18. The Water People

18. THE WATER PEOPLE (41)

A boy carrying his bow and arrows was walking about near the water, when two women standing close to the shore said, "Follow us." Then he leaned his bow up against a tree and followed them, and presently those women said, "We are going down into the water. Go down in with us." So saying, they started on, and just as they had said, they presently went down into the water, that boy with them. When all got in, the bottom was as if there were no water there, and before they had gone far they came to where there were some old water people. Those old men said, "There is a chair. Sit down." The chair they thus indicated to him was a very big water turtle. "They spoke to me," the youth related "and I sat down and they said 'Do you want to lie down? There is a bed. You must lie down. The tree-tyer [i. e., tie-snake] there is the bed,' they said to me. Presently they said, 'You can go hunting if you want to.' 'I cannot go hunting because I have no gun.' But the old men said, 'Go about hunting, and when you fall down somewhere come back.' After they had said this to me I set out, and while I was walking around, there was a rumbling noise and I fell down. I lay there for a while, and then came to my senses and returned to them. When I got back the old men said, 'What did you kill?' 'I killed nothing' I answered, 'but I fell down and was unconscious. After I had lain there for a while I came back, but I did not kill anything.' 'Let us go and look at the place where you fell,' said those old men. Immediately we started, and when we got there, a very big thing of some sort was lying there dead. 'It is just as we said,' said they, and they brought it back, Then

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they ate. After I had been there for a while those old men said, 'If you want to go, you may,' and I said, 'I will go.' 'You take him back,' they said to someone, and just as I thought, 'They are going to take me along' I lost consciousness. Next I came to my senses standing close to the water, exactly where I had been when they took me off. 'My bow is standing up against a tree,' I thought, and when I got to the place, there it was just as I had thought, and I took it and started off. When I got to the place where my people lived, they were there. Then they said, 'The one who has been lost for such a long time is back.' The old men compounded medicine for me and after a while I got well," said the boy. They used to tell it so.