This was their marriage. But before Tee-hee-neh should go with Kos-soo-kah to his lodge there must be a great feast, and all day long Ah-wah-nee was astir with signs of preparation.
From many shady places came a sound like the tap-tap-tapping of woodpeckers, where the older women sat upon smooth, flat rocks pounding dried acorns into meal to make the acorn bread; and the younger women went with their baskets to the meadows and woods for grass seeds, herbs and wild honey.
Early in the morning Kos-soo-kah left his lodge and gathered about him the strongest of the young braves to go forth into the forest and net the grouse, and seek the bear and deer in their haunts, for this was the man’s share of the marriage feast. While his hunters strung their bows and fastened arrow-heads to the feathered shafts, Kos-soo-kah stole away for a last word with Tee-hee-neh, his bride; and when they parted it was with the promise that at the end of the day’s hunt Kos-soo-kah should drop an arrow from the cliff between Cho-look, the High Fall, and Le-ham-i-te, the Cañon of the Arrow-wood. By the number of feathers it bore, Tee-hee-neh could tell what the kill had been.
The morning mists were still tangled in the pines when Kos-soo-kah and his hunters began to climb the trail that cut into the heart of the forest. From a covert spot Tee-hee-neh watched her lover disappear through the cleft in the northern wall, where the arrow-wood grows thick; then she joined the other women and worked with a light heart until long shadows stretched across the meadow and warned her of the hour when she was to be near the foot of Cho-look to receive the message from Kos-soo-kah.
Far over the mountains Kos-soo-kah laughed loud with a hunter’s pride as he bound to his swiftest arrow all the feathers of a grouse’s wing. Sped by a hunter’s pride and a lover’s pride he leaped along the rocky trail, far in advance of the youthful braves of his band who bore among them the best of the kill. Eagerly he watched the western sky, fearful lest the sun’s last kiss should tinge the brow of Tis-sa-ack before he reached the cliff whence his bow should let fly the message to the waiting one below.
The frightened quail fluttered in his path unseen. A belated vulture, skimming the fading sky, seemed not to be in motion. So swiftly Kos-soo-kah ran, the wind stood still to let him pass.
He reached the valley wall at last, his strength well spent but still enough to pull his bow to a full half-circle. Poised for an instant, the feathered shaft caught on its tip a sun ray, then flew downward; but though mighty and sure the force that sent it, no message came to the faithful Tee-hee-neh.
Hour after hour she waited, the joy in her heart changing to a nameless fear as the blue sky faded gray, and the gray went purple in the thickening dusk, and yet no sign, no sound of the returning hunters.
“Kos-soo-kah! Kos-soo-kah!” trembled her voice in the stillness. Only a weird echo answered, “Kos-soo-kah.”
Perhaps they had wandered far, and Kos-soo-kah could not reach the cliff till the night shadows had crept out of the valley, and over the tops of the mountains. Perhaps even now he was returning down the Cañon of the Arrow-wood. This she whispered to a heart that gave no answering hope.