and the mountains." While he was in
the mountains he made the antelope, and turned it loose to see how
it travelled. The antelope ran so fast that it fell over some rocks
and hurt itself. He saw that this would not do, and took the
antelope down on the prairie and set it free there, and it ran away
fast and gracefully, and he said to it, "This is the place that
suits you."

At last, one day, Old Man decided that he would make a woman and a
child, and he modelled some clay in human shape, and after he had
made these shapes and put them on the ground, he said to the clay,
"You shall be people." He spread his robe over the clay figures and
went away. The next morning he went back to the place and lifted up
the robe, and saw that the clay shapes had changed a little. When he
looked at them the next morning, they had changed still more; and
when on the fourth day he went to the place and took off the
covering, he said to the images, "Stand up and walk," and they did
so. They walked down to the river with him who had made them, and he
told them his name.

As they were standing there looking at the water as it flowed by,
the woman asked Old Man, saying, "How is it; shall we live always?
Will there be no end to us?"

Old Man said, "I have not thought of that. We must decide it. I will
take this buffalo chip and throw it in the river. If it floats,
people will become alive again four days after they have died; they
will die for four days only. But if it sinks, there will be an end
to them." He threw the chip into the river, and it floated.

The woman turned and picked up a stone and said, "No, I will throw
this stone in the river. If it floats, we shall live always; if it
sinks, people must die, so that their friends who are left alive may
always remember them." The woman threw the stone in the water, and
it sank.

"Well," said Old Man, "you have chosen; there will be an end to
them."

Not many nights after that the woman's child died, and she cried a
great deal for it. She said to Old Man, "Let us change this. The law
that you first made, let that be the law."

He said, "Not so; what is made law must be law. We will undo nothing
that we have done. The child is dead, but it cannot be changed.
People will have to die."

These first people did not have hands like a person; they had hands
like a bear with long claws. They were poor and naked and did not
know how to get a living. Old Man showed them the roots and the
be