ey ran away.

"Oh, what shall we do with these dreadful ones?" they said.

Others exclaimed: "Let us carry them to the lake of muddy water and
drown them!"

Instantly they ran with them. They threw the Fish and the Turtle into
the lake. Toward the center of the large lake the Turtle dived. There
he peeped up out of the water and, waving a hand at the crowd, sang out,
"This is where I live!"

The Fish swam hither and thither with such frolicsome darts that his
back fin made the water fly. "E han!" whooped the Fish, "this is where I
live!"

"Oh, what have we done!" said the frightened people, "this will be our
undoing."

Then a wise chief said: "Iya, the Eater, shall come and swallow the
lake!"

So one went running. He brought Iya, the Eater; and Iya drank all day at
the lake till his belly was like the earth. Then the Fish and the Turtle
dived into the mud; and Iya said: "They are not in me." Hearing this the
people cried greatly.

Iktomi wading in the lake had been swallowed like a gnat in the water.
Within the great Iya he was looking skyward. So deep was the water
in the Eater's stomach that the surface of the swallowed lake almost
touched the sky.

"I will go that way," said Iktomi, looking at the concave within arm's
reach.

He struck his knife upward in the Eater's stomach, and the water falling
out drowned those people of the village.

Now when the great water fell into its own bed, the Fish and the Turtle
came to the shore. They went home painted victors and loud-voiced
singers.

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