runner. "Ah, has he gone so fast ahead that the disturbed grasses
in his trail have quieted again?" exclaimed Iktomi. With that
thought he quickly dropped the heavy stone. "No more of this!"
said he, patting his chest with both hands.

Off with a springing bound, he ran swiftly toward the goal.
Tufts of reeds and grass fell flat under his feet. Hardly had they
raised their heads when Iktomi was many paces gone.

Soon he reached the heap of cold ashes. Iktomi halted stiff
as if he had struck an invisible cliff. His black eyes showed a
ring of white about them as he stared at the empty ground. There
was no pot of boiled fish! There was no water-man in sight! "Oh,
if only I had shared my food like a real Dakota, I would not have
lost it all! Why did I not know the muskrat would run through the
water? He swims faster than I could ever run! That is what he has
done. He has laughed at me for carrying a weight on my back while
he shot hither like an arrow!"

Crying thus to himself, Iktomi stepped to the water's brink.
He stooped forward with a hand on each bent knee and peeped far
into the deep water.

"There!" he exclaimed, "I see you, my friend, sitting with
your ankles wound around my little pot of fish! My friend, I am
hungry. Give me a bone!"

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the water-man, the muskrat. The sound
did not rise up out of the lake, for it came down from overhead.
With his hands still on his knees, Iktomi turned his face upward