The mother of _Pa-hu-ka´-tawa_ had her bed near the door of the lodge on the left hand side, the last bed next to the door. One night, at midnight, he came into the lodge, and touched his mother and said, "Mother! mother!" His mother used to dream of him almost every night, and she thought she was dreaming now. She said, "Oh, my son, do not do this. You are deceiving me again." He stopped; but presently he touched her again, and pushed her shoulder, and she awoke.
He said to her, "Mother, I am here," and she reached out and felt him.
Then she put her arms around him, and hugged him, and said to him, "Oh, my son, my son, you have come back to me." She cried, she was so glad.
Then they talked together. He gave her a piece of meat--a piece of fresh buffalo meat--though they had had no fresh meat in the village for six months. He said to his mother, "I am really alive, though I was killed. The _Nahu´rac_ (animals) took pity on me, and have made me alive again. And now I am going off; but do not cry about me any more." Then he went away.
The next morning, when his mother awoke, she found by her side the piece of fresh meat, and she began to cook it on the coals. The people wondered where she got the fresh meat, and asked her about it, but she would not tell them where she got it, for her son had told her to say nothing. They asked her again where she got it, and she told them she found it in her bed.
After a long time her son came again in the night, and went into the lodge, and spoke to his mother, saying, "Mother, I am here again." She awoke, and rejoiced that he had come back. He said to her, "My mother, I know that you are poor. You are blind on account of me, because you have cried so much. Now, my mother, there is standing by the side of your daughter's bed, water in a wooden bowl. After I have left you to-night, go over there, and put your face down deep into the water, and open your eyes in the water, and then you will see." Before he left her he gave her some _ka´wis_.[8]
[8] Chopped buffalo meat tied up in the small intestine.
After he had gone, she did as he had told her. She got up, and feeling her way along with her hands, crept into the place where her daughter slept. There she felt the wooden bowl with water in it, and she put her face deep down into the water, and opened her eyes in it, and when she took her face out of the water, and opened her eyes again, she could see. Then she was glad. Everybody wondered how the mother's eyes had been cured, but she told no one, except only her oldest son.