490 THE BELLA COOLA INDIANS

“It is because you are so greedy that no woman will have intercourse with
you.”

“Rot!” he replied. ‘I could sleep with you if I wanted.”

That night as the girl was sleeping, her brother came and seduced her.
She awoke just as he was leaving, too late to discover who her seducer
had been. Thinking that whoever it was might return, she determined
to remain awake the next night. For hours she lay feigning sleep, but
towards dawn could keep awake no longer. Then her evil brother came
again, as before fleeing as she awoke. She was much puzzled, unable to
think who her lover might be. The third night she mixed some paint
with gum and grease, warmed the mixture by the fire and went to sleep
with it beside her. Once again her brother held intercourse, but this
time, though he fled when she awoke and she was unable to see his face,
she had been quick enough to throw out her arms, smeared with the
sticky paint, and felt them come in contact with the man’s body.

All the next day the girl kept peering out through the cracks in the
wall of the house hoping to see a lad stained with paint. In the distance
she could see the village boys playing, and noticed that one had stains
on his body, but she was not close enough to recognize who it was. So
she called one of her younger sisters.

“Go and see,” she said, ‘“‘who that is with paint stains on his back.”

The younger child returned quickly.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. ‘“Can’t you see? It is our oldest
brother.”

The girl was covered with shame and mortification. For four days
she ate nothing, then gathered her few possessions—comb, paint, and so
forth—into a small bundle, and set out, not caring where she went. Her
younger sister saw her slip out through the hole in the floor.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Oh, I am just going to get some spruce gum to chew,” she answered.
“You run home.”

The little girl did not want to go home, but turned back when her elder
sister spoke angrily to her. Still intent on following, she hid in some
bushes hoping that her sister would not notice, but the latter had become
suspicious and watched. When she saw what the younger one had done,
she turned back, caught the little girl, and, disregarding her struggles,
tied her to a tree so that she could not come after her.

The elder sister now set out on her lonely journey, following a dried-up
water-course which she ascended. Though she did not know it, this was
the dry river-bed leading from Azjunttim’s house to this world, a track
which often figures in Bella Coola mythology. To anyone else the stony
river-bed would have been difficult of ascent, to her it was like a fine road.