country to go home, and on the fourth day, the wife
said to her husband, "Open your eyes." He looked about him and saw that
those who had been with them had vanished, but he found that they
were standing in front of the old woman's lodge by the butte. She came out
and said: "Here, give me back those mysterious medicines of mine, which
enabled you to accomplish your purpose." He returned them to her, and
became then fully a person once more.
Now, when they drew near to the camp, the woman went on ahead, and sat down
on a butte. Then some curious persons came out to see who it might be. As
they approached, the woman called out to them: "Do not come any nearer. Go
tell my mother and my relations to put up a lodge for us, a little way from
camp, and to build a sweat house near by it." When this had been done, the
man and his wife went in and took a thorough sweat, and then they went into
the lodge, and burned sweet grass and purified their clothing and the Worm
Pipe; and then their relations and friends came in to see them. The man
told them where he had been, and how he had managed to get back his wife,
and that the pipe hanging over the door-way was a medicine pipe, the Worm
Pipe, presented to him by his ghost father-in-law. That is how the people
came to possess the Worm Pipe. This pipe belongs to that band of the
Piegans known as _Esk'-sin-i-tup'piks,_ the Worm People.
Not long after this, in the night, this man told his wife to do something;
and when she did not begin at once, he picked up a brand from the fire, not
that he intended to strike her with it, but he made as if he would hit her,
when all at once she vanished, and was never seen again.
THE GHOSTS' BUFFALO
A long time ago there were four Blackfeet, who went to war against the
Crees. They travelled a long way, and at last their horses gave out, and
they started back toward their homes. As they were going along they came to
the Sand Hills; and while they were passing through them, they saw in the
sand a fresh travois trail, where people had been travelling.
One of the men said: "Let us follow this trail until we come up with some
of our people. Then we will camp with them." They followed the trail for a
long way, and at length one of the Blackfeet, named E-k[=u]s'-kini,--a very
powerful person,--said to the others: "Why follow this longer? It is just
nothing." The others said: "Not so. These are our people. We will go on
and camp with them." They
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