Old Indian Legends | Page 5

called for help. "He! What sound is it that makes my ear ache!"
exclaimed Iktomi, holding a hand on his ear.
He rose and looked around. The squeaking came from the tree. Then he
began climbing the tree to find the disagreeable sound. He placed his
foot right on a cracked limb without seeing it. Just then a whiff of wind
came rushing by and pressed together the broken edges. There in a
strong wooden hand Iktomi's foot was caught.
"Oh! my foot is crushed!" he howled like a coward. In vain he pulled
and puffed to free himself.
While sitting a prisoner on the tree he spied, through his tears, a pack of
gray wolves roaming over the level lands. Waving his hands toward
them, he called in his loudest voice, "He! Gray wolves! Don't you come
here! I'm caught fast in the tree so that my duck feast is getting cold.
Don't you come to eat up my meal."
The leader of the pack upon hearing Iktomi's words turned to his
comrades and said:
"Ah! hear the foolish fellow! He says he has a duck feast to be eaten!
Let us hurry there for our share!" Away bounded the wolves toward
Iktomi's lodge.
From the tree Iktomi watched the hungry wolves eat up his nicely

browned fat ducks. His foot pained him more and more. He heard them
crack the small round bones with their strong long teeth and eat out the
oily marrow. Now severe pains shot up from his foot through his whole
body. "Hin-hin-hin!" sobbed Iktomi. Real tears washed brown streaks
across his red-painted cheeks. Smacking their lips, the wolves began to
leave the place, when Iktomi cried out like a pouting child, "At least
you have left my baking under the ashes!"
"Ho! Po!" shouted the mischievous wolves; "he says more ducks are to
be found under the ashes! Come! Let us have our fill this once!"
Running back to the dead fire, they pawed out the ducks with such rude
haste that a cloud of ashes rose like gray smoke over them.
"Hin-hin-hin!" moaned Iktomi, when the wolves had scampered off.
All too late, the sturdy breeze returned, and, passing by, pulled apart
the broken edges of the tree. Iktomi was released. But alas! he had no
duck feast.

IKTOMI'S BLANKET

IKTOMI'S BLANKET
ALONE within his teepee sat Iktomi. The sun was but a handsbreadth
from the western edge of land.
"Those, bad, bad gray wolves! They ate up all my nice fat ducks!"
muttered he, rocking his body to and fro.
He was cuddling the evil memory he bore those hungry wolves. At last
he ceased to sway his body backward and forward, but sat still and stiff
as a stone image.
"Oh! I'll go to Inyan, the great-grandfather, and pray for food!" he
exclaimed.

At once he hurried forth from his teepee and, with his blanket over one
shoulder, drew nigh to a huge rock on a hillside.
With half-crouching, half-running strides, he fell upon Inyan with
outspread hands.
"Grandfather! pity me. I am hungry. I am starving. Give me food.
Great-grandfather, give me meat to eat!" he cried. All the while he
stroked and caressed the face of the great stone god.
The all-powerful Great Spirit, who makes the trees and grass, can hear
the voice of those who pray in many varied ways. The hearing of Inyan,
the large hard stone, was the one most sought after. He was the
great-grandfather, for he had sat upon the hillside many, many seasons.
He had seen the prairie put on a snow-white blanket and then change it
for a bright green robe more than a thousand times.
Still unaffected by the myriad moons he rested on the everlasting hill,
listening to the prayers of Indian warriors. Before the finding of the
magic arrow he had sat there.
Now, as Iktomi prayed and wept before the great-grandfather, the sky
in the west was red like a glowing face. The sunset poured a soft
mellow light upon the huge gray stone and the solitary figure beside it.
It was the smile of the Great Spirit upon the grandfather and the
wayward child.
The prayer was heard. Iktomi knew it. "Now, grandfather, accept my
offering; 'tis all I have," said Iktomi as he spread his half-worn blanket
upon Inyan's cold shoulders. Then Iktomi, happy with the smile of the
sunset sky, followed a footpath leading toward a thicketed ravine. He
had not gone many paces into the shrubbery when before him lay a
freshly wounded deer!
"This is the answer from the red western sky!" cried Iktomi with hands
uplifted.
Slipping a long thin blade from out his belt, he cut large chunks of

choice meat. Sharpening some willow sticks, he planted them around a