Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/240

 202 three boys went on their way much relieved, wondering how the little ferryman was going to outwit and punish the great grizzly-woman. Earlier in the day, before the boys arrived, on learning from the talking-bird what a wicked woman the grizzly was, and that she was pursuing the boys and would desire to cross the river in his boat, he went to his food-cellar, and taking all his store of food, he carried it to the river's bank. Calling all the fish in the river to him, he threw them the food, promising to give them a daily supply ever after, if they would help him that day. They consented to do so, and asked what he wished them to do. He told them that later in the day he would have to ferry the grizzly-woman across, and that he would make her sit in a hole, which he would make for the purpose in the bottom of his canoe, and that as she sat there they were to all come and bite a piece out of her, the little trout first, and then the bigger ones, and then the salmon trout, and then the salmon themselves, and last of all the big sturgeon. They readily promised to do as he wished, the more so as the grizzly's carcase was to be theirs afterwards. The boys had barely landed when the grizzly appeared on the opposite bank, and shouted for the ferryman to come and put her over. He was busily engaged in making the hole in his boat's bottom, and cried out that he could not come over for a little while as he had to mend a hole in his boat that one of the boys he had just landed had made as he was jumping out of it. "Oh! never mind the hole," shouted the impatient grizzly; "I am in a great hurry to cross, I cannot wait." "But I could never bring you over with my boat in this condition," answered Ground-hog, as he knocked the last piece out of the hole; "I must really mend it first." "I cannot be delayed in this manner," called out the grizzly; "my business will not admit of delay. Come across at once; I will risk the passage." The Ground-hog, having made the hole, no longer had any reason for delay; so after making the grizzly promise to do exactly what he told her, he sat in the far end of his canoe so that the fore part which had the hole in it rose completely out of the water, and enabled him to cross without letting the water in. When he reached the other side he pointed out the big hole in the bottom to the grizzly, telling her that it was very risky to attempt the passage with the boat in such a condition, and that the only possible way to cross would be for her to sit down in the hole, and thus prevent the water