IN THE REIGN OF COYOTE
THE FROG AND THE COYOTE
HEN Doña Juanita was a tiny girl like you, Mabel, and Don Antonio was a little boy like you, Joe, they lived on a large ranch across the bay from San Francisco. They had no school to attend, and they saw other white children only at Christmas, or Easter, or Saint Francis' Day, or some other such great feast time. They had their lessons, of course,—book lessons, which were not long enough to weary them; riding lessons, which carried them over the hills many hours
a day; and music lessons, which consisted in practicing guitar and violin accompaniments to the sweet old Spanish songs. In addition, Juanita was taught all kinds of needlework, from plain hemming to the finest embroidery. As for amusements, they played dancing games with each other and with the children of the Indian servants, and they listened to the stories that Tecla, their nurse, old Klayukat, the saddler, and Wantasson, the blacksmith, delighted to tell.
There was a rivalry among these three storytellers, for they came from different tribes, and the legends of their people were not the same.
Tecla was from Baja, or Lower, California, where Juanita and Antonio's mother had once lived. Old Klayukat's tribal home was to the far north, at Puget Sound. He had been brought down by a king's vessel and given into the charge of the padres at the mission of San Francisco d'Assisi. There he had become a Christian and had been taught the saddler's trade. He had been employed by the children's grandfather ever since their father was a little boy. Wantasson was from Alta California, which is the California that now belongs to the United States. Before he had become Christianized at the mission, he had wandered about and so knew stories from the different tribes of the country.
To Juanita and Antonio it mattered little from what places the stories came,—whether from the northern Oregon Country, Baja California, or their own Alta California. All the tales were fascinating to them, and they were always eager to do any favor for Wantasson, Klayukat, or Tecla in the hope of winning a story in return.
One hot day the children and Tecla were lying under the big oak tree by the spring, when they saw a small green frog hop among the little yellow water flowers which we call "brass buttons."
"Did I ever tell you the story of the frog and the coyote?" asked Tecla.
"Oh, no; please tell it now"; and Juanita clapped her hands.
"Do tell it, my good Tecla," added Antonio. (Spanish Californian children were trained to be always polite to their elders, no matter what social position these occupied.)
"Well, sit still, thou restless Nita, and I will tell it as my godfather told it to me."
One day the coyote found a frog in the road, and said, "Now, I shall eat you up."
The frog replied: "Oh, don't eat me to-day, Brother Coyote. Let us run a race to-morrow, and if you win, then you may eat me."
The coyote said, "All right."
Then the frog went to see his frog friends, and said, "I am going to run a race with the coyote to-morrow, from the spring to the elder tree and back, and if he wins, he is to eat me."
"Ha, ha! Of course he will win," laughed his friends.
"Not if you will help me, as friends should," said the frog. "One of you go to the turning stake and, when you see the coyote coming, give three jumps to show him that you are ahead. I will stay near the home stake and jump in ahead of him when he is coming back." The frog's friends agreed to help him.
The next day the coyote came to run the race. The frog was there, and at the appointed time they both started, but the frog gave only three jumps and then lay down on the grass to rest. The coyote ran very fast; and, as he did not see the frog, he thought him far behind. As he neared the turning post, he saw the frog jump three times in front of him.
"Oh, this is strange," said the coyote; "I did not see you pass me. But I will beat you home."
He ran as fast as he could, but when he came in sight of the home stake, there was the frog making the three last jumps.
Then the coyote ran away in disgust.
"The frog was not a gentleman," commented Antonio, "for he was acting a lie."
"Your Señora Madre calls," said Tecla; "we must go to her. God willing, to-morrow I will tell you about another frog,—and he was not a gentleman either."