His eyes burned with the passion fire as a fair vision rose before him, yonder on the granite dome of the southern wall. It was the form of a maiden, not of the dark tribe he loved and guarded, but fairer than any he had seen or known in dreams. Her face had the rosy flush of dawn, her eyes took their color from the morning sky, and her hair was like strands of golden sunlight. Her voice was low as a dove call when she whispered Tu-tock-ah-nu-lah’s name.
For a moment she lingered, smiling; but even as the Rock Chief leaped from his tower in answer to her call, she glided across the rounded dome and faded from his sight, leaving her throne shrouded in a snowy cloud. Piqued by the mystery of her flight, Tu-tock-ah-nu-lah followed the sound of her rustling garments, wandering all day over the mountains; but the pine trees wove a blue mist about her, hiding her from his eyes. Not until he returned to his citadel at night did he see her face again. Then for an instant she appeared upon her throne, her pale brow tinged with the rose glow of the sun; and he knew that she was Tis-sa-ack, the Goddess of the Valley, who shared with him the loving care of the Ah-wah-nee-chees.
Every morning now at dawn Tu-tock-ah-nu-lah left his tower and sped across the valley to meet the lovely goddess of his heart’s desire. Through the day he hovered near her, gazing upon the fair form, always half hidden by billowing cloud, trying to read an answering love in her wide blue eyes. But never again did he hear the voice that came to him across the valley in the stillness of that one gray dawn.
Tu-tock-ah-nu-lah’s passion grew day by day, as summer ripens the fruits of springtime budding; but Tis-sa-ack had no joy in his love. Her heart was heavy with a great sorrow, for she saw that the Rock Chief was blind to the needs of his people, that he had forsaken those who looked to him for life.
The sun burned his way through the sky, and no rains fell to cool the aching earth. Tu-tock-ah-nu-lah paid no heed to the withering leaves of the wild corn, the shrunken streams from which the fisherman turned with empty nets, the shriveling acorns that fell worthless to the ground. He neither knew nor cared that the hunter, after weary days in the mountains, came to his lodge at night with arrows unused, to meet the anxious glance of starving women and hear the wailing cry of hungry children.
The Ah-wah-nee-chees called upon the Rock Chief in vain. He did not hear their cries; he thought only of his love. The harvest moon looked down into the valley and saw the dark form of Famine skulking there. Then it was that Tis-sa-ack’s love was swept away by an overwhelming pity; and as she lay upon her couch she cried out to the Great Spirit to send the rain-clouds that bear life to all things of the earth.
And even as she prayed, there came an answer to her prayer. With a voice of thunder the Great Spirit gave commands to the spirits of the air. With a barbed shaft of lightning he rent the granite dome where Tis-sa-ack prayed; and from the cleft rock came a rush of water that filled the dry basin of Wai-ack, the Mirror Lake, and sent a wandering stream through the thirsty fields.
Now the withered corn-stalks raised their drooping heads, flowers nodded among the waving grasses and offered their lips to the wild bees, and the acorns swelled with sap that crept upward from reviving roots. The women went joyously into the fields to gather the harvest, and the men no longer returned with empty pouches from the forest or fished by the riverside in vain.
The chief of the Ah-wah-nee-chees ordered a great feast, and all faces were turned in gratitude to the dome where Tis-sa-ack dwelt. But Tis-sa-ack was gone. She had sacrificed her love, her life, for the children of Ah-wah-nee. Through her they had suffered; through her their sufferings had ceased; and that all might hold her memory dear she left them the lake, the river and a fragment of her throne. Upon the bosom of Ke-koo-too-yem, the Sleeping Water, her spirit rests, wandering sometimes of a summer evening to the Half Dome, there to linger for a moment as the sun slips over the western wall of the valley.