The talk soon went around that Coyote-Jim was claiming some money. It was told us that he was going to make the boy’s mother’s father pay fifteen dollars. “That’s my price,” he said. “I won’t do anything to the boy, for he isn’t worth it. Nobody paid for his mother. Also, I won’t charge him much. But his mother’s people are well-to-do, and they will have to pay this amount that I name. Otherwise, I will be mad.” As a matter of fact, he was afraid to do anything, for he, himself, was afraid of the soldiers at Húpa. He just made big talk. Besides, what he wanted was a headband ornamented with whole woodpecker heads, that the boy’s grandfather owned. He thought he could make the old man give it up, on account of what his grandson had said.
The boy went around, hollering to everybody. “I don’t have to pay,” he said. “I heard everybody saying things like that! How did I know that they only did it during that one day? Besides, look at me! Look at my shirt. Look at my pants.” He showed them his straw hat. “Look at my hat! I am just like a white man. I can say anything I please. I don’t have to care what I say.”
Every day somebody came along the river, telling us the news. There was a big quarrel going on. I was camped at that time, with my daughter, above Metá, picking acorns. All the acorns were bad that year—little, and twisted, and wormy. Even the worms were little and kind of shriveled that year. That place above Metá was the only place where the acorns were good. Lots of people were camped there. Some paid for gathering acorns there. My aunt had married into a house at Metá, the house they call Wóogi, “In-the-middle-House,” so I didn’t have to pay anything. People used to come up from the river to where we acorn pickers were camped, to talk about the news. They told us the boy’s mother’s people were trying to make some people at Smith River pay. “He’s the son of one of their men,” the old grandfather said. “They’ve got to pay for the words he spoke. I don’t have to pay.” The thing dragged on. Three weeks later they told us the old man wouldn’t pay yet.
Somebody died at the old man’s house that fall. The people were getting ready to have a funeral. The graveyard for that house called Héthlqau, in Wáhsek, is just outside the house door. They went into that kämethl, in that corpse-place, what you whites call a cemetery. They dug a hole and had it ready. They were singing “crying-songs” in that house where the person had died.
Tuley-Creek Jim’s brother-in-law was traveling down the river in a canoe. When he got to Wáhsek he heard “crying-songs.” “Somebody has died up there,” they told him. “We better stop! No use trying to go by. We better go ashore till the burial is over.” Tuley-Creek Jim’s brother-in-law did not want to stop. “They owe some money to my wife’s brother,” he said. “One of their people said something to Jim. They don’t pay up. Why should I go ashore?” So they all paddled down to the landing-place. They started to go past, going down river. A young fellow at the landing-place grabbed their canoe. “You got to land here,” he said. “My aunt’s people are having a funeral. It ain’t right for anybody to go by in a canoe.” The people in the canoe began to get mad. They pushed on the bottom with their paddles. The canoe swung around. Coyote-Jim’s brother-in-law stood up. He was pretty mad. They had got his shirt wet. He waved his paddle around. He hollered. He got excited.
One of the men on the bank was Billy Brooks, from the mouth of the river. “Hey! You fellow-living-with-a-woman-you-haven’t-paid-for!” he said to Billy Brooks, “make these fellows let go of my canoe.”
Billy was surprised. He hadn’t been holding the canoe. And anyway, he did not expect to be addressed that way. “Läs-son” is what he had heard addressed to him. That means “half-married, or improperly married, to a woman in the house by the trail.” Brooks had had no money to pay for a wife, so he went to live with his woman instead of taking her home to him. That is what we call being half-married. Everybody called Billy that way, behind his back. “Half-married-into-the-house-by-the-trail” was his name.
When Billy got over being surprised at this form of address, he got mad. He pointed at the fellow in the canoe. He swore the worst way a person can swear. What he said was awful. He pointed at him. He was mad clear through. He didn’t care what he said. “Your deceased relatives,” is what he said to Coyote-Jim’s brother-in-law, in the canoe. He said it right out loud. He pointed at the canoe. That’s the time he said “Your deceased relatives.” “All your deceased relatives,” he said to those in the canoe.
Coyote-Jim’s brother-in-law sat down in the canoe. Nobody tried to stop the canoe after that. The canoe went down river. Billy Brooks went up to the house. He waited. After a while the people there buried that person who was dead, and the funeral was over. “I’ve got to pay money,” Billy Brooks said to them then. “I got mad and swore something terrible at Coyote-Jim’s brother-in-law. That was on account of you people. If you had paid what you owed to Coyote-Jim, Coyote-Jim’s brother-in-law wouldn’t have gone past your house while you were crying, and you wouldn’t have held his canoe, and he wouldn’t have addressed me as he did, and I wouldn’t have said what I did. Moreover, Wóhkel Dave was in the canoe, and when I said that which I said, it applied to him, too. I feel terrible mean about what I said. I’ve got to have trouble with both those men. There were others in the canoe, too, but they are poor people, and don’t amount to anything. But Dave is a rich man. Now all this trouble is on your account, and you’ve got to pay me two dollars and a half.”
The old man at Wáhsek was in trouble. “First my mouse says to Coyote-Jim what should not in any case have been said,” the old man complained. (We call illegitimate children “mice,” because they eat, and stay around, and nobody has paid for them.) “Now on account of what my mouse said, all this other trouble has happened.”