"It is a token of defeat," said the Basket Woman; "the others will come soon." But some came feebly because of wounds, and it seemed the women looked for some who might never come. They cast up their arms and cried with a terrible wailing sound that rose and shuddered among the pines.
"Be still," said the young man; "would you bring our enemies down upon us with your screeching?" Then the women threw themselves quietly in the dust, and rocked to and fro with sobbing; their stillness was more bitter than their crying.
Suddenly out of the wood came a storm of arrows, a rush of strange, painted braves, and the din of fighting.
"Shut your eyes," said the Basket Woman, "it is not good for you to see." Alan hid his face in the Basket Woman's dress, and heard the noise of fighting rage and die away. When he ventured to look again on the ruined huts and the trampled harvest, there were few left in the camp of Corn Water, and they had enough to do to find food for their poor bodies. They winnowed the creek with basket-work weirs for every finger-long troutling that came down in it, and tore the bark off the pine trees to get at the grubs underneath.
"Why do they not go out and kill deer as before?" asked Alan.
"Their enemies lurk in the wood and drive away the game," said the Basket Woman.
"Why do they not go to another place?"
"Where shall they go, when their foes watch every pass?" said she.
It seemed to Alan that many days and nights passed while they watched by the camp; and the days were all sorrowful, and always, as before, the best meat was set aside for the strongest.
"Why is this so?" asked the boy.