em," said the boy; but it was not so easily done as
said. Many there were who were slothful, and many were afraid; but the
most disbelieved it wholly.

"For," they said, "how should this boy tell us of a thing of which we
have never heard!" But at last the boy and their own misery persuaded
them.

The Coyote advised them how the march should begin. The boy and the
counselor went foremost; next to them the swiftest runners, with the
others following in the order of their strength, and speed. They left
the place of their home and went over the high mountains where great
jagged peaks stand up above the snow, and down the way the streams led
through a long stretch of giant wood where the somber shade and the
sound of the wind in the branches made them afraid. At nightfall, where
they rested, one stayed in that place, and the next night another
dropped behind; and so it was at the end of each day's journey. They
crossed a great plain where waters of mirage rolled over a cracked and
parching earth, and the rim of the world was hidden in a bluish mist. So
they came at last to another range of hills, not so high, but tumbled
thickly together; and beyond these, at the end of the hundred days, to
the Big Water, quaking along the sand at the foot of the Burning
Mountain.

It stood up in a high and peaked cone, and the smoke of its burning
rolled out and broke along the sky. By night the glare of it reddened
the waves far out on the Big Water, when the Fire Spirits began their
dance.

Then said the counselor to the boy who was soon to be called the Fire
Bringer: "Do you stay here until I bring you a brand from the burning;
be ready and right for running, and lose no time, for I shall be far
spent when I come again, and the Fire Spirits will pursue me."

[Illustration: THE COYOTE STOLE THE FIRE AND BEGAN TO RUN AWAY WITH IT
DOWN THE SLOPE OF THE BURNING MOUNTAIN]

Then he went up the mountain, and the Fire Spirits, when they saw him
come, were laughing and very merry, for his appearance was much against
him. Lean he was, and his coat much the worse for the long way he had
come. Slinking he looked, inconsiderable, scurvy, and mean, as he has
always looked, and it served him as well then as it serves him now. So
the Fire Spirits only laughed, and paid him no further heed.

Along in the night, when they came out to begin their dance about the
mountain, the Coyote stole the fire and began to run away with it down
the slope of