Each night and morning the old woman rubbed the little boy with deer’s fat, and soon he was large enough to run around and play. Then she said to him: “My grandson, you mustn’t show yourself; you must always play in the tall grass; never go away from it!” [[100]]
Tekewas came every day; sometimes she wanted to stay, but her mother drove her off. When the boy was large enough to trap birds, his grandmother said: “Stay near the house; don’t go far, for if you do, you will get killed.” One evening she asked: “What have you been doing all day?”
“Playing with birds,” said the boy. “They can talk to me now.”
“The best way to play is with a bow and arrows. You can shoot an arrow toward the sky, then watch and see where it falls.”
One day the boy noticed that his shadow was two, and he was one. The next morning, when he went out to play, he shot an arrow up to the sky; then he held his head down and listened. The arrow came back, hit him on the top of the head and split off one half of him; there was another boy just like him. He wished the second boy to be small, to be a baby. He called the baby by his own name. He went to a clump of brush, scratched a place in the middle of it, put his blanket down there, put the baby on it, and said: “Don’t cry; if you do, our aunt will come and eat us up.”
For a long time he sat and talked with his little brother, then he went home. It was night and his grandmother was frightened; she thought that Tekewas had killed the boy.
“Why did you stay so long?” asked she.
“I lost my blanket. I put it down in the brush and then couldn’t find it.”
The next morning his grandmother gave him a wildcat skin blanket, and he went out to play; but he didn’t play, he sat by his little brother and cried, he was so sorry for him. When it was dark, he covered the child with brush and went home. “What is the matter?” asked his grandmother. “Why have you been crying?”
“I shot at a bird and then couldn’t find my arrow.”