But she did go with him to the place of the well in the sand at Shufinne at the time when the Twilight Woman went for water. He waited there and drew for her the water, and watched closely her face as he spoke a Castilian word of greeting. If he had hope that she had ever before heard such words his hopes were fruitless. She was so indifferent to his presence that not even once did she lift her eyes from the water jar or look in his face, and the fragile figure turned from him and walked away as if Castilian warriors were seen daily on the path to that well.
Yahn knew that all the other women wished greatly to be let go down to the village that they might see and be spoken to by the great strangers, and she hid in the brush to watch the medicine god woman and even won courage to ask of her who had filled the water jar so quickly.
“Was it not then the stranger who is your lover, Yahn Tsyn-deh?” asked the other, not as one who cares, but as one who states a fact––“the man whom you give love to in these new days.”
“Who says I give love?” demanded Yahn. “Säh-pah the liar, or Koh-pé, who knows not anything!”
“You walk together alone as lovers walk. The other women do not think they lie.”
“They are fools––the other women!” stated Yahn––“also they are liars. They are glad if a man of the beard looks the way they are,––they would make a trail to follow if the men of iron whistled them,––they would be proud to make their own men ashamed––they!”
For the first time the older woman looked in the face of the girl with intentness, as though suddenly aroused to interest in the human drama about her, and the actors in it.
“Then you would not follow, Yahn Tsyn-deh?” she asked. “The others say you laugh at the men of the tribe and give love to the strangers––they say you pass Ka-yemo on the trail and your eyes never see him any more because of the men of iron who give you gifts!”
“A jealous woman says that!” stormed Yahn Tsyn-deh,––“a woman who maybe lies to him when he will listen! You see this:”––and she picked up a black water worn pebble with a vein of white through the heart of it––“Sometime when the Earth Mother was beginning with the work, these two were maybe not together like this. They were apart––maybe it was before the ice went from around our world and the mountains sent fire to split the rocks. Look you now––you are wise, but maybe you do 275 not know how this is, for you go into shadow lands, and men and women, and the stones over which your feet walk, are all the same to you––also the love of a man and a woman are not anything to your thoughts!”