“Big-Fat was the voice of God, but he took Broken-Rib and made him into a priest, so that he became the voice of Big-Fat and did most of his talking for him.  And both had other men to be servants to them.  So, also, did Little-Belly and Three-Legs and Pig-Jaw have other men to lie in the sun about their grass houses and carry messages for them and give commands.  And more and more were men taken away from work, so that those that were left worked harder than ever before.  It seemed that men desired to do no work and strove to seek out other ways whereby men should work for them.  Crooked-Eyes found such a way.  He made the first fire-brew out of corn.  And thereafter he worked no more, for he talked secretly with Dog-Tooth and Big-Fat and the other masters, and it was agreed that he should be the only one to make fire-brew.  But Crooked-Eyes did no work himself.  Men made the brew for him, and he paid them in money.  Then he sold the fire-brew for money, and all men bought.  And many strings of money did he give Dog-Tooth and Sea-Lion and all of them.

“Big-Fat and Broken-Rib stood by Dog-Tooth when he took his second wife, and his third wife.  They said Dog-Tooth was different from other men and second only to God that Big-Fat kept in his taboo house, and Dog-Tooth said so, too, and wanted to know who were they to grumble about how many wives he took.  Dog-Tooth had a big canoe made, and, many more men he took from work, who did nothing and lay in the sun, save only when Dog-Tooth went in the canoe, when they paddled for him.  And he made Tiger-Face head man over all the guards, so that Tiger-Face became his right arm, and when he did not like a man Tiger-Face killed that man for him.  And Tiger-Face, also, made another man to be his right arm, and to give commands, and to kill for him.

“But this was the strange thing:  as the days went by we who were left worked harder and harder, and yet did we get less and less to eat.”

“But what of the goats and the corn and the fat roots and the fish-trap?” spoke up Afraid-of-the-Dark, “what of all this?  Was there not more food to be gained by man’s work?”

“It is so,” Long-Beard agreed.  “Three men on the fish-trap got more fish than the whole tribe before there was a fish-trap.  But have I not said we were fools?  The more food we were able to get, the less food did we have to eat.”

“But was it not plain that the many men who did not work ate it all up?” Yellow-Head demanded.

Long-Beard nodded his head sadly.

“Dog-Tooth’s dogs were stuffed with meat, and the men who lay in the sun and did no work were rolling in fat, and, at the same time, there were little children crying themselves to sleep with hunger biting them with every wail.”

Deer-Runner was spurred by the recital of famine to tear out a chunk of bear-meat and broil it on a stick over the coals.  This he devoured with smacking lips, while Long-Beard went on: