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*‘Yah, my grandchild, if you find the buffalo-dung which lies by the 
grove, if you find it, I shall be able to bring you back. That is where this 
Sky is pierced, and whence your husband always makes his way,^’ she told 
her; “Look for it,” she told her. 
And so she went out and looked for it. It did not take her long to 
find it. She went to see her grandmother. 
“Grandmother, I have found it!” the old woman was told by her 
granddaughter. 
“Now, grandchild, I can help you to escape. Take this,” she told her, 
giving her her rawhide thong, “and tie it, later, to a tree. But first you 
will make a nest in which you and your son will sit,” she told her; “And 
then, later, when my rawhide thong is too short, it will stretch,” her grand- 
mother told her; “Then when you reach yon earth of yours, you will untie 
that in which you will be riding. ‘Grandmother, here is your rawhide 
thongT you will say. You will fling it aloft towards this place. Then it 
will come falling here,” she told her. 
So she went away, first to make the nest. 
The Sun by this time knew that his wife intended to go away ; already 
he felt the grief of it. But he had not yet completed his circuit of this 
earth. 
Then when the woman had made the thong and had tied it to a tree, 
and had let herself down by the rope, even though it proved too short, the 
rawhide thong each time stretched to new length. 
By this time the Sun had finished his roundabout course. He went 
to the place from which his wife had let herself down. He took up a stone. 
“Now then, I shall at least turn the joke on my wife!” he said of her, 
standing close to that opening; “Now then, let this stone come down upon 
my wife’s head! Let me not by chance injure Sun-Child, my son!” he said, 
as he let go the stone. 
Thereupon he went home and into the lodge. 
“My son, have you found where my daughter-in-law has gone?” 
“Yes, I have found her tracks, where she went on her homeward way,” 
he answered him. 
“Why! I wonder if really she will succeed in bringing my grandchild 
safely to her home!” he said to him. 
“Yes!” 
When early morning had come, just as the woman was about to 
alight from her fall, even than that stone overtook her. It came down on 
her head. The rawhide thong broke; she fell upon the bare ground; she 
was killed by her fall. 
There she lay. The child stayed there, sucking from time to time at 
her breast, even though his mother had died. He did not know that his 
mother was dead, but kept playing about that place where his mother lay. 
For a long time, in the end, he was there. In time his mother’s body began 
to decay where it lay. 
Then at one time, as he went about at his play, he found the place 
where dwelt a certain little old woman, and he saw her little garden, where 
in a small way she raised different plants. The child did not know what 
they were, but merely would play round there, pulling up the little plants 
and playing with them, not eating them, but at purposeless play. When 
he had gone back to where his mother was, only then would the old woman 
