When night came they lay down to sleep. In the morning, after their morning meal, the two again went forth to hunt. After a long tramp they reached a place in which they saw many deer. At once the younger brother began to shout loudly in order to frighten the deer, so that they would run away from him, and he would have the opportunity of overtaking them. Hearing his outcries, the deer fled from him, and the youth pursued them. By midday he had overtaken and killed six deer.
As he was returning to his camp, he was surprised to hear the voice of a man speaking to him, saying, “Verily, is it not you who are fleet of foot and swift on the course?” Looking around, the now frightened youth saw at one side an opening—a roadway, as it were, through the forest—and standing in this roadway at some distance he saw a man, or what he took to be a man, gazing at him. Boastingly the youth replied, “It is certainly true that I am fleet-footed.” Then the strange man, or what the youth took to be a man, said: “I will run a race with you. You keep saying at all times and places that there is no one able to outfoot you, so let us make an agreement to run a race with certain conditions tomorrow. At midday we shall meet here in this place; right here. And we will agree to wager our lives on the issue of the race. One of the conditions of the race must be that I shall follow you for two days. When we start let us be as far apart as we are now—the distance from the spot where you are standing to this place where I stand. You shall choose the direction that we shall take in the race, whether we shall camp for the night, or not. When you decide that we shall camp for the night, you must say, ‘We will camp for the night’; and where you stop you shall make a mark from which you shall start in the morning, and then you can go aside to camp for the night. And there you may kindle a fire and prepare any food that you may have with you (said sneeringly).”
Then the youth who was swift of foot answered: “I agree to your proposition, and if at the end of two days you do not overtake me, then I shall pursue you.”
Then the strange man rejoined, “We have now come to an agreement on this matter, and you must tell your elder brother of it.” The fleet-footed youth replied, “Let it be so; I will tell it to my elder brother.” Thereupon the strange man admonished the youth, saying, “You must not fail in the least to be here just at midday tomorrow, and we shall stand here again.” Then the youth, answering, said, “So [[497]]let it be,” and he started for the place where stood the temporary camp of his elder brother and himself.
When he arrived there he found his brother at home. As soon as his elder brother looked at him he said, “You look very dejected; possibly you are ill.” The younger brother said: “I am not at all ill. Perhaps the reason why I am looking as I do is that I saw a strange man, who said to me, ‘Are you the person who keeps on saying “I am swift of foot?” ’ I replied that I am the person. Thereupon the stranger said, ‘I will run you a race just to test your words. So tomorrow when the sun will be at midday here in this very place you and I must again stand, and from this place you and I must start.’ Moreover, he told me that I must inform you, my elder brother. So I have now informed you.” And he continued to sit with his head bowed as if in deep trouble.
Then the elder brother said: “Oh! my younger brother, you and I are brothers, and we are about to die because of your doing that which I have frequently forbidden you doing, namely, your continually saying, ‘I am fleet-footed.’ I kept saying to you that your talking thus would bring us misfortune. Now that form of talking has this day severed our minds one from the other.” Thereupon the elder brother began to shed tears of bitter grief, saying between paroxysms of weeping: “Perhaps that thing with which you have made an agreement to run a foot race with your life as a wager is not at all a human being. Verily, no one knows of what abominable species of monsters it comes.”
Seemingly undismayed, the younger brother replied, “Oh! my elder brother, now you must make me two pairs of moccasins, and I shall take with me also two ears of parched corn, which I shall place in my bosom.” So the elder brother sat up the entire night to make the two pairs of moccasins which his younger brother required in his race on the morrow.
In the morning the two brothers conversed together. The elder said: “When you start away I shall go to notify our friends in their encampment; for perhaps the person with whom you are to run a foot race is not a human being. Perhaps, too, you are about to die, so you and I may be now talking together for the last time.” Then they parted there.
The younger brother went to the place where he had agreed to be at midday for the beginning of the two days’ foot race. In due time he arrived at the spot, and he was surprised to see standing there the strange man who had challenged him to the race, and who now addressing him said, “Now, truly, you have arrived on time.” In reply Hayanowe (“He-the-Fleet-footed”) said, “I have arrived all right, and I am ready for the race.” To this the stranger answered, [[498]]“Come, now, which way shall we go?” The youth then said, “So let it be. We will go toward the east—toward the sunrise.” The strange man replied, “Come on then. Get ready; and when you are ready you must say, ‘Come now; I am ready.’ ”
In a short time the youth said, “Come on now; I am ready.” Then the two started on a run. The youth Hayanowe struck a steady gait. When the sun was at the meridian, and again when it was midway between noon and sunset, the strange man urged his youthful competitor, saying, “Exert yourself, my friend.” These admonitions caused the youth some perturbations of spirit; he even feared for his life; so he put forth his topmost speed and ran swiftly until nearly sunset, when the standing trees gave out loud sounds, which seemed to come as the result of a force which struck them hard. Thereupon the youth heard the strange man shout to him, “Exert yourself, my friend; I will overtake you indeed.”