ADVENTURES OF COYOTE. 89 
and when he was right under the tree Coyote jumped upon him. It 
was but a short time until the horse threw Coyote off from his back, 
and when Coyote was down on the ground the horse kicked him under 
the jaws and went off. As Coyote was about to die, Mountain-Lion, 
who had been watching Coyote all the time, came up to see what was 
the matter with him, and when he came up to him he saw his jaws to 
one side. Mountain-Lion asked Coyote what he was laughing about, 
and asked him if he was able to kill another five-year-old horse. Coyote 
lay there for a long time before he was able to move. Finally he arose 
and decided to leave the place, never to return to it. As he was going 
along a small stream he heard some one up in a persimmon tree, and so 
he thought that he would go over and see who it was. He found 
Opossum in the persimmon tree eating persimmons. Coyote went 
under the tree and asked Opossum to throw down some persimmons to 
him. Opossum refused and laughed at Coyote and began to play with 
him. Opossum would take one persimmon and eat it, and then he would 
throw the seeds down to Coyote. Finally Coyote became angry at 
Opossum and wished he could get him down fromthe tree. Sometimes 
Opossum would get on a small limb of the tree, and then drop down as 
though he was going to fall to the ground, but he would always catch 
himself by wrapping his tail around the limb. He kept on doing this 
to torment Coyote for a long time, until he climbed out on a dry limb. 
He threw himself off the limb again and said to Coyote: ‘‘I am falling 
off, sure. JI am coming down,’’ and just as he let himself off of the 
limb it broke off and down came Opossum. Coyote was upon him and 
gave him a good beating, and then he left him todie. Opossum fooled 
Coyote, for he was not hurt at all, and when Coyote went away Opos- 
sum jumped up and climbed the persimmon tree again. After a while 
Coyote looked back to see if Opossum was dead. He could not see 
him, and so he went back and found that Opossum was gone. He 
looked up in the tree, and there he saw him laughing at him again. 
54. COYOTE ESCAPES AN IMAGINARY FOE.* 
One time Coyote went out hunting buffalo. While he was going 
through the timber he found Turkey up on the top of a talltree. He 
told Turkey that he was going to kill him if he did not get down from 
the tree. He said: ‘‘If you don’t come down I will climb the tree. 
If you fly to another tree, I will break it down at once, and will cer- 
tainly kill you; but if you fly toward the prairie I can not harm you, 
for I have no powers to kill anything on the prairie.’’ ‘Turkey believed 
* Told by Wing. 
7D 
