Before night,
however, he began to feel his real punishment and next morning no
one would have known the pudding-headed thing that sadly followed
the hunters, for the bright little dog that a day before had run
so joyously through the woods. It was many a long day before he
fully recovered and at one time his life was in the balance; and
yet to the last of his days he never fully realized the folly of
his insensate attacks on the creature that fights with its tail.
"It is ever so," said the Indian. "The lynx, the panther, the
wolf, the fox, the eagle, all that attack the Kahk must die.
Once my father saw a bear that was killed by the quills. He had
tried to bite the Kahk; it filled his mouth with quills that he
could not spit out. They sunk deeper and his jaws swelled so he
could not open or shut his mouth to eat; then he starved. My
people found him near a fish pond below a rapid. There were many
fish. The bear could kill them with his paw but not eat, so with
his mouth wide open and plenty about him he died of starvation in
that pool.
"There is but one creature that can kill the Kahk that is the
Ojeeg the big fisher weasel.
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