English Translation
6. Coyote and Quail1
Horace Torres
Coyote, trotting along a road saw Quail and her children walking along the road.
Then Coyote spoke thus to her:
"How do you keep your children going along after you in such straight line?"Coyote said to her.
"They follow me around so well because of this rope which is stretched between them."said Quail to him.
"You do so too, Coyote."she said to him.
"All right, I too will do so."Coyote said to her.
Then, pushing a yucca [rope] through the throats of his children, he strung that yucca between their throats.
So he strung them one after another.
Then having done so in this way, he started trotting off in the lead.
But his children lay on the ground, dead.
Ethnological Notes
Morris Opler
6.1
Mescalero texts 6 and 7 do not belong to the part of the Coyote cycle related in texts 1 to 5. They are isolated tales from a preceding portion of the cycle.