but when the pinch begins they hunt scattering and avoid one another.
That was how it happened that the First Father, who was still called
Younger Brother, was alone with Howkawanda when he was thrown by a buck
at Talking Water in the moon of the Frost-Touching-Mildly. Howkawanda
had caught the buck by the antlers in a blind gully at the foot of the
Tamal-Pyweack, trying for the throw back and to the left which drops a
buck running, with his neck broken. But his feet slipped on the grass
which grows sleek with dryness, and by the time the First Father came up
the buck had him down, scoring the ground on either side of the man's
body with his sharp antlers, lifting and trampling. Younger Brother
leaped at the throat. The toss of the antlers to meet the stroke drew
the man up standing. Throwing his whole weight to the right he drove
home with his hunting-knife and the buck toppled and fell as a tree
falls of its own weight in windless weather.

"'Now, for this,' said Howkawanda to my First Father, when they had
breathed a little, 'you are become my very brother.' Then he marked the
coyote with the blood of his own hurts, as the custom is when men are
not born of one mother, and Younger Brother, who had never been touched
by a man, trembled. That night, though it made the hair on his neck rise
with strangeness, he went into the hut of Howkawanda at
Hidden-under-the-Mountain and the villagers wagged their heads over it.
'Hunger must be hard on our trail,' they said, 'when the wolves come to
house with us.'

"But Howkawanda only laughed, for that year he had found a maiden who
was more than meat to him. He made a flute of four notes which he would
play, lying out in the long grass, over and over, until she came out to
him. Then they would talk, or the maiden would pull grass and pile it in
little heaps while Howkawanda looked at her and the First Father looked