“Oh, pshaw, nonsense! We are only going to play a little while with the thunder and lightning.”
“All right,” replied the old Worm; “sit here and wait for me.” He wriggled himself and stirred about, and his countless legs were more countless than ever with rapid motions as he ran toward the walls of that stately terrace. A vine could not have run up more closely, nor a bird more rapidly; for if one foot slipped, another held on; so the old Centipede wriggled himself up the sides and over the roof, down into the great sky-hole; and, scorning the ladder, which he feared might creak, he went along, head-downward, on the ceiling to the end of the room over the altar, ran down the side, and approached that most forbidden of places, the altar of the gods themselves. The beloved gods, in silent majesty, were sitting there with their heads bowed in meditation so deep that they heard not the faint scuffle of the Centipede’s feet as he wound himself down into the altar and stole the thunder-stone. He took it in his mouth—which was larger than the mouths of Centipedes are now—and carried it silently, weighty as it was, up the way he had come, over the roof, down the wall, and back to the flat stone where he made his home, and where, hardly able to contain themselves with impatience, the two youthful gods were awaiting him.
“Here he comes!” cried the younger brother, “and he’s got it! By my war-bonnet, he’s got it!”
The old grandfather threw the stone down. It began to sound, but Áhaiyúta grabbed it, and, as it were, throttled its world-stirring speech. “Good! good!” he cried to the grandfather; “thank you, old grandfather, thank you!”
“Hold on!” cried the younger brother; “you didn’t bring both. What can we do with the one without the other?”
“Shut up!” cried the old Worm. “I know what I am about!” And before they could say any more he was off again. Ere long he returned, carrying the shaft of lightning, with its blue, shimmering point, in his mouth.
“Good!” cried the War-gods. And the younger brother caught up the lightning, and almost forgot his weapons, which, however, he did stop to take up, and started on a full run for Thunder Mountain, followed by his more deliberate, but equally interested elder brother, who brought along the thunder-stone, which he found a somewhat heavier burden than he had supposed.
It was not long, you may well imagine, so powerful were these Gods of War, ere they reached the home of their grandmother on the top of Thunder Mountain. They had carefully concealed the thunder-stone and the shaft of lightning meanwhile, and had taken care to provide themselves with a few prairie-dogs by way of deception.
Still, in majestic revery, unmoved, and apparently unwitting of what had taken place, sat the Rain-gods in their home in the mountains of Summerland.
Not long after they arrived, the young gods began to grow curious and anxious to try their new playthings. They poked one another considerably, and whispered a great deal, so that their grandmother began to suspect they were about to play some rash joke or other, and presently she espied the point of lightning gleaming under Mátsailéma’s dirty jacket.