was war between the king and the ruler of the
next province. There was a great council called and it was unanimously
agreed that as Boh Han Me was the bravest man in the country, he should
be appointed as commander-in-chief.

When the message came to his house, however, it caused him great
distress, for as he told his wife, he did not want to be killed in the
least; he did not wish to run the risk of being killed or even hurt.
Besides he had never been on horseback in his life. He had a buffalo
that ploughed his fields, and it is true that occasionally, tired with
the day's work, he had ridden home on its back when the sun sank into
the west, but he was sure that if he got on the back of a horse it would
immediately divine that he was ignorant of the art of riding, did not
_mau_ as he said, and he would be thrown to the ground and hurt, killed
maybe. Who could tell?

Again his clever wife came to the rescue. "You must go to the fight
whether you want to or not," said she. "The king has given orders and he
must be obeyed. To disobey the king is more dangerous than seeing a bear
or even fighting a snake, so go you must. As to riding, that is easily
managed. Bring your pony here and I will show you how to ride without
danger."

On the never-to-be-forgotten day when the whole family went into the
jungle to gather _nau_, they were very poor, but since the fight with
the snake in the well, they had become rich, and so now the _boh_ had
servants to do his bidding, and he therefore called one of them to
saddle his pony and bring it to the door of his house. This was soon
done. He took his seat, and then his wife took long pieces of rawhide
and fastened his legs, from ankle to knee, on both sides to the stirrups
and girths. She knotted them securely so that there would be no chance
of his falling off his steed. He was very pleased that he had such a
clever wife, who could help him out of every trouble into which he might
fall, and rode away well pleased with himself, and soon reached the
place where the soldiers were assembled awaiting his appearance before
beginning the march.

To have seen him nobody would have thought that he was frightened sick.
He sat up bravely, and you would have thought that he was the best
horseman in all the hill and water country, but all the time he was
turning over in his mind the advice given by his wife when they talked
it over the night before. This was what she said to him: "Now, when you