The girl in the bright star found herself in a servant’s home, and was obliged to do all manner of work and to become the servant’s wife. This star had been nearer the earth, and so it had seemed to be the larger and brighter star. When this girl found that her friend had gone to a beautiful star and become the wife of a chief, with plenty of servants to wait upon her, and that she was never permitted to do any work, she cried and cried because the change in her own condition seemed more cruel, and she was even obliged to live with a servant.
The girls were still friends and often met in the clouds and went out to gather wild turnips, but the chief’s wife could never dig, her friend was always obliged to serve her. Whenever they started out an old man would say to them:—
“When you dig a turnip, you must strike with the hoe once, then pull up the turnip. Never, by any means, strike twice.” After going to gather turnips many times and receiving always this same instruction the chief’s wife grew curious, and one day she said to her friend:
“Why is it, they tell us to strike but once? To-day when you dig that turnip I wish you to strike twice. Let us see why they allow us to strike but once.”
The servant struck once with the hoe and took up the turnip, then, as commanded, she struck with her hoe again in the same place. Behold a hole! She leaned forward and looked down. She saw her home. She cried to her friend. “Look! I can see through the clouds. See! there is our home.”
The chief’s wife looked also, and she saw the village and her home. The girls sat looking through the hole, and they longed to go home, and they sat weeping. An old man chanced to pass by, and he saw them and stopped and asked:—
“What is the matter? What are you crying about?”
And they answered, “Because we can see our home. We are so far away, we wish to be there, but we can never get there.”
The old man passed on. He went to the chief and he told him that the girls sat weeping because they could see their home, and they wanted to go back to the earth.
The chief then called all his people together, and he sent them away to find all the lariats[[5]] that they could.