Some savage creatures of the wilderness there are who choose their mates, and stand, to live or to die, against all foes who would break the bond. The tigress will watch her mate do battle for her and then follow his conqueror,––but Yahn Tsyn-deh had not even so much as that meekness of the tiger in her;––her own share of the battle would she fight that the mate she chose should remain unconquered. Proud she was of his beauty and of his grace in the scalp dance,––but more proud would she be when no 288 serene young Po-Athun-ho looked at her lover as if from a high place of thought. It was, strangely enough, the unspoken in Tahn-té against which she rebelled in bitterness. No word that was not gentle had he ever spoken to her––and to Ka-yemo no word that lacked dignity. It was as if the man in his thoughts was enthroned on the clouds:––and at last she had found the way for that cloud to be dragged low in the dust!
CHAPTER XX
THE CHOICE OF YAHN TSYN-DEH
And while Yahn Tsyn-deh laid the trap, and the medicine drums sounded, and the women gathered the children close because of the trembling earth, one girl robed in the skin of a mountain lion waited alone at the portal of the star, and knelt in the shadow, and looked with eyes of fear at the great pieces of severed cliff, or ancient wall sent crashing downwards by the force of the earth shock.
Past her portal they had crashed until it seemed the roof must fall also, and she gathered the robe of Tahn-té about her, and came as far as might be into the open––and watched with longing eyes the trail across the mesa to the great river!––for that trail was as the path of the sun to her,––or the rainbow in the sky!
The feet of Tahn-té had touched that trail, and when the night came, and the moon rose in the great circle over the eastern hills––over that trail would he come, and though the mountains themselves crashed downwards to the mesa, he would hold her close, and the very spirits of darkness could send no more fear!
She kept very still there waiting at the portal, for strange noises were heard on the mesa, a dislodged stone rumbling down the long slope––or a bit of loose clay falling from the ancient walls. At times the smaller sounds suggested passing feet––and 290 above all things must she remain hidden from people until he came for her––he––the god-like one who had brought her to this dwelling so akin to the dwellings of the Divine Ones of the Navahu land in the place called Tsé-ye. The difference was that the Tsé-ye dwellings were deep in the heart of the world––while these dwellings were lifted high above the world.
But she knew without words that he indeed belonged to the Divine Ones ere he brought her to the ancient dwellings. That her name had been in his heart, and on his lips before she herself had told him, was but a part of the strange sweet magic of the new life into which he had led her.