“Be sure you pull the bags out in two minutes,” said Lox. “I will go and hunt for some more buckskin.”
In two minutes the women raked out the fire, and found nothing but scraps of scorched leather and half-melted glass. Then they were very angry, and ran after the joker; but he had turned himself into a coon again and hidden in a hollow tree. When they had all gone back to their ruined work he came down and went on his mischievous way.
When he came out of the wood he saw a village by the side of a river. Outside one of the wigwams a woman was nursing a baby, and scolding it because it cried.
“What a lot of trouble children are,” said Lox. “What a pity that people don’t make men of them at once, instead of letting them take years to grow up.”
The woman stared. “How can a baby be turned into a man?” she asked.
“Oh, it’s easy enough,” said he. So she lent him her baby, and he took it down to the river and held it under the water for a few minutes, saying magical words all the time; and then a full-grown Indian jumped out of the water, with a feather head-dress, and beaded blankets, and a bow and quiver slung over his back.
“Wonderful! Wonderful!” said his mother, and she hurried back to the village to tell her friends the secret. The last thing Lox saw as he hurried away into the wood was a score of mothers drowning their children.
On the path in front of him Lox spied a couple of maidens, and they were trying to reach the fruit that grew on a wild plum-tree. The joker stepped on one side and broke a twig off another plum-tree and stuck it in his hair. The twig sprouted fast, and grew into a little plum-tree with big plums hanging from its twigs. He went along the path, picking and eating the plums as he walked, till he came up with the girls.
“Wonderful!” said they. “Do you think we could get plums like that?”
“Easily,” said he and he broke off two little twigs. “Stick these in your hair, and you will have head-dresses like mine.”