The Junior Classics, vol 1 | Page 8

in jerking out between his big sobs, "I haven't got any father nor mother, I haven't."
Knowing that he was of a wicked and revengeful nature, his grandmother dreaded to tell him the story of his parentage, as she knew he would make trouble of it.
Manabozho renewed his cries and managed to throw out for a third or fourth time, his sorrowful lament that he was a poor unfortunate who had no parents or relatives.
At last she said to him, to quiet him, "Yes, you have a father and three brothers living. Your mother is dead. She was taken for a wife by your father, the West, without the consent of her parents. Your brothers are the North, East, and South; and being older than you your father has given them great power with the winds, according to their names. You are the youngest of his children. I have nursed you from your infancy, for your mother died when you were born."
"I am glad my father is living," said Manabozho, "I shall set out in the morning to visit him."
His grandmother would have discouraged him, saying it was a long distance to the place where his father, Ningabinn, or the West, lived.
This information seemed rather to please than to discourage Manabozho, for by this time he had grown to such a size and strength that he had been compelled to leave the narrow shelter of his grandmother's lodge and live out of doors. He was so tall that, if he had been so disposed, he could have snapped off the heads of the birds roosting on the topmost branches of the highest trees, as he stood up, without being at the trouble to climb. And if he had at any time taken a fancy to one of the same trees for a walking stick, he would have had no more to do than to pluck it up with his thumb and finger and strip down the leaves and twigs with the palm of his hand.
Bidding good-by to his old grandmother, who pulled a very long face over his departure, Manabozho set out at a great pace, for he was able to stride from one side of a prairie to the other at a single step.
He found his father on a high mountain far in the west. His father espied his approach at a great distance, and bounded down the mountainside several miles to give him welcome. Apparently delighted with each other, they reached in two or three of their giant paces the lodge of the West which stood high up near the clouds.
They spent some days in talking with each other-for these two great persons did nothing on a small scale, and a whole day to deliver a single sentence, such was the immensity of their discourse, was quite an ordinary affair.
One evening Manabozho asked his father what he was most afraid of on earth.
He replied-"Nothing."
"But is there nothing you dread here-nothing that would hurt you if you took too much of it? Come, tell me."
Manabozho was very urgent, so at last his father said: "Yes, there is a black stone to be found a couple of hundred miles from here, over that way," pointing as he spoke. "It is the only thing on earth I am afraid of, for if it should happen to hit me on any part of my body it would hurt me very much." The West made this important circumstance known to Manabozho in the strictest confidence.
"Now you will not tell anyone, Manabozho, that the black stone is bad medicine for your father, will you?" he added. "You are a good son, and I know you will keep it to yourself. Now tell me, my darling boy, is there not something that you don't like?"
Manabozho answered promptly-"Nothing."
His father, who was of a steady and persevering nature, put the same question to him seventeen times, and each time Manabozho made the same answer-' 'Nothing."
But the West insisted-"There must be something you are afraid of."
"Well, I will tell you," said Manabozho, "what it is."
He made an effort to speak, but it seemed to be too much for him.
"Out with it," said the West, fetching Manabozho such a blow on the back as shook the mountain with its echo.
"Je-ee, je-ee-it is," said Manabozho, apparently in great pain. "Yes, yes! I cannot name it, I tremble so."
The West told him to banish his fears, and to speak up; no one would hurt him. Manabozho began again, and he would have gone over the same make-believe of pain, had not his father, whose strength he knew was more than a match for his own, threatened to pitch him into a river about five miles off. At last he cried out:
"Father, since you will know, it is the root of the bulrush."