A large court had been marked out on the ground, and the “antelope” was not allowed to go outside it, and the “hunters” tried to hem him in a corner; but when the “antelope,” to avoid being touched, ran out of court all the “hunters” got on their feet and chased him, and he who first pretended to cut him up with a knife became the “antelope.”
A general mêlée usually ensued, for every one pretended to cut him up with shouts of “a leg for me,” “head for me,” “some flesh for me.” The game excited much laughter, and all seemed to enjoy it thoroughly.
After the evening meal was over, and the men had lit their pipes and gone to hold high converse on politics, woman, and sundry other important matters, Bakula was called upon by the young men of the party to tell a story or two before they rolled themselves in their mats for the night.
Nothing loth, he told, with all his usual grace and sprightliness, the following story, perhaps suggested by the fact that they themselves were on a journey. He called it--
“How the Fox saved the Frog.”
“A Frog, having built a nice town, received a visit from several well-dressed young men. The Frog welcomed them, and they very civilly answered his greetings. The Frog asked them where they were going, and they replied: ‘We are not going anywhere in particular; we are just walking about visiting the towns.’ The Frog called out his thirty wives to come and pay their respects to the visitors, and they came out of their houses and greeted the young men.
“The wives asked their husband how he came to know them, and he replied: ‘I do not know them, but seeing them well dressed I saluted them.’
“‘Oh! you welcomed them because they are well dressed,’ they retorted; ‘yet ever since we married you we have never received any new cloths from you.’[[28]]
“‘Never mind,’ he said, ‘I am well known as a great chief who has built a whole town and married thirty wives.’
“‘Oh yes,’ they answered, ‘you are well known; but we work and farm, and have no cloths, only rags, hence you don’t respect us like those who are well dressed.’ The Frog was dumb.