“In its stead they left a pointed rock lodged in the cliff.”
Hum-moo, the Lost Arrow
TEE-HEE-NEH was the fairest of the daughters of Ah-wah-nee, and the happiest, for she was the chosen bride of the brave Kos-soo-kah.
When she went forth from her father’s lodge to bathe in the shadowy depths of Ke-koo-too-yem, the Sleeping Water, her step was light as the touch of a wind-swept leaf upon the rocks. When she stooped to lave her cheeks in the cool spray, her dark hair fell about her shoulders like a silken web, and the water mirror showed her a pair of laughing eyes of the color of ripened acorns, and in them the soft light of an Indian summer day. The sound of her voice was as the patter of rain on green leaves, and her heart was fearless and full of love.
No other woman of the tribe could weave such baskets as grew by the magic skill of her fingers, and she alone knew the secret of interweaving the bright feathers of the red-headed woodpecker and the topknots of mountain quail. Her acorn bread was always sweetest, the berries she gathered ripest, the deerskin she tanned softer than any other; and all because of the love in her heart, for she knew that Kos-soo-kah would eat of her bread and fruit, would drink from the baskets she wove, would wear upon his feet the moccasins she made.
Kos-soo-kah was a hunter, fearless and bold, sure with bow and spear, always fortunate in the chase. In his veins ran the blood that surges hot when there are daring deeds to do, and of all the young chiefs of Ah-wah-nee he had the greatest power among his people. Like the wooing of the evening star by the crescent moon was the mating of Tee-hee-neh with Kos-soo-kah; and when the young chief gathered together robes of squirrel and deerskin and of the skins of water-fowl, arrows and spear-heads, strings of coral and bear teeth, and gave them as a marriage token to Tee-hee-neh’s father, the old chief looked upon him with favor.