Young Coyote [itsaya' yaqan] was the hunting chief. He would tell his hunters, "We will all meet there and then start the hunt." At the meeting place Young Coyote would rush up to a log and kick it. There would be a sudden burst of flame ['pim"] and the log would burn. The hunters would stand around the fire then while Young Coyote gave the hunting commands and assignments. "You will go in this direction, and you in that direction," he i would command. And the hunters always killed much game. One day Young Coyote shot his game, went home and told his father, "I shot game over there and cached it in a tree. You must come with me and bring it in while I go on hunting again." 

Now Coyote [itsaya' ya] followed his son. They arrived at the tree-cache. Young Coyote took off his clothes and climbed up the tree to get the cache. He was just on the point of reaching it when Coyote looked up from below and winked at it. Suddenly the cache went higher. 

Young Coyote said, "Why do you look up? Stop it!" "But I'm not looking up," Coyote denied. Again Coyote winked at the cache, and it rose higher. 

Young Coyote remonstrated, "Why are you looking up?" "No, child, I'm not; no, child, I'm not looking up," Coyote told him. 

Young Coyote climbed higher and higher to reach the cache while Coyote, below, kept winking. Young Coyote climbed up and up until he disappeared into the empty space above. He was lost. 

Below, Coyote took his son's clothes, put them on, and started home. He went along, and, pretending to be Young Coyote, he started bawling about his father, "Oh, my father has gotten lost!" 

But really, Coyote only wanted his son's wives, Black Cricket [tsa' Ixtsalx] and White Swan [huyqu' yx], He arrived home, and there Black Cricket detected the deception at once. She had a child, a boy. Now Coyote took White Swan for his wife, and Black Cricket took her child and moved out. 

The people had decided to break camp and move away. Coyote told the hunters, "We will assemble there." The hunters went to the meeting place, and there Coyote ran up to a dog and kicked it. There resulted only a sputtering and hissing ['tsis, tsis"] from the heat. Coyote kicked and kicked with all his might, but he caused only a sizzle. He explained to the people, "My father used to give me power, but now that source has been lost to me, and I do pitifully." Then Coyote gave out assignments for the hunt, and all the hunters went forth. They returned empty-handed. 

The people had moved camp, and they were traveling along. Black Cricket had also packed her lodge equipage and sundry possessions on her back and followed. She put her son to ride on top of her pack, and she arranged her overnight camp in whatever pitiful way she could. She wept and wailed, "Oh my husband, oh, Black Cricket, a' hahaha, a' hahaha!" But at the tree where he had disappeared, Young Coyote climbed up and up, very ft up He reached the clouds. Then he started walking along, when, suddenly, he saw a lodge. He approached it and entered. Oh, a terrible hissing greeted him, hisses of anger ["its', its' its'"] Some old men confronted him with spears in hand. They were Spiders [xalxalu' yana]. Young Coyote had entered their lodge, and they were hissing angrily, ready to kill the intruder. They would have killed Young Coyote on the spot had he not addressed the as kinsmen. "Grandfathers, it is I!" he told them.

"Wherefore and whence grandfathers! We have but one grandson, the son who Coyote caused to get lost," the Spiders replied angrily. 

"Indeed, and I am he!" cried Young Coyote. 

"Is it grandson, is it that you are he?" the Spiders asked in astonishment. And now Young Coyote stayed there with them. The Spiders resumed their spinning which had been interrupted. They began to spin, they never did anything but spin. Their hands and fingers had long been covered with sores and scabs. They were chapped and blistered. Young Coyote stayed with the Spiders. One day they said to him, "If you should get impatient go, we will arrange to send you home." 

"Yes, I do want to go home now," Young Coyote replied.

"Then tomorrow you will go," the Spiders told him. The next morning when everything was ready, Young Coyote said to them, Thank you grandfathers. I am going to send you something from down below; therefore, don't pull up your string right away." 

"Yes thank you, grandson," the Spiders said. Now they bound Young Coyote with many strings and then gave these instructions, "You will descend five times. From here you are to descend until you land on the first level; there you must roll about. You will descend again until you come to rest on the next level, where you will roll yourself about until you start falling again. When you have done this four times, you will arrive, at the fifth drop, the earth." 

