From the day when her son had been honored as Po-Ahtun-ho, the strife of existence seemed ended for S[=aa]-hanh-que-ah. The thing she had lived to see was now accomplished. Her days were now the gray days of rest and of mystery. She made many prayers alone in the hills, and forgot to eat.
She was not old, yet to Tahn-té she said, “It is over:––The time is come when you stand alone to be strong. Your work is now the work of the strong man, and I go to make prayers in the hills.”
When she stayed over long, he sought her out lest ill should come to her, and more than once he had walked into the village with his mother in his arms as other people carried the little children. It was the Woman of the Twilight, and no one laughed. At any other woman they would have laughed to see her carried in the arms of a man.
And so, when she stood on her terrace and spoke of the voice of the Dawn and the Mountain Mists, all listened. The men talked of it in the kivas of each clan, and the women talked all together, and were glad. They did not know quite what their fear had been, but it was no longer with them since the woman of the God Thoughts said the voices sang no fear.
Only Yahn Tsyn-deh on the terrace opposite, strung 105 together claws of birds for a necklace, and scoffed warily.
“Only if you are mountain strong need you have no fear,” she said. “The promise that her son is maybe the Voice and the Dawn is a good promise––but the wise woman of the hill caves is double wise! Her song has double thoughts. Be you all mountain strong, as gods are strong, and no fear will come! But if the mountain strength waits not at your door––what then happens?”
No one knew, and the women looked at each other in question. The peace of the wise woman’s words was killed by the bitter laugh of Apache Yahn.
When the bitter mood touched the girl, the Te-hua people remembered that her mother was of that wild Apache people––enemy to all. At times she could be a maid like other maids––with charm and laughter––a very bewitching Yahn who made herself a beauty barbaric with strings of gay berries of the rose, or flat girdles of feathers dyed like the rainbow. Her bare arms had bracelets of little shells. Into the weaving of her garments she had put threads of crimson in strange patterns––they were often the symbols of the Apache gods or spirit people, and when she chose she made the other women feel fear with them. Her own mother who told her of them, would not have worn them thus––but Yahn was more Apache than her mother.
One woman shelling corn for the meal, suggested that if the Te-hua people had not mountain strength it might mean war as the people to the South had endured that other time––when the men at Tiguex were burned to ashes by the strangers.
“Oh, wise Säh-pah!” and Yahn laughed at the 106 late thought,––“Has the thing at last come to the mind of one of you?”