The old woman said to her:
"I suspect your mother has painted her face red. Do not try to find her.
If the chief's son marries her she will not want to be burdened with
you."

The old woman was right. The girl went down to the river, and sure
enough found a hole cut in the ice and about it lay the filth that the
mother had washed from her body. The girl gathered up the filth and went
on. By and by she came to a second hole in the ice. Here too was filth,
but not so much as at the previous place. At the third hole the ice was
clean.

The girl knew now that her mother had painted her face red. She went at
once to the chief's tepee, raised the door flap and went in. There sat
her mother with the chief's son at their wedding feast.

The girl walked up to her mother and hurled the filth in her mother's
face.

"There," she cried, "you who forsake your helpless children and forget
your husband, take that!"

And at once her mother became a hideous old woman.

The girl then went back to the lodge of the old woman, leaving the camp
in an uproar. The chief soon sent some young warriors to seize the girl
and her brother, and they were brought to his tent. He was furious with
anger.

"Let the children be bound with lariats wrapped about their bodies and
let them be left to starve. Our camp will move on," he said. The chief's
son did not put away his wife, hoping she might be cured in some way and
grow young again.

Everybody in camp now got ready to move; but the old woman came close to
the girl and said:

"In my old tepee I have dug a hole and buried a pot with punk and steel
and flint and packs of dried meat. They will tie you up like a corpse.
But before we go I will come with a knife and pretend to stab you, but
I will really cut the rope that binds you so that you can unwind it from
your body as soon as the camp is out of sight and hearing."

And so, before the camp started, the old woman came to the place where
the two children were bound. She had in her hand a knife bound to the
end of a stick which she used as a lance. She stood over the children
and cried aloud:

"You wicked girl, who have shamed your own mother, you deserve all the
punishment that is given you. But after all I do not want to let you lie
and starve. Far better kill you at once and have done with it!" and
with her stick she stabbed many times, as if to kill, but she was really
cutting the rope.

The camp moved on; but the children lay on th