once; but the bull said, “No, first take the sticks out of my head.”  The girl began to do it, but before she had done much she heard the old woman calling her to bring the water.  The girl called back, “I am trying to get the water clear,” and went on fixing the buffalo’s head.  The old woman called again, saying, “Hurry, hurry with that water.”  The girl answered, “Wait, I am washing my little brother.”  Pretty soon the old woman called out, “If you don’t bring that water, I will kill you and your brother.”  By this time the girl had most of the sticks out of the bull’s head, and he told her to get on his back, and went into the water and swam across the river.  As he reached the other bank, the girl could see the old woman coming from her lodge down to the river with a big stick in her hand.

When the bull reached the bank, the girl jumped off his back and started off on the trail of the camp.  The bull swam back again to the other side of the river, and there stood the old woman.  This bull was a sort of servant of the old woman.  She said to him, “Why did you take those children across the river?  Take me on your back now and carry me across quickly, so that I may catch them.”  But the bull said, “First take these sticks out of my head.”  “No,” said the old woman; “first take me across, then I will take the sticks out.”  The bull repeated, “First take the sticks out of my head, then I will take you across.”  This made the old woman very angry, and she hit him with the stick she had in her hand; but when she saw that he would not go, she began to pull the sticks out of his head very roughly, tearing out great handfuls of hair, and every moment ordering him to go, and threatening what she would do to him when she got back.  At last the bull took her on his back, and began to swim across with her, but he did not swim fast enough to please her; so she began to pound him with her club to make him go faster.  When the bull got to the middle of the river he rolled over on his side, and the old woman slipped off, and was carried down the river and drowned.

The girl followed the trail of the camp for several days, feeding on berries and roots that she dug; and at last one night after dark she overtook the camp.  She went into the lodge of an old woman who was camped off at one side, and the old woman pitied her and gave her some food, and told her where her father’s lodge was.  The girl went to it, but when she went in her parents would not receive her.  She had tried to overtake them for the sake of her little brother who was growing thin and weak because he had not been fed properly; and now her mother was afraid to let her stay with them.  She even went and told the chief that her children had come back; he was angry, and he ordered that the next day they should be tied to a post in the camp, and that the people should move on and leave them there.  “Then,” he said, “they cannot follow us.”