Just then the grown-up sons of the old man, who had come to smoke and chat, rose and said to one another: “Is it not about time we should be going home? The stars must be all out.” Thus saying, they bade the old ones to “wait happily until the morning,” and shook hands with the young man who had come, and went to the homes of their wives’ mothers.
“Listen, my child!” said the old man after they had gone away, turning toward his daughter, who was sitting near the wall and looking down at the beads on her belt fringe. “Listen! You have heard what the young man has said. What think you?”
“Why! I know not; but what should I say but ‘Be it well,’” said the girl, “if thus think my old ones?”
“As you may,” said the old man; and then he made a cigarette and smoked with the young man. When he had thrown away his cigarette he said to the mother: “Old one, is it not time to stretch out?”
So when the old ones were asleep in the corner, the girl said to the youth, but in a low voice: “Only possibly you love me. True, I have said ‘Be it well’; but before I take your bundle and say ‘thanks,’ I would that you, to prove that you verily love me, should go down into my corn-field, among the lands of the priest-chief, by the side of the river, and hoe all the corn in a single morning. If you will do this, then shall I know you love me; then shall I take of your presents, and happy we will be together.”
“Very well,” replied the young man; “I am willing.”
Then the young girl lighted a bundle of cedar splints and showed him a room which contained a bed of soft robes and blankets, and, placing her father’s hoe near the door, bade the young man “wait happily unto the morning.”
So when she had gone he looked at the hoe and thought: “Ha! if that be all, she shall see in the morning that I am a man.”
At the peep of day over the eastern mesa he roused himself, and, shouldering the wooden hoe, ran down to the corn-fields; and when, as the sun was coming out, the young girl awoke and looked down from her house-top, “Aha!” thought she, “he is doing well, but my children and I shall see how he gets on somewhat later. I doubt if he loves me as much as he thinks he does.”
So she went into a closed room. Down in the corner stood a water jar, beautifully painted and as bright as new. It looked like other water jars, but it was not. It was wonderful, wonderful! for it was covered with a stone lid which held down many may-flies and gnats and mosquitoes. The maiden lifted the lid and began to speak to the little animals as though she were praying.