Mountain Dweller

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Title:     Mountain Dweller
Author: Elaine Goodale Eastman [More Titles by Eastman]

Two sisters belonging to a well-known family one day became very hungry and helped themselves to some of their mother's fat meat, notwithstanding the girls were strictly forbidden to eat anything between meals.

When the mother found it out she was angry, especially with her elder daughter, for the younger was still a child. She not only scolded the girl, but slapped her severely. At last she said: "Since you are so fond of eating, you had better go and marry Mountain Dweller!"

Now Mountain Dweller is a being who lives alone upon the mountains and is supposed to be a great hunter. Up to this time, no mortal had ever seen him. The girls were more deeply offended by her words than by the blows she had given the elder, and that night when their mother slept they ran off into the woods.

They had wandered a long way and were crying with fear and hunger when they heard some one chopping wood in the distance. "Perhaps it is really he," said the elder sister, and they followed the sound.

There stood a man whose face was painted red. He was kind and asked the girls what they were doing so far from home.

As soon as they had told him, he invited them into his house near by, and they found it large and well stored with abundance of meat. They remained there as he asked them, and the elder sister in time became his wife.

Now the mother had soon repented her hasty speech and both parents searched everywhere for their daughters. When they could not find them, they mourned them as dead. A year passed, and the mourners' feast had been given, when one day Mountain Dweller said to his wife and his sister-in-law: "Wouldn't you like to see your father and mother again?"

"Oh, yes, yes!" exclaimed the little girl, but the other thought not, for the insult was hard to forgive. At last she consented to go, whereupon her husband hunted continually and prepared a large quantity of meat for a present to his father-in-law.

"Make a little basket, no larger than the end of your thumb," he told her; and when it was finished, he put into it all those canoe loads of meat, hung it on his finger, and the three of them went down the mountain to the old home of the two girls.

Their little brother was playing outside the hut and saw them first. He ran inside. "Mother, mother!" he cried, "my two sisters are coming!"

"Nonsense," scolded his mother. "Your sisters have been dead a long time, as you well know. Did we not give the mourners' feast for them this last moon?"

"Nevertheless I ought to know my own sisters, and I do know them," the boy persisted. "They are coming--they are here!"

The mother came to the door and saw them, and instantly she threw herself upon their necks, crying for joy.

The next morning, the elder daughter said to her: "Mother, back there in the woods a little way there is a basket for you. Send my brother to bring it."

The boy went and soon came back saying that it was too heavy for him. The whole village went, but all of them together could not carry the basket. Finally the young wife went herself, and she brought it easily in one hand. But when she set it down in the house and began to unpack it, behold! the place was filled and running over with meat of all kinds. There was a great feast and every one was pleased, but unfortunately the girls' mother ate so much that in the night she became very ill, and by morning she was dead.

This is a story told to discourage greediness.

[The end]
Elaine Goodale Eastman's short story: Mountain Dweller

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