THE TOAD AND THE BOY

THE water-fowls were flying over the marshy lakes. It was now the
hunting season. Indian men, with bows and arrows, were wading waist
deep amid the wild rice. Near by, within their wigwams, the wives were
roasting wild duck and making down pillows.

In the largest teepee sat a young mother wrapping red porcupine
quills about the long fringes of a buckskin cushion. Beside her lay a
black-eyed baby boy cooing and laughing. Reaching and kicking upward
with his tiny hands and feet, he played with the dangling strings of his
heavy-beaded bonnet hanging empty on a tent pole above him.

At length the mother laid aside her red quills and white sinew-threads.
The babe fell fast asleep. Leaning on one hand and softly whispering
a little lullaby, she threw a light cover over her baby. It was almost
time for the return of her husband.

Remembering there were no willow sticks for the fire, she quickly
girdled her blanket tight about her waist, and with a short-handled ax
slipped through her belt, she hurried away toward the wooded ravine. She
was strong and swung an ax as skillfully as any man. Her loose buckskin
dress was made for such freedom. Soon carrying easily a bundle of long
willows on her back, with a loop of rope over both her shoulders, she
came striding homeward.

Near the entrance way she stooped low, at once shifting the bundle to
the right and with both hands lifting the noose from over her head.
Having thus dropped the wood to the ground, she disappeared into her
teepee. In a moment she came running out again, crying, "My son! My
little son is gone!" Her keen eyes swept east and west and all around
her. There was nowhere any sign of the child.

Running with clinched fists to the nearest teepees, she called: "Has any
one seen my baby? He is gone! My little son is gone!"

"Hinnu! Hinnu!" exclaimed the women, rising to their feet and rushing
out of their wigwams.

"We have not seen your child! What has happened?" queried the women.

With great tears in her eyes the mother told her story.

"We will search with you," they said to her as she started off.

They met the returning husbands, who turned about and joined in the
hunt for the missing child. Along the shore of the lakes, among the
high-grown reeds, they looked in vain. He was nowhere to be found. After
many days and nights the search was given up. It was sad, indeed, to
hear the mother wailing aloud for her little son.

It