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Updated: May 9, 2025
"'One blood we are, said the First Father of Dogs, remembering how Howkawanda had marked him, but we are not of one smell and the rams may trample me. "Howkawanda took off his deerskin and put around the coyote so that he should have man smell about him, for at that time the Bighorn had not learned to fear man.
"'Dead, go back to the dead! cried the Head Man, but he did not stop to see whether Howkawanda obeyed him, for by this time the whole pack was squealing down the creek to Hidden-under-the-Mountain.
"It was about the first streak of the next morning that the people waked in their huts to hear a long, throaty howl from Younger Brother. Howkawanda lay cold, and there was no breath in him. They thought the coyote howled for grief, but it was really because, though his master lay like one dead, there was no smell of death about him, and the First Father was frightened.
The more he howled, however, the more certain the villagers were that Howkawanda was dead, and they made haste to dispose of the body. Now that the back of the Hunger was broken, they wished to go back to Hidden-under-the-Mountain.
"I have heard of that trail, 'said the First Father of all the Dogs to Howkawanda, one day, when they had hunted too far for returning and spent the night under a juniper: 'a place where the wind tramples between the mountains like a trapped beast. But there is a trail beyond it. I have not walked in it. All my people went that way at the beginning of the Hunger.
"'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.
Snow lay deep over the dropped timber and the pine would not burn. Howkawanda would scrape together moss and a few twigs for a little fire to warm the front of him and Younger Brother would snuggle at his back, so between two friends the man saved himself." The Blackfoot nodded.
Younger Brother crept as close to the pyre as he dared, and whined in his throat as the fire took hold of the brush and ran crackling up the open spaces. "It took hold of the wrapped deerskins, ran in sparks like little deer in the short hair, and bit through to Howkawanda.
He sank down in the soft snow at Younger Brother's shoulder. "'Up, Master, said Younger Brother, 'I hear something. "'It is the Storm Spirit singing my death song, said Howkawanda. But the coyote took him by the neck of his deerskin shirt and dragged him a little. "'Now, he said, 'I smell something. "Presently they stumbled into brush and knew it for red cedar.
The words that Howkawanda said before he killed the Bighorn were probably the same that every Indian hunter uses when he goes hunting big game: "O brother, we are about to kill you, we hope that you will understand and forgive us." Unless they say something like that the spirit of the animal killed might do them some mischief.
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