298 THE MAIDU. 
seed and herbs; your rivers shall be full of salmon, and your hearts shall 
be rejoiced. Farewell.” 
Then he ceased speaking, and the two old men rose through the roof, 
and went up to the valley of heaven (hi-pi-ning’ koy-o-di'). Very soon the 
two boys who had kindled the fire were stricken with death; they lay still 
on the floor, and breathed no more. There was also a woman who had not 
restrained her curiosity, but had groped about the house, feeling with her 
hands, if perchance she might touch the two old men She also fell on the 
floor quickly and died. 
The people went out in the morning, and washed their bodies, and 
rejoiced. When the sun was up they took food and were glad. But at 
noon there fell fire out of the sun upon the village, and burned it up to the 
uttermost house, and all the villages of that land round about, and all the 
men, women, and children, save Piuchunnuh alone. He escaped because he 
covered his face with his hands when the fire was kindled by the two boys, 
but he was dreadfully burned, almost unto death. 
Now, long before all these things happened, there lived at Ush’-tu- 
ped-di (near Chico) a tribe of Indians whose chief was Ki-u-nad’-dis-si. 
But Hai’-kut-wo-to-peh, one of the two old men of the north, came down 
and gambled with him. They had four short pieces of bone, two plain and 
two marked. They rolled them up in little balls of dry grass; then one of 
the players held up one of them in each hand, and the other held up his. 
If he matched them, he counted two; if he failed to match them, the other 
counted one. There were sixteen bits of wood as counters, and when one 
got the sixteen he was winner. Haikutwotopeh used a trick; his arms were 
hollow, and there was a hole through his body, so that he could slip his 
pieces across from one hand to the other and win every time. Kiunaddissi 
wished to bet bows, arrows, shell-money, ete., as usual; but Haikutwoto- 
peh would not bet anything but men and women. So he won Kiunaddissi’s 
whole tribe from him, and carried them away to the north, to the ice-land. 
There remained only Kiunaddissi, his daughter, and an old woman. 
So Piuchunnuh went down to Ushtupeddi, and abode there, because 
they spoke the same language as himself. He taught them all the things 
