he has a duck feast to be eaten!
Let us hurry there for our share!" Away bounded the wolves toward
Iktomi's lodge.

From the tree Iktomi watched the hungry wolves eat up his nicely browned
fat ducks. His foot pained him more and more. He heard them crack the
small round bones with their strong long teeth and eat out the oily
marrow. Now severe pains shot up from his foot through his whole body.
"Hin-hin-hin!" sobbed Iktomi. Real tears washed brown streaks across his
red-painted cheeks. Smacking their lips, the wolves began to leave the
place, when Iktomi cried out like a pouting child, "At least you have
left my baking under the ashes!"

"Ho! Po!" shouted the mischievous wolves; "he says more ducks are to be
found under the ashes! Come! Let us have our fill this once!"

Running back to the dead fire, they pawed out the ducks with such rude
haste that a cloud of ashes rose like gray smoke over them.

"Hin-hin-hin!" moaned Iktomi, when the wolves had scampered off. All
too late, the sturdy breeze returned, and, passing by, pulled apart the
broken edges of the tree. Iktomi was released. But alas! he had no duck
feast.

IKTOMI'S BLANKET

ALONE within his teepee sat Iktomi. The sun was but a handsbreadth from
the western edge of land.

"Those, bad, bad gray wolves! They ate up all my nice fat ducks!"
muttered he, rocking his body to and fro.

He was cuddling the evil memory he bore those hungry wolves. At last he
ceased to sway his body backward and forward, but sat still and stiff as
a stone image.

"Oh! I'll go to Inyan, the great-grandfather, and pray for food!" he
exclaimed.

At once he hurried forth from his teepee and, with his blanket over one
shoulder, drew nigh to a huge rock on a hillside.

With half-crouching, half-running strides, he fell upon Inyan with
outspread hands.

"Grandfather! pity me. I am hungry. I am starving. Give me food.
Great-grandfather, give me meat to eat!" he cried. All the while he
stroked and caressed the face of the great stone god.

The all-powerful Great Spirit, who makes the trees and grass, can hear
the voice of those who pray in many varied ways. The hearing of
Inyan, the large hard stone, was the one most sought after. He was the
great-grandfather, for he had sat upon the hillside many, many seasons.
He had seen the prairie put on a snow-white blanket and then change it
for a bright green robe more than a thousand times.

Still unaffected by the myriad moon