,' said Little Chief, 'but it will
make me a very nice bed.' So he carried it home and made a bed of it.
There wasn't quite enough, so the next day he cut some more and carried
it home at once. But this, being green, soon soured and smelled so badly
that he was forced to take it out and throw it away. That set him to
thinking. Why was the first he had brought in so dry and sweet and
pleasant? Why didn't it spoil as the other had done? He cut some more
and spread it out on the big flat rock and once again he forgot. When he
remembered and went to look at it two or three days later, he found it
just like the first, dry and sweet and very pleasant to smell. This he
took home to add to his bed. Then he took home some more that was green,
and this spoiled just as the other had done.

"Little Chief was puzzling over this as he squatted on a rock taking a
sun-bath. The sun was very warm and comforting. After a while the rock
on which he sat grew almost hot. Little Chief had brought along a couple
of pieces of pea vine on which to lunch, but not being hungry he left
them beside him on the rock. By and by he happened to glance at them.
They had wilted and already they were beginning to dry. An idea popped
into his funny little head.

"'It's the sun that does it!' he cried.

"Up he jumped and scampered away to cut some more and spread it out on
the rocks. Then he discovered that the pea vine which he spread in the
sun dried as he wanted it to, while any that happened to be left in the
shadow of a rock didn't dry so well. He had learned how to make hay. He
was the first hay-maker in the Great World. He soon had more than
enough for a bed, but he kept on making hay and storing it away just
for fun. Then came cold weather and all the green things died. There was
no food for Little Chief. He hunted and hunted, but there was nothing.
Then because he was so hungry he began to nibble at his hay. It tasted
good, very good indeed. It tasted almost as good as the fresh green
things. Little Chief's heart gave a great leap. He had food in plenty!
He had nothing to worry about, for his hay would last him until the
green things came again, as come they would, he felt sure.

"And so it proved. And that is how Little Chief the Pika learned to make
hay while the sun shone in the days of plenty. He taught his children
and they taught their children, and Little Chief of today does it just
as his great-great-ever-so-great-grand-daddy did. I don't