“Very well,” continued the old Owl, “if you care to join in our dance, fulfill the conditions, and I think we can receive you into our order.” And he added, aside: “The silly fool; the sneaking, impertinent wretch! I will teach him to be sticking that sharp nose of his into other people’s affairs!”
“All right! All right!” cried the Coyote, excitedly. “Will it last long?”
“Until the sun is so bright that it hurts our eyes,” said the Owl; “a long time yet.”
“All right! All right! I’ll be back in a little while,” said the Coyote; and, switching his tail into the air, away he ran toward his home. When he came to the house, he saw his old grandmother on the roof, which was a rock beside his hole, gathering fur from some skins which he had brought home, to make up a bed for the Coyote’s family.
“Ha, my blessed grandmother!” said the Coyote, “by means of your aid, what a fine thing I shall be able to do!”
The old woman was singing to herself when the Coyote dashed up to the roof where she was sitting, and, catching up a convenient leg-bone, whacked her over the pate and sawed her head off with the teeth of a deer. All bloody and soft as it was, he clapped it on his own head and raised himself on his hindlegs, bracing his tail against the ground, and letting his paws drop with the toes outspread, to imitate as nearly as possible the drooping wings of the dancing Owls. He found that it worked very well; so, descending with the head in one paw and a stone in the other, he found a convenient sharp-edged rock, and, laying his legs across it, hit them a tremendous crack with the stone, which broke them, to be sure, into splinters.
“Beloved Powers! Oh!” howled the Coyote. “Oh-o-o-o-o! the dance may be a fine thing, but the initiation is anything else!”
However, with his faith unabated, he shook himself together and got up to walk. But he could walk only with his paws; his hindlegs dragged helplessly behind him. Nevertheless, with great pain, and getting weaker and weaker every step of the way, he made what haste he could back to the Prairie-dog town, his poor old grandmother’s head slung over his shoulders.
When he approached the dancers,--for they were still dancing,--they pretended to be greatly delighted with their proselyte, and greeted him, notwithstanding his rueful countenance, with many congratulatory epithets, mingled with very proper and warm expressions of welcome. The Coyote looked sick and groaned occasionally and kept looking around at his feet, as though he would like to lick them. But the old Owl extended his wing and cautioned him not to interfere with the working power of faith in this essential observance, and invited him (with a _hem_ that very much resembled a suppressed giggle), to join in their dance. The Coyote smirked and bowed and tried to stand up gracefully on his stumps, but fell over, his grandmother’s head rolling around in the dirt. He picked up the grisly head, clapped it on his crown again and raised himself, and with many a howl, which he tried in vain to check, began to prance around; but ere long tumbled over again. The Burrowing-owls were filled with such merriment at his discomfiture that they laughed until they spilled the foam all down their backs and bosoms; and, with a parting fling at the Coyote which gave him to understand that he had made a fine fool of himself, and would know better than to pry into other people’s business next time, skipped away to a safe distance from him.