"Yes " replied Young Coyote. Now they began to lower him, and down, down, went At last he felt himself come to rest; he rolled about and began to drop again. He did this four times and now, descending for the fifth time, he landed on the ground. There untied himself and then, very quickly, he went off a short distance and shot a great antlered buck. He packed the meat, tied the pack to the string, and then shook the string to signal his Grandfathers above. 

The Spiders were watching their string and wondering, "When will it jiggle as a signal for us to pull up?

What will it be that we will pull up?" Young Coyote gave the string a hard jerk and now he saw the string and pack begin to rise. The Spiders were pulling up. The Spiders received their pack, and they were overjoyed with it. "Thank you, grandson, they said to themselves. 

Young Coyote returned to earth and decided, "I am going to follow them. I followed the trail left by the people who had moved camp. He came upon their overnight camp sites. He saw a lodge site off to the side, apart from the others, and he thought, "This Black Cricket's lodge site." He followed along. At one of the people's camping-over places found a little bow. "The poor ones have lost the boy's bow," he said to himself. 

He followed on. One day he saw the people ahead. "There they are, moving along," he told himself. Now just as he was about to overtake them, the baby boy, sitting on the pack which his mother carried, happened to look around and saw him. Young Coyote held up the little bow for the baby to see, and the baby recognized him and said, "Father bow! Father bow!" The mother walked along weeping. "Stop saying that. You are only consoling yourself talking like that. Your father is gone," she scolded her son and, at the same time, ached back and struck him with her digging stick. 

But the boy kept saying, "Father bow [to' ta'tam -baby talk]!" 

One of Black Cricket's pack straps was trailing along behind, and now Young Coyote [me up close and stepped on the strap. Suddenly halted by the strap, the woman wailed in despair, "A' hahaha [a laugh of despondence]!" and looked around to suddenly see her husband standing close beside her. She was overwhelmed with joy, and she began to tell him how badly they had been treated. "They have done pitifully by us; they have done pitifully us. When they pack in from the hunt, they always pass us by. When you got lost, your father came home and took your wife, White Swan, for himself: and he would not take care of us," she told Young Coyote. 

"Yes, let him have her for his wife. But now you must pack me," Young Coyote instructed her, "and you must travel along just as you have been doing, bawling as you go. Then, when you have set up your lodge and the wood gatherers come past, you will ask them for wood like this, 'Your orphan boy is freezing to death. Have you no pity? Your orphan boy is freezing to death.' Thus you will collect a share of their wood, and you must in the same way collect meat from the hunters when they pass by." Then tired as she was, Black Cricket packed her husband along gladly. When the people stopped to camp that evening, she erected her lodge. Then, as her husband had instructed her to do, she collected large quantities of firewood and meat. That evening the people detected a change in her behavior. "What is Black Cricket doing?" they asked one another after they had noticed that she would remain silent for intervals between periods of weeping, and they noticed that she not only wept spasmodically, whereas before she had wept continuously, but that now she wept differently and disinterestedly. "What is Black Cricket doing? Somebody go and spy on her," the people said. Now the Blue Racer [k'uyi' mk' uyimnim] went. He approached her lodge stealthily ["satu'-x"]; behold, he saw Black Cricket's husband lounging there in the lodge. Here Blue Racer made a faint stir ["lo x"], and suddenly Black Cricket began to wail again. He returned to the people and said to them, "Her husband has returned from being lost. Young Coyote has returned." 

Now the news was formally announced throughout the encampment, "Young Coyot has returned." 

"They have found out about us," Young Coyote said to his wife. 

In another lodge Coyote lamented, "My son, my son, my son, so you have come back! White Swan felt deeply ashamed, and she went outside of her lodge, dove into the water and left the people. She was to remain wild thenceforth. Now Coyote, conscience stricken went to his son's lodge. "0 my son, I was just borrowing these clothes and things from you. Here they are," he told Young Coyote.

"Keep them. I do not want them," Young Coyote replied. Coyote was mortified. 

The people broke camp and moved on.

Young Coyote became hunting chief again. He would run up to a log, kick it, and would burst into flame. He would give directions for the hunt, and the hunters would forth and bring in much game. One day Young Coyote said to his father, "I shot a deer over there. Now I want you to come with me and bring it home, and I will go on hunting from there." 

