Over beyond To-co-yah, the North Dome, among the Mo-nos and Pai-u-tes, a few of the ill-fated Ah-wah-nee-chees had found refuge. Among them was the chief of the tribe, who after a time took a Mo-no maiden for his bride. By this Mo-no woman he had a son, and they gave him the name of Ten-ie-ya. Before another round of seasons, the spirit of the Ah-wah-nee-chee chieftain had wandered on to the Land of the Sun, the home of happy souls.
Ten-ie-ya grew up among his mother’s people, but the fire of a warrior chief was in his blood and he liked not to live where the word of another was law. The fire in his blood was kept aflame by the words of an old man, the patriarch of his father’s tribe, who urged him to return to Ah-wah-nee, the home of his ancestors, and gather about him the people whose chief he was by right of birth.
So Ten-ie-ya went back across the mountains by a trail abandoned long ago, and from the camps of other tribes came those in whose veins was any trace of Ah-wah-nee-chee blood; and, as before, the number was increased by lawless braves of weaker bands who liked a greater freedom for their lawlessness. Again, under the favor of the Great Spirit, the Ah-wah-nee-chees flourished and by their fierce strength and daring became to other tribes as the mountain lion to the wolf and the coyote and the mountain sheep.
“A monster grizzly that had just crept forth from his winter cave.”
And it chanced that one day while Ten-ie-ya and his warriors were camped near Le-ham-i-te, the Cañon of the Arrow-wood, a young brave went out in the early morning to the lake of Ke-koo-too-yem, the Sleeping Water, to spear fish. His lithe, strong limbs took no heed of the rocky talus in his path, and he leaped from boulder to boulder, following the wall that rose sheer above him and cut the blue sky overhead.
As he reached the base of Scho-ko-ni, the cliff that arches like the shade of an Indian cradle basket, he came suddenly upon a monster grizzly that had just crept forth from his winter cave. The grizzly knows no man for his friend; least of all, the man who surprises him at the first meal after his long sleep. The rivals of Ah-wah-nee were face to face.
The Ah-wah-nee-chee had no weapon save his fish spear, useless as a reed; yet he had the fearlessness of youth and the courage of a race to whom valorous deeds are more than strings of wampum, piles of pelt or many cattle. He faced the grizzly boldly as the clumsy hulk rose to its full height, at bay and keen for attack. With instinctive love of conflict roused, the young chief seized a broken limb that lay at his feet, and gave the grizzly blow for blow.
The claws of the maddened brute raked his flesh. The blood ran warm over his glistening skin and matted the bristled yellow fur of the grizzly.