sleep again. Soon his nose snored again. Old Man
said, "What is it now?" The nose said, "There is a coyote over there,
coming this way." Old Man said, "A coyote is nothing," and again went to
sleep. Presently his nose snored again, but Old Man did not wake up. Again
it snored, and called out, "Wake up, a bob-cat is coming." Old Man paid no
attention. He slept on.

The bob-cat crept up to where the fire was, and ate up all the roast
prairie-dogs, and then went off and lay down on a flat rock, and went to
sleep. All this time the nose kept trying to wake Old Man up, and at last
he awoke, and the nose said: "A bob-cat is over there on that flat rock. He
has eaten all your food." Then Old Man called out loud, he was so angry. He
went softly over to where the bob-cat lay, and seized it, before it could
wake up to bite or scratch him. The bob-cat cried out, "Hold on, let me
speak a word or two." But Old Man would not listen; he said, "I will teach
you to steal my food." He pulled off the lynx's tail, pounded his head
against the rock so as to make his face flat, pulled him out long, so as to
make him small-bellied, and then threw him away into the brush. As he went
sneaking off, Old Man said, "There, that is the way you bob-cats shall
always be." That is the reason the lynxes look so today.

Old Man went back to the fire, and looked at the red willow sticks where
his food had been, and it made him mad at his nose. He said, "You fool, why
did you not wake me?" He took the willow sticks and thrust them in the
coals, and when they took fire, he burned his nose. This pained him
greatly, and he ran up on a hill and held his nose to the wind, and called
on it to blow hard and cool him. A hard wind came, and it blew him away
down to Birch Creek. As he was flying along, he caught at the weeds and
brush to try to stop himself, but nothing was strong enough to hold him. At
last he seized a birch tree. He held on to this, and it did not give
way. Although the wind whipped him about, this way and that, and tumbled
him up and down, the tree held him. He kept calling to the wind to blow
gently, and finally it listened to him and went down.

So he said: "This is a beautiful tree. It has kept me from being blown away
and knocked all to pieces. I will ornament it and it shall always be like
that." So he gashed it across with his stone knife, as you see it to-day.

THE STORY OF THE THREE TRIBES

THE PAST AND THE PRESENT