“I will do just as I have done,” said Kéis. “If I get mad, I will kill people by throwing out sickness.”
“If you do, you will be hated, and you will always be in trouble,” said Wéwenkee. And he begged hard for Kéis to put away sickness. “You are my nephew,” said he; “you should do as I say. I am a chief, too. I am sorry for the people who are to come, and you ought to think of them. Let us put sickness back in our bodies, and never use it unless this earth tells us to. It won’t be long that we shall be persons; soon we shall live under rocks and in holes in the ground. When the people to come take our places, they will hate you. I am sorry for your little brother. I would go away now, but [[65]]I don’t want to be changed till some one comes to tell me what I shall be.”
So Wéwenkee talked to his nephew, and at last Kéis took off all his sicknesses and tied them up in a bundle. He put the bundle in his quiver, and said: “I will only take these out when people abuse me.” Then he told his brother to come in.
“My little nephew,” said Wéwenkee, “those Gletcówas can turn to anything; sometimes they are fish and sometimes they are bugs or ticks. You might catch one of them and think that you were holding him in your hand, but he would be gone. You can remember better than Kéis; that is why I tell you about those brothers. Sometimes they are large animals, sometimes they are a straw on a trail, or a stump of burnt wood, or lice. Often, in the night, they are wind; or they are mole hills for men to fall over. I can’t tell you all that they turn to. I know they are going to kill your brother, for he has tried to kill them.” Then he said to Kéis: “Stand up.” When his nephew stood up, Wéwenkee turned him around, looked at him on every side, and said: “I don’t like any part of your skin, and your mind is mean. What part of my skin do you like?”
Kéis said: “I like the spots on your breast and the gloss on your body.”
“Lie down,” said Wéwenkee, “and cover yourself up and sleep all day; then maybe your mind will be better and you won’t get mad so easily.” He told him over and over not to open the bundle of sickness, then he told Snoútiss to watch Kéis, and if he started to untie the bundle to come and tell him. He said: “Nobody will be able to kill sickness; your brother has spoiled the world. In later times we may have no mind, but we may want to go near houses. People will hate Kéis, but they will say: ‘His uncle was chief before we came,’ and they will know that I won’t hurt them.”
Kéis slept till night, then he woke up and sent his brother for water. “I wonder why he sent me for water when there was water in the house,” thought Snoútiss, and he hurried back and looked in at the smoke hole. Kéis was sitting by the fire, untying his bundle. When he heard Snoútiss on the [[66]]top of the house, he tied up the bundle and pulled his blanket around him.
“What were you doing?” asked Snoútiss.
“I was covering myself up.”
“I know what you were doing,” said the boy; “you were letting out sickness. Our uncle told you never to untie that bundle.”