Like an old fox, Topanashka determined to circumvent the dangerous spot, by describing a wide arc around it. He would thus meet the trail farther north, and be able to judge from signs there whether or not the Tehua was close upon the Rito. First he would have to crawl backward until he was at a sufficient distance to be out of sight altogether.
This movement he began to execute in his usual slow and deliberate manner, crawfishing until he felt sure that he could not be seen from the point where the crows had taken their position. Once during his retreat the birds fluttered upward, croaking, but alighted again on the same spot. Something must have disturbed them.
Topanashka arose, straightened himself, and moved ahead as noiselessly as possible. He maintained a course parallel to the trail.
The old man considered himself now as being in the country of the enemy and on hostile ground. For whereas he was in reality not far from the Rito, still, possibly, he had an enemy in his rear. It is the custom of a warrior of high rank in the esoteric cluster of the war magicians, ere the trailing of an enemy begins, to pronounce a short prayer, and Topanashka had neglected it. His indignation at the discovery of Shotaye's misdeed was the cause of this neglect. Now it came to his mind.
"Kuawk, kuawk, kuawk!"
A crow flew overhead. It came from the tree where the others had been sitting, or at least from that direction.
To the Indian the crow is a bird of ill omen. Its discordant voice is, next to the cry of the owl, regarded as the most dismal forewarning. The use of its plumage in magic is strongly condemned. Was it not strange that those harbingers of misfortune so persistently followed him, and that their repulsive croaking always interrupted his thoughts? Topanashka resolved to make good on the spot what he had omitted, and ere he moved, to pray.
In place of the formula which the warrior recites when he is on the track of an enemy, Topanashka selected another one, spoken upon entering dangerous ground where enemies may be lurking. It seemed to him that the latter was better adapted to the occasion, since he was unarmed and therefore unable to fight in case of necessity. He still carried with him the same fetich, a rude alabaster figure of the panther, which we saw dangling from his necklace on the day he went to visit the tapop. But the necklace he had left at home this time, and he carried the amulet in a leather satchel concealed under his wrap. He took out the wallet and removed the fetich from it. To the back of the figure was fastened a small arrow-head, on the sides a turquoise and a few shells were tied with strings of yucca fibre.
The old man squatted on the ground, took from the same satchel a pinch of sacred meal, and scattered it to the six regions. Then he whispered,—
"[=A]-ā. Nashtio, Shiuana, Kopishtai! Make me precious this day, even if the land be full of enemies. Let not my life be threatened by them. Protect me from them. Let none of the Moshome go across this line," he drew a line in the sand with the arrow-point, "give me protection from them! Mokatsh, Tyame, Shiuana, shield my heart from the enemy."