“Go away!” said the younger girl. “I will bring this to life.” She wrapped the bones up carefully and started down the mountain, her sister following.
When they got to their camp the elder said: “Let me have those bones; they are the bones of the man who killed us. I’ll pound them up and burn them.”
The younger sister didn’t listen to what the elder said. She got deer fat, rubbed the skeleton with it, and pushed some of the fat between the teeth. She worked over the skeleton all night. In the morning there was a little flesh on the bones; at midday the skeleton was a man again.
The younger sister fed him, and the elder gathered seeds for him, for she liked him now.
Cogátkis called to his mother: “I see two persons sitting in the shade while my elder sister gathers seeds.” The next morning he called to his mother: “The stranger is alone; both my sisters are gathering seeds.”
Isis drank water, then lay down and slept. While he was sleeping porcupines danced around him, and sang. The [[35]]sisters came at midday, and when the porcupines saw them coming they ran away.
The next morning the younger sister said to Isis: “This is the last day we can gather seeds near by. We must go farther up the mountain.”
When Isis was left alone, he fell asleep. The porcupines came and danced around him and sang, and each one’s song was: “Who can cut off my feet and hands and eat them?”
Isis woke up, struck the chief of the porcupines with his cane, killed him, cut off his feet and hands, pulled the quills out of his back and tied them up in ten bunches. He wanted to give the quills to his wives and his mother-in-law. Isis was well now, and could hunt for deer.
Soon the elder sister had a child. Isis stayed in the camp till the child was five days old; then he went out to hunt. He killed a deer, but he let it stay where it fell, for it wasn’t right to bring it home or say anything about it. The next day he killed two deer at a shot, left them and went home.