"Behold, father and elder brother, we come seeking only the light of thy favor. Listen!"
Then they told him of the lost Corn maidens, and prayed him to seek them, that messages of conciliation might be sent them or given.
"Being so, be it well with thy wishes. Go ye before contentedly," answered the Eagle, smoothing his feathers.
Forthwith the warriors returned to the council of the fathers, relating how that their message had been well received, and the eagle leapt forth and winged his way high into the sky—high, high, until he circled among the clouds, small seeming and swift, as seed-down in a whirlwind. And all through the heights he circled and sailed, to the north, the west, the south and the east. Yet nowhere saw he trace of the Maidens. Then he flew lower, returning, and the people heard the roar of his wings almost ere the warriors were rested, and arose eagerly to receive his tidings. As he alighted, the fathers said, "Enter thou and sit, oh brother, and say to us what thou hast to say;" and they offered him the cigarette of the space-relations.
When they had puffed to the regions and purified his breath with smoke, and blown smoke over the sacred things, then the Eagle spake: "Far have I journeyed, scanning all the regions. Neither blue bird nor wood-rat can hide from my seeing," said he, snapping his beak and looking aslant. "Neither of them, unless they hide under bushes; yet have I failed to see aught of the maidens ye seek for. Send you, therefore, for my younger brother the Falcon; strong of flight is he, yet not so potently strong as I, and nearer the ground he takes his way ere sunrise."
Then the Eagle, scarce awaiting the thanks of the fathers, spread his wings and flew away to Twin mountain, and the Warrior Priests of the Bow, sought again fleetly over the plain to the westward for his younger brother, the Falcon.
THE SEEKING OF THE MAIDENS OF CORN BY THE FALCON.
They found him sitting on an ant hill; nor would he have paused but for their cries of peaceful import, for, said he, as they approached him, "If ye have snare-strings I will be off like the flight of an arrow well plumed of our feathers!"
"Nay, now!" said the twain. "Thy elder brother hath bidden us seek thee." Thereupon they told him what had passed, and how that the Eagle had failed to find their maidens so white and beautiful.
"Failed, say ye? Of course he failed! For he clambers aloft to the clouds and thinks, forsooth, that he can see under every bush and into every shadow, as sees the Sun-father who sees not with eyes! Go ye before," said the Falcon; and ere they had turned toward the town, he had spread his sharp wings and was skimming off over the tops of the trees and bushes as though verily seeking for field mice or birds' nests. And the warriors returned to tell the fathers and await his coming; but after he had sought far over the world to the north and the west, the east and the south, he too returned and was received as had been the Eagle; but when he had settled on the edge of a tray, before the altar, as on the ant hills he settles today, and had smoked and been smoked as had been the Eagle, he told the sorrowing fathers and mothers that he had looked behind every copse and cliff-shadow, but of the maidens had found no trace. "They are hidden more closely than ever sparrow hid," said he, gripping the cover of the tray on which he perched as though it were real feathers and blood, and ruffling his crest. Then he, too, flew away to his hills in the west.