r. She heard after this that the bracket bull was in it (i.e.,
alive) all through, and that he was not killed at that time.
When she heard that she killed a cock, and she let down some of its
blood into her bed, and she put a sup of the blood into her mouth, and
she played the same trick over again, and said that there was nothing
at all to cure her but a piece of the bracket bull.
The butchers were sent for, and they were ready to kill the bracket bull
as soon as he came in. The bracket bull sent another one of the cattle
in before himself, and the butchers killed it. The woman got part of its
flesh, and she thought it was part of the bracket bull she was eating,
and she got better.
She found out afterwards that it was not the bracket bull that was dead,
and she said, "Never mind; I'll kill the bracket bull yet!"
The next day, when the lad was herding the cows on the mountain, the
bracket bull came and said to him, "Take the horn off me and eat your
enough now. That's the last time for you. They are waiting to kill me
to-night, but don't you be afraid. It is not they who shall kill me, but
another bull shall kill me. Get up on my back now."
The lad got up on his back then and they went home. The two butchers
were on each side of the gate waiting for him. The bracket bull struck a
horn on each side of him, and he killed the two butchers. Out with him
then, and the lad on his back.
He went into a wild wood, and he himself and the lad spent the night in
that wood. He was to fight with the other bull on the next day.
When the day came, the bracket bull said, "Take the horn off me and eat
your enough--that's the last luck you have. I am to fight with the other
bull immediately, and I shall escape from him to-day, but he will have
me dead to-morrow by twelve o'clock."
Himself and the other bull fought that day, and the bracket bull came
back in the evening, and he himself and the lad passed that night in the
wood.
When the next day came, the bracket bull said to him, "Twist the horn
off me and eat your enough--that's the last luck you'll have. Listen now
to the thing that I'm telling you. When you'll see me dead, go and cut a
strip of skin of the back and a strip of the stomach off me, and make a
belt of it, and at any time at all there will be any hard pinch on you,
you shall have my power."
The bracket bull went then to fight with the other bull, and the other
bull killed him. The other bull went away
|