“Now listen, boy, and I will show thee. How is it with us? Do we dwell always in one place? Nay, thou knowest we do not. We shift with the cattle and go from place to place; we cannot abide in one place always. So do the spirits. It is true that after a while we come back to our village here; and so, perchance, might they return, if we should be content to wait for them; but meantime the folk and the cattle would have no water to drink. So what’s to do? Why we must make them a new home. That’s what we must do—make them a new home!”
“Why don’t the Medicine Men make it?” Tig asked.
“Speak not of them, boy,” said Arsan. “They know their own ways. I am an old man, but I know not the ways of them. I bethink me of the old times that are past long ago, and of what our fathers did to prepare a dwelling-place for the water-spirits.”
“What did they do, grandfather?” Tig asked.
“Nay, now, be content. I have said enough,” the old man answered.
But that night when Tig was in the hut with his father, he said to him, “Father, I have been talking with Arsan. He knows how to make the water-spirits come back and fill up our pond again.”
“Oh, he knows, does he?” said Garff. “Then he must tell us.”
