233 
Then at one time, when he went off at random, he came to a wooded 
ravine and there saw a spring, and some good clay which looked exactly 
like vermilion. He took some, because he liked it, and placed it here and 
there on his coat, and on his head, thinking to himself that it was just as 
though he were painting his face. In that guise he went home. When he 
reached their dwelling, when he entered, and those women, his wife^s 
sisters, looked at him, at once they burst out laughing, and ^‘Goodness!” 
they said to him, “A strange sight, the way he gets himself full of blood, 
when he has killed all the game he likes!” they said to him, 
“Splendid! Splendid!” exclaimed the old man. 
The youth said, “I have not killed any kind of creature.” 
“Why, surely it was in killing some game that you got yourself all 
full of blood like this!” his wife told him. 
Then she took some water and washed his coat for him and his head. 
“A strange sight, the way he gets himself covered with blood!” she 
said. 
Then the old man went out of the tipi. 
“Come, come, my followers, make yourselves ready! Let us fetch 
meat from the killing! My son-in-law has killed a dam with her young!” 
cried the old man. 
At that they made ready. 
“Come, daughter, let my son-in-law show the way,” he said. 
Then that youth said, “I have not killed any kind of creature,” he 
told his wife. 
“But this,” she said to him, “where did you get it, this, which you 
call ‘clay,’ at the place to which you went?” his wife asked him; “And do 
you think we are human beings here?” she asked him. 
“Yes,” said that youth. 
“No,” his wife told him; “When you who dwell there below, say 
‘Thunderers,’ even such are we,” she told him; “That creature which they 
tell you you have slain, when you say ‘Great Serpent,’ such it is. That 
clay which you have brought from where it is, we call it that creature’s 
blood,” his wife told him. 
So then they set out, that mortal man leading them thither. All 
his wife’s sisters went with him. 
When they got there, his father-in-law said, “Now, daughter, take 
care of my son-in-law, that he be not frightened by those who are about 
to take up the game he has killed,” said he. 
Thereupon his wife picked him up; as if he were but a small creature 
she handled him, and placed him under her arm. 
At that, “No, they are not mortals!” he thought, as they all began to 
fly about; “And so they are Thunderers!” as his wife joined them, and 
there came a great rain, and the Thunderers roared loud, as if they were 
shooting some object, and the earth trembled much, as it seemed to him. 
When they had ceased their noise, and his wife took him forth, there he 
saw a Great Serpent and a small one. It seemed strange to him that they 
had got those creatures from the spring, when he saw them. 
“Daughter, take my son-in-law home,” said the old man. “It will not 
agree with him to look too long at these serpents,” was the old man’s 
thought. 
