But they may end up saying worse things than that. From the gossip I’ve heard, some people are deeply suspicious of him. Some are even saying that Sequoyah is an evil sorcerer. He went west only to learn more magic and has returned to work bad medicine on people. One of those is the man who just rode past me with a sour look on his face. He saw me but did not even nod his head in my direction. His name is Tall Man and he is the father of my friend Galuloi.

I am sure that when Tall Man gets home he will tell everyone in his family where he saw me. He may even tell his son to keep away from me.

My stepmother’s place is impressive. It is not just the sturdy well-built log cabin that is bigger than my mother’s. Though the two chairs on the porch are empty, smoke is rising from the chimney, and I know that someone is home. The place is well kept. It does not look as it did just before my father went to Arkansas.

I was heeding my mother’s words back then and staying away from my father. So I did not see how it appeared when he was living there. But I am told that everything was looking run-down. Tall grass and weeds grew in the garden behind the cabin. When he left and my stepmother began taking care of things herself everything improved.

Of course appearance is not the most important thing. In fact, if you are too proud of how good your property looks or how handsome or beautiful you are, people may remind you of the story about Possum and his tail.

Back long ago, Possum was very proud of how he looked. The hair on his tail was thick and bushy, long and silky. He was always combing it and boasting about how beautiful it looked. He would sing this song about that tail of his:

He nio dil dil

Ha que que la lo

The other animals got tired of hearing him boasting like that. They got tired of hearing him always singing that irritating song again and again.

He nio dil dil

Ha que que la lo

So they went to Cricket.

“Go to his house at night,” they said to Cricket. “Cut all the hairs off his tail while he is sleeping.”

So Cricket did as they asked. He waited till Possum was asleep and then crossed over the creek to Possum’s house. He cut off all the hairs on Possum’s tail and then crept away.

The next day, Possum woke up and started to comb his tail as he always did every morning. But when he did so, all of those hairs came right off because Cricket had cut them.

And ever since then Possum has had the ugliest tail of all the animals.