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At Orleans Bar there lived a maiden. She always brought wood for her fire in the morning before breakfast. The rest of the day she used to spend making baskets. One morning when she was after wood she heard a baby rolling about in a hollow tree. Without stopping to gather the wood for which she had come, she took the baby and carried it home. There she cared for it as if it were her own. When the umbilical cord fell off she considered where she should put it. She decided to throw it into the river. Soon the boy was large enough to run about. She made a bow for him and put up a mark in the house for him to shoot at. She did not go for wood as she had formerly done. She kept the door shut and never allowed the boy to go out for fear she should lose him. Whenever she was obliged to go out she closed the door with great care. After a time he became a good-sized boy.
At a village below Orleans there lived another maiden, who noticed that her neighbor did not go Out as she had been in the habit of doing and suspected there must be some cause for it. One day when the foster mother was gone after wood this girl came and sat down by the house to watch. Soon she saw a straw fall and stick up in the ground like an arrow. Watching carefully she saw another one come out of the smoke-hole. Running up on the roof of the house she looked in. She was surprised to see a boy inside. She opened the door, picked him up, and ran away with him. When she got back to her own house she took a little canoe out of the house, put water in it, and stretched it until it became a full-sized canoe. She also took from the house a small storage basket which contained her treasures. Placing the boy in the stern of the boat she started down the river. They went on down past Weitchpec until they came to the mouth of the Klamath.
When the foster mother came back she saw that the door was not just as she had left it. She went in and found the boy was gone. She looked for him everywhere but could not even find his tracks. She searched for him in the neighboring mountains in vain. "Somebody has taken him away from me," she thought. Taking her stone pestle with her she climbed the mountain on the south side of the river. From its top she saw with surprise a boat going along on the ocean toward the south. "I am going to kill him," she thought, and threw the pestle at him with all her might. The girl had taken a head-dress from the storage basket and put it on the boy. The pestle just hit the end of this and knocked the feathers off. These feathers flew away as gulls and other sea-birds. The pestle stuck up in the water and stands there yet. They went on to the end of the world at the south where they are still living.
157:1 Told at Hupa, December 1901, by Emma Lewis.