When the circle was finished, they bent all the tops of the branches together and tied them; then they covered the house with dry grass.
The Father tried to get Massea to build a better kind of house; he said he would show him how to do it, for the brush house was too cold. But Massea said, “No; we like this kind of house. When it gets too dirty, we will burn it down and build another.”
They left a little hole for a door. They left it open all the time because they had nothing with which to close it.
After the house was finished and the baskets were put away in it, they all went to help their friends build their houses. One of the Indians who was already living at the Mission brought them a bundle of straw, which Massea put across the hole in front of their house. That meant to any Indian who might come to see them, “We are away from home, and shall be gone some time.”
BREAKFAST AT THE MISSION
NEXT morning Ama got up very early. She went down to the creek bed and hunted about until she found two stones that she liked. One was large and flat on top; the other was small and long, with one end that had been worn smooth by the water. She wanted to make a new mortar and pestle, for the old ones were so heavy that she had not brought them with her.
Ama carried her corn down to the creek, put it on the big stone, and tried to pound it with the little one; but the corn flew all over the ground, for there was no hole worn yet in the top of the flat rock.
She poured some more corn on the top of the flat stone, but this time she did not pound it so hard. Even then she could not grind it very well, but by and by it was fine enough so that she could make mush of it.
She started to go to the hut to tell Docas to make a fire. Just as she climbed up the bank the sun came over the top of the mountain. It shone on the queer, shiny thing that looked something like a basket upside down. This thing hung between two posts by the church, and it was shining so brightly now that Ama could hardly look at it.
At the same moment that the sun rose, she heard something go, “Clang, clang, clang!” The sound seemed to come from this same shiny thing.