the cane, and the next time he went to the village he took it with him. It was stronger than the tula grass cane.