The Toad And The Boy

There was a hunting season. Indian men, with bows and arrows, were wading waist deep amid the wild rice. In the largest teepee sat a young mother next to her laid a black-eyed baby who was laughing. When his mother stopped to wrap red porcupine quills about the long fringes of a buckskin cushion the child fell asleep. It was a time when her husband used to return. She remembered that there were no willow sticks for the fire so she went to the wooded ravine. After that she returned to her teepee and saw that her son disappeared. Nowhere was any sign of the child! She cried that her son was gone and ran to the nearest teepees to ask neighbors about her son. But every neighbor told her: "We haven't seen your child!"