"I am the creator of the mountains," said Zipacná.
Zipacná was bathing at the edge of a river when four hundred youths passed[70] dragging a log to support their house. The four hundred were walking, after having cut down a large tree to make the ridge-pole of their house.
Then Zipacná came up, and going toward the four hundred youths, said to them: "What are you doing, boys?"
"It is only this log," they answered, "which we cannot lift and carry on our shoulders."
"I will carry it. Where does it have to go? What do you want it for?"
"For a ridge-pole for our house."
"All right," he answered, and lifting it up, he put it on his shoulders and carried it to the entrance of the house of the four hundred boys.
"Now stay with us, boy," they said. "Have you a mother or father;"
"I have neither," he answered.
"Then we shall hire you tomorrow to prepare another log to support our house."
"Good," he answered.
The four hundred boys talked together then and said:
"How shall we kill this boy? Because it is not good what he has done lifting the log alone. Let us make a big hole and push him so that he will fall into it. 'Go down and take out the earth and carry it from the pit,' we shall tell him. and when he stoops down, to go down into the pit, we shall let the large log fall on him and he will die there in the pit."
So said the four hundred boys, and then they dug a large, very deep pit. Then they called Zipacná.
"We like you very much. Go, go and dig dirt, for we cannot reach [the bottom of the pit]," they said.
"All right," he answered. He went at once into the pit. And calling to him as he was digging the dirt, they said: "Have you gone down very deep yet?"
"Yes," he answered beginning to dig the pit. But the pit which he was making was to save him from danger. He knew that they wanted to kill him; so when he dug the pit, he made a second hole at one side in order to free himself.
"How far [have you gone]?" the four hundred boys called down.
"I am still digging; I will call up to you when I have finished the digging," said Zipacná from the bottom of the pit. But he was not digging his grave; instead he was opening another pit in order to save himself.
At last Zipacná called to them. But when he called, he was already safe in the second pit.
"Come and take out and carry away the dirt which I have dug and which is in the bottom of the pit," he said, "because in truth I have made it very deep. Do you not hear my call? Nevertheless, your calls, your words repeat themselves like an echo once, twice, and so I hear well where you are." So Zipacná called from the pit where he was hidden, shouting from the depths.
Then the boys hurled the great log violently, and it fell quickly with a thud to the bottom of the pit.
[70] Omuch Qaholab, "four hundred young men." The collective noun is used to indicate a great number, a crowd.
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