"No, my son. It is unreasonable for me to go. I am tired," Coyote protested. 

"Hurry and get ready. We certainly are going," Young Coyote pronounced. 

Coyote tried to refuse again, "My son, no. I do not wish to go." 

But Young Coyote repeated very firmly, "Hurry and get yourself ready. We are going now. It is only a short distance." 

Coyote got ready and followed his son. They walked along. "But you said it was only short distance," Coyote complained. 

"Just a little farther. Here we are," Young Coyote told him. "And now pack it and take it home while I go on hunting." Young Coyote went off, circled around, and started back home. Then, as he went along, he began to cleave the ground mightily with a stick. Deep valleys, bluffs, and chasms were formed. 

Coyote started home with his pack. He came to the edge of the valley and looked down at the precipitous gorges and cliffs. "I was afraid of this; I suspected him. Now he avenging himself," Coyote said to himself. He descended with great difficulty and then climbed up the other side. He descended into the next valley. [There were five deep valleys.] 

And now he began to tire and he became thirsty. He saw a river below, and he made way there laboriously. "Let me have a good bath and cool off in the water," he decided. 

While he was bathing, he happened to look downstream. Five maidens, sisters, were bathing there. "Well, some maidens are bathing there," Coyote whispered to himself. Now he pronounced a charm, "Let there float past here many things such as cushions, robes, parfleches, and the girls will think, 'Some East-country expeditioners have fallen into river above.' Let there be a raft on which let me be a baby lying in a cradleboard and let me wail, 'A', a', a', [sound of a baby crying]' as I float along." And now all this came about; many things floated down the river, and Coyote became a baby. He floated down the river. 

There were the Swallow sisters [lawt' axt' axya' ya atsi' matan]. 

"Oh, it looks as if some people have fallen into the river while on an East-country expedition," they told one another. They began to pull different things out of the water. "Oh, there floats a baby on a raft! Let it belong to whoever reaches him first!" they shouted. Now they all plunged into the water and raced to get the baby. 

Then Coyote, the baby, winked at the eldest sister by way of saying, "You beat the others." Thus the eldest was first to reach the baby, and she pulled it to shore. Now the baby belonged to her. 

The youngest of the Sisters recognized the baby's true identity. "He is Coyote. Why do you bother with him?" she told her Sisters. The baby began to snivel, and the elder Sisters remonstrated, "Why do you say that about the baby? You have hurt his feelings!" 

The Swallow Sisters lived by the river, and they had a fish trap which the salmon could get past. Coyote saw the situation, and he made plans now to do something of benefit to people. One day the Sisters went out to dig roots, and they took water with them as they were accustomed to do. The Sisters were busily digging roots when the baby spilled the water and began to cry, began to cry for water. "Oh, the baby is crying because he is thirsty. But look, he has spilled the water!" the Sisters exclaimed. 

"Why are you lavishing kindness on Coyote? It is Coyote, and why are you so concerned about him?" the youngest Sister commented again. Now the elder Sisters said, "Perhaps he could go by himself to drink." They pointed to the river and said to the baby, "There is water. Go by yourself to drink." The baby started crawling along, toward the place they had pointed out to him. 

"That they should be telling me to do this!" Coyote was saying to himself. He managed to arrive at the river's edge. 

"Oh, he has arrived! He is very capable," the Sisters observed. But now Coyote changed tactics and broke down the Swallows' fish trap. The Sisters saw what was happening, I they rushed for Coyote, their erstwhile baby. "And I told you not to bother with him-that he is Coyote! Now he has torn apart our trap!" the youngest reproached her sisters as they dashed upon Coyote.

But now Coyote had finished breaking the dam all to pieces, and he fled. He fled with a speed comparable only to the tautness of a breaking tendon. He outran the Sisters by far. He ran to the top of a hill, and there he stopped and looked back at the Swallows. Then he shouted to them, "You, the eldest, will name my child 'He-of-a-Winning-Personality [titsaqi'y-tamaxts]' and the next one this, and the next one and the next. But the youngest just used to hate me!" Now Coyote left them and went on.