So they dwelt together thus until the next day. As soon as it was morning they sat together, because they constantly expected that at any moment the mother of the dead man would come in haste. Hence they lived as husband and wife, and the brother kept saying to his sister: “Be of good courage; you must do exactly as I tell you, for we must try to escape in order that we may live until we reach the distant place whence we two started.” [[670]]
When the sun had sunk low in the west the door flaps were thrust aside suddenly, and the old woman entered the lodge. They two who lived there were indeed husband and wife (in appearance). The old woman thereupon said: “Oh! I am exceedingly thankful that now for certain I have a daughter-in-law.” At this they two smiled.
The old woman said further: “I have misgivings in my mind, caused by the actions of your dogs. None of them will accept what I offer them for food. You should go there again to feed them, and you two might remain there once overnight.”
The young man replied: “So be it.” Just then the fire began to sing unexpectedly, and the fire spoke too, saying three times: “He, my friend, has killed me.” At this the old woman exclaimed: “Kyū-uʼ! It is frightful. It is an astonishing thing that is happening in the fireplace which you two have for yourselves; for it does not cease from saying: ‘My friend has killed me, there in your fire.’ ” The young man answered: “I do not know anything about the thing concerning which you are perplexed.” Reaching for an arrow, he scraped it, saying: “It is so that we two, I and my friend, use the fire for the scrapings from our arrows;” and thereupon he threw the scrapings into the fire. At once the voice from the fire pit exclaimed several times very rapidly: “My friend has killed me!” The young man again said: “We use the fire for the scrapings from our arrows.” The old woman exclaimed: “Kyū-uʼ. You two have no sense,” and she then departed. The young man said to her as she was leaving the lodge: “We will soon be there.”
When they were alone he said to his sister: “It is just as I have been saying right along: we two are about to meet our death.” He believed that she was in great fear, so he added, “Do you have courage; and do not let it appear that you fear anything.” Just as the sun sank low in the west they started for the place where stood the lodge of the old woman. They arrived there just before night. As they entered the lodge and sat down in the place where the friend of the young man was accustomed to sit they were surprised to see standing on one side a screech owl and on the other a horned owl. They were more distressed when the screech owl sang out, “It is another, it is another, it is another, it is another.” Then the old woman said: “Lo! This is happening all the time, and it gives me a troubled mind.” The young man answered her: “It is very strange that you pay any heed to the various notes of the screech owl,” and he said to the owl: “Here, this is what you eat,” giving it meat. It stopped uttering its warning notes and merely repeated its usual note thrice, saying, “Ho-ho-ho-wāʼ.”
Then all lay down for the night, and the brother and sister lay together in the place where the dead friend of the brother was accustomed to lie. All of a sudden the horned owl cried out: “Hi, [[671]]hi, hi, hi; he takes to wife his younger sister.” This it repeated thrice. At once the old woman arose, saying: “Why do you two not stop it constantly saying, ‘He takes to wife his younger sister.’ ” But the young man exclaimed: “Fie upon it! Why do you pay any attention to all the notes made by a common horned owl?” With these words he again gave it meat, which it greedily seized as he said to it: “Here, take this; it is what you eat.” As soon as it had finished eating the meat it resumed its regular note, “Hi, hi, hi, hi.” Then the young man said to his suspicious host: “So let it be; now lie down again.” However, the old woman continued to grow more and more suspicious, for she began to believe that something had perhaps happened to her son and that he was no longer alive. At midnight the brother said to his sister: “You must lie as still as possible and I, too, shall do the same; we must pretend to be asleep.” They at once began seemingly to snore, but of course they were not snoring; they did not know what the old woman would do should they fall asleep.
The old woman arose very stealthily while the notes of the owls continued, the screech owl saying, “It is another, it is another, it is another,” and the horned owl, “Hi, hi, hi, hi; he takes his younger sister to wife.” Creeping slowly over to the spot where the two were lying, and thrusting her hand under the coverings, the old woman made an examination of their private parts, after which she exclaimed: “Pshaw! Of course things are as they are with those who do as married people are accustomed.” Then she went back to her part of the lodge and again lay down.
In the morning the old woman prepared the morning meal, and all ate their breakfast. When they had finished eating the old woman said: “I have mysterious premonitions. I visited the place there where thy friend has kindled a fire, and it says continually, ‘My own friend has killed me; my own friend has killed me; my own friend has killed me.’ ” The young man replied: “Pshaw! It is foolish to pay any attention to that noise, for it is caused by our scraping arrows there.” As he spoke he got his arrow and began scraping it, and cast the litter into the fire, whereupon the fire said several times, “My own friend has killed me.” He added, “Now cease paying any attention to such idle things.” The old woman replied, “So be it, as you say.”
Then the young man said: “Oh, mother! We two will now go back to the other place. I said that of a certainty we would remain here only one night, and perhaps now my brother-in-law is anxious about us.” The old woman replied: “So let it be as you have spoken.” He answered: “In two days we two will return again.” So they started for their home, where they arrived all right. Then the young man said to his sister: “The only thing left for us [[672]]to do is to make preparations to escape. You shall take the lead and I will remain, and I shall overtake you if it so be that I shall survive.”
The brother then drew from under the couch whereon he was accustomed to lie a small case and took therefrom a very small black dog and a little rod of red willow. He used the rod to tap lightly the dog, which immediately began to grow in size. At first he said: “It is not yet large enough,” although the dog was then of the size of ordinary dogs. So he tapped it again and it continued to grow and had now reached the size of the largest kind of dogs. Yet he said: “Still I do not think the dog is large enough, for it is not yet large enough for you to ride astride of it;” so he tapped it with still other blows, which caused it to grow in size. It had become at last a very large dog.