Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/79

Rh exclaimed Sesere; “you two give me bad word,” and he pushed the skulls away. Then he drew them back to him saying, “Come on—you are all right.”

Sesere did not make a neĕt or go fishing that night, but brought all his gear to the shore. Next morning five dogs came running towards him, and he called out to them and gave them each a piece of meat and observed them closely; then he went outside his house, put on his arm-guard (kadig) (7), and seizing his bow and arrows, shot four dogs dead. The fifth ran away, but he too received a parting shot which sorely wounded him. The Badu men who were on the look-out exclaimed, “See there’s only one dog, where are the rest?” The fugitive cried, “Sesere shot all the others, he shot me too;” then he fell down dead. Sesere took the coverings off the four dogs he had killed and discovered the men, and having tied a rope round their necks, he dragged them off to the river.

On the following day the brothers of the slain men took some red paint (parma) and placed it in the middle of the kwod or bachelors’ quarters, saying, “To-morrow we will kill that man.” Two great warriors, Mănulbau and Sasalkadz, took some of the red paint, and rubbing it over their bodies, said they would go.

Sesere, meanwhile, consulted his domestic oracle, informing the skulls that he had killed four men from the big village, and asked whether he would live or be killed. They replied that there would be a big fight on the morrow, and that ultimately he would be killed; and they further instructed him, when he saw the men coming, to take a large bu shell (Fusus), put it behind his house, and get into it when he was out of breath with fighting, and he would be transformed into a small black bird with a white breast.

On the eventful morning Sesere straightened his arrows over the fire and painted himself black and white. The Tul men marched to Seserenegegat in double file, Mănulbau and Sasalkadz heading each row. They called out, “Where are you, Sesere?” Sesere slung a bundle of