One day he came to a wigwam where two old Indians were taking a nap
beside the fire. He picked out a burning stick, held it against their
bare feet, and then ran out and hid behind the tent. The old men sprang
up, and one of them shouted to the other:

"How dare you burn my feet?"

"How dare _you_ burn _my_ feet?" roared the other, and sprang at his
throat.

When he heard them fighting Lox laughed out loud, and the old men ran
out to catch the man who had tricked them. When they got round the tent
they found nothing but a dead coon. They took off its skin, and put its
body into the pot of soup that was boiling for dinner. As soon as they
had sat down, out jumped Lox, kicking over the pot and putting out the
fire with the soup. He jumped right into the coon's skin and scurried
away into the wood.

In the middle of the forest Lox came upon a camp where a party of women
were sitting round a fire making pouches.

"Dear me," said Lox, looking very kind. (He had put on his own skin by
this time.) "That's very slow work! Now, when I want to make a pouch I
do it in two minutes, without sewing a stitch."

"I should like to see you do it!" said one of the women.

"Very well," said he. So he took a piece of skin, and a needle and
twine, and a handful of beads, and stuffed them in among the burning
sticks. In two minutes he stooped down again and pulled a handsome pouch
out of the fire.

"Wonderful!" said the women; and they all stuffed their pieces of
buckskin and handfuls of beads into the fire.

"Be sure you pull the bags out in two minutes," said Lox. "I will go and
hunt for some more buckskin."

In two minutes the women raked out the fire, and found nothing but
scraps of scorched leather and half-melted glass. Then they were very
angry, and ran after the joker; but he had turned himself into a coon
again and hidden in a hollow tree. When they had all gone back to their
ruined work he came down and went on his mischievous way.

When he came out of the wood he saw a village by the side of a river.
Outside one of the wigwams a woman was nursing a baby, and scolding it
because it cried.

"What a lot of trouble children are," said Lox. "What a pity that people
don't make men of them at once, instead of letting them take years to
grow up."

The woman stared. "How can a baby be turned into a man?" she asked.

"Oh, it's easy enough," said he. So she lent him her baby, and he took
it down to the river and held it un