And when he went for the horse in the morning, he found with him a beautiful white gelding, much more handsome than any horse in the tribe.  That night the dun horse told the boy to take him again to the place behind the big hill, and to come for him the next morning; and when the boy went for him again, he found with him a beautiful black gelding.  And so for ten nights, he left the horse among the hills, and each morning he found a different coloured horse, a bay, a roan, a gray, a blue, a spotted horse, and all of them finer than any horses that the Pawnees had ever had in their tribe before.

Now the boy was rich, and he married the beautiful daughter of the Head Chief, and when he became older he was made Head Chief himself.  He had many children by his beautiful wife, and one day when his oldest boy died, he wrapped him in the spotted calf robe and buried him in it.  He always took good care of his old grandmother, and kept her in his own lodge until she died.  The dun horse was never ridden except at feasts, and when they were going to have a doctors’ dance, but he was always led about with the Chief wherever he went.  The horse lived in the village for many years, until he became very old.  And at last he died.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 7:  From “Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk Tales.”  Copyright, 1890, by George Bird Grinnell; published by Charles Scribner’s Sons.]

XVII

THE GREEDY YOUNGSTER

Once upon a time there were five women who were in a field reaping corn.  None of them had any children, but they were all wishing for a child.  All at once they found a big goose egg, almost as big as a man’s head.

“I saw it first,” said one.  “I saw it just as soon as you did,” shouted another.  “But I’ll have it,” screamed the third, “I saw it first of all.”

Thus they kept on quarrelling and fighting about the egg, and they were very near tearing each other’s hair.  But at last they agreed that it should belong to them all, and that they should sit on it as the geese do and hatch a gosling.  The first woman sat on it for eight days, taking it very comfortably and doing nothing at all, while the others had to work hard both for their own and her living.  One of the women began to make some insinuations to her about this.

“Well, I suppose you didn’t come out of the egg either before you could chirp,” said the woman who was on the egg, “But I think there is something in this egg, for I fancy I can hear some one inside grumbling every other moment:  ‘Herring and soup!  Porridge and milk!’ You can come and sit for eight days now, and then we will sit and work in turn, all of us.”

So when the fifth in turn had sat for eight days, she heard plainly some one inside the egg screeching for “Herring and soup!  Porridge and milk!” And so she made a hole in it; but instead of a gosling out came a baby, but it was awfully ugly, and had a big head and a tiny little body.  The first thing it screamed out for, as soon as it put its head outside the egg, was “Herring and soup!  Porridge and milk!” And so they called it “the greedy youngster.”