Then the Coyote considered a long time how he should tell the boy what fire is. “It is,” said he, “red like a flower, yet it is no flower; neither is it a beast, though it runs in the grass and rages in the wood and devours all. It is very fierce and hurtful, and stays not for asking; yet if it is kept among stones and fed with small sticks, it will serve the people well and keep them warm.”
“How is it to be come at?”
“It has its lair in the Burning Mountain; and the Fire Spirits guard it night and day. It is a hundred days’ journey from this place, and because of the jealousy of the Fire Spirits no man dare go near it. But I, because all beasts are known to fear it much, may approach it without hurt, and, it may be, bring you a brand from the burning. Then you must have strong runners for every one of the hundred days to bring it safely home.”
“I will go and get them,” said the boy; but it was not so easily done as said. Many there were who were slothful, and many were afraid; but the most disbelieved it wholly.
“For,” they said, “how should this boy tell us of a thing of which we have never heard!” But at last the boy and their own misery persuaded them.
The Coyote advised them how the march should begin. The boy and the counselor went foremost; next to them the swiftest runners, with the others following in the order of their strength, and speed. They left the place of their home and went over the high mountains where great jagged peaks stand up above the snow, and down the way the streams led through a long stretch of giant wood where the somber shade and the sound of the wind in the branches made them afraid. At nightfall, where they rested, one stayed in that place, and the next night another dropped behind; and so it was at the end of each day’s journey. They crossed a great plain where waters of mirage rolled over a cracked and parching earth, and the rim of the world was hidden in a bluish mist. So they came at last to another range of hills, not so high, but tumbled thickly together; and beyond these, at the end of the hundred days, to the Big Water, quaking along the sand at the foot of the Burning Mountain.
It stood up in a high and peaked cone, and the smoke of its burning rolled out and broke along the sky. By night the glare of it reddened the waves far out on the Big Water, when the Fire Spirits began their dance.
Then said the counselor to the boy who was soon to be called the Fire Bringer: “Do you stay here until I bring you a brand from the burning; be ready and right for running, and lose no time, for I shall be far spent when I come again, and the Fire Spirits will pursue me.”
the coyote stole the fire and began to run away with it down the slope of the burning mountain