And the fourth woman answered: “This is the skull of my sister-in-law. You should not be disrespectful. I will carry it along so that you shall respect it.”
The women wore a skin belted in at the waist, making a skirt of one part, and leaving the other long enough to cover the back and to draw over the head, and the last woman put it between her back and the blanket, saying: “I shall carry it.”
But after a time she wearied of carrying it, and she put it down by the roadside in a place where no one would molest it. But the skull followed them, singing:—
“There were four women passing along here. One of them is my sister-in-law.”
The women heard it singing, and ran. When they camped for the night the skull came up and destroyed the first woman. It bit her and she died.
When the three women awoke and found one dead, they fled from the skull, but it followed, singing:—
“There were four women passing along here. One of them is my sister-in-law.”
They ran away from it and camped for the night, but when they awoke in the morning they found another woman had been killed by the skull, so again they fled, but again they heard it singing:—
“There were four women passing along here. One of them is my sister-in-law.”
Next morning only one woman awoke, and the skull came up to her and said:—