Page:Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society V.djvu/151

Rh just devoured their father's corpse; the blood was still streaming from their mouths. He ran among them, and hacked at them in every direction with his great stone knife. They fled; but he pursued them, and in a little while he had killed all but one. This one ran faster than the rest, and climbed among some high rocks; but Nayénĕzgani followed him and caught him. He stopped to take breath; as he did so he looked at the child and saw that he was disgustingly ugly and filthy. "You ugly thing," said Nayénĕzgani; "when you ran from me so fleetly I thought you might be something handsome and worth killing; but now that I behold your face I shall let you live. Go to yonder mountain of Natsĭsaán144 and dwell there. It is a barren land, where you will have to work hard for your living, and will wander ever naked and hungry." The boy went to Natsĭsaán, as he was told, and there he became the progenitor of the Pahutes, a people ugly, starved, and ragged, who never wash themselves and live on the vermin of the desert.145

343. He went to where he had first found the children of Tse‘tahotsĭltá‘li. Nothing was left of the father's corpse but the bones and scalp. (This anáye used to wear his hair after the manner of a Pueblo Indian.) The hero cut a piece of the hair from one side of the head and carried it home as a trophy. When he got home there were the usual questions and answers and rejoicings, and when he asked his mother, "Where is the home of the Bĭnáye Aháni, the people who slay with their eyes," she begged him, as before, to rest contented and run no more risks; but she added: "They live at Tsé‘ahalzĭ′ni, Rock with Black Hole."146 This place stands to this day, but is changed since the anáye dwelt there. It has still a hole, on one side, that looks like a door, and another on the top that looks like a smoke-hole.

344. On this occasion, in addition to his other weapons, he took a bag of salt with him on his journey.147 When he came to Tsé‘ahalzĭ′ni he entered the rock house and sat down on the north side. In other parts of the lodge sat the old couple of the Bĭnáye Aháni and many of their children. They all stared with their great eyes at the intruder, and flashes of lightning streamed from their eyes toward him, but glanced harmless off his armor. Seeing that they did not kill him, they stared harder and harder at him, until their eyes protruded far from their sockets. Then into the fire in the centre of the lodge he threw the salt, which spluttered and flew in every direction, striking the eyes of the anáye and blinding them. While they held down their heads in pain, he struck with his great stone knife and killed all except the two youngest.

345. Thus he spoke to the two which he spared: "Had you grown up here, you would have lived only to be things of evil and to destroy