'My arrows are not like that,' answered the boy. 'They are only good for shooting birds;' but though he did not trust the man, he never guessed that his desire was to get Heart-stopper. They talked for some time longer, and at length the boy lost patience and cried out:
'You call yourself my uncle, yet you made away with my mother's friends. Now know that you will never make away with me like that.'
His words angered the one-eyed man, and, quick as lightning, they both held their arrows in their hands; but the boy was the quickest, and with the help of the dog, soon killed his enemy. Then he burned the body, and paddled on still further, never thinking that his mother at home was wondering why he did not come back.
At last he heard a voice calling to him. 'That is another bad man,' said he; but he paddled to the place where the sound came from, and found a cliff rising straight out of the water. In the middle of the cliff was an opening with a circle of red paint round it, and devil-clubs fastened to a ring which was driven into the rock.
'Come in! Come in!' cried the voice, and the boy entered and saw a woman there with a knife in each hand. He guessed who she was, and said to her:
'I have seen your husband;' but she took no heed of his words, and begged him again to enter and she would give him some food before he went on his way.
'I do not like that sort of food,' he answered as soon as he had seen it; and she exclaimed, 'Well! if you want to quarrel let us fight till one of us is killed.'
'Willingly!' replied the boy, and he heard her go to the rock at the entrance and sharpen the knives in her hands. When she had finished she threw one of them at him, but he jumped aside and it stuck in the stool where he had been sitting. Then he seized the knife and threw it at her, and it stuck in her heart and she died. He let her lie where she fell, and lifting his eyes he noticed with dismay that the hole at the end of the cave was quickly growing smaller and smaller. Hastily he snatched up some ermine skins that lay on the ground and tied two or three in his hair, and shrank himself till he managed to get into one of them, and squeezed through the entrance just before it closed entirely. Once out of the cave he shot some deer and brought them down in his canoe to his mother and his grandmother, who had spent their time in grieving over him and wondering if they would ever see him again.
'I am all right,' he said to them when he got home; 'and I have slain the people who put your friends to death.'