E - ya - ha hi, E - ya, E - ya - hi!
But every man sang it for himself, beginning when he liked and leaving off, and when a rabbit started up under foot or one over-leaped himself and went sprawling to the sand the refrain broke out again, but the words, when there were any, seemed not to have anything to do with the hunt, and sounded to Alan like a game.
"He-yah-hi, hi! he has it; he has it, he has the white, he has it!"
"Na'ÿang-wit'e!" chuckled the Basket Woman. "Na'ÿang-wit'e, na'ÿang-wit'e! It is as it was of old time, look now and you shall see."
Alan looked at the hunters again, and whether it was because of the blown dust of the mesa, or the quiver of heat that rose up from the sand, or because the Basket Woman had laid her hand upon him, he saw that they were not as they had been a moment since. Now they wore no hats and were naked from the waist up, clothed below with deerskin garments. Quivers of the skin of cougars with the tails hanging down were slung between their shoulders, and the arrows in them were pointed with tips of obsidian and winged with eagle feathers. Every man carried his bow or his spear in his hand. Bright beads and bits of many-colored shell hung and glittered in their hair. Rabbits went before them like grasshoppers for number, and the song and the shouting were fierce and wild. "But what is it all about?" asked Alan.
"Na'ÿang-wit'e, na'ÿang-wit'e," laughed the Basket Woman. "Wait and I will tell you the story of that song, for it is so that every song has its story, without which no one may understand it. It is not well to go too near the guns; sit you here and I will tell."
So Alan bent down the sagebrush to make him a springy seat and the Basket Woman sat upon the ground with her hands clasped about her knees.
"Long and long ago," said the Basket Woman, "when men and beasts talked together, there were none so friendly and none so much about the wickiups as the rabbit people, and some of our fathers have told that it was they who taught my people the game of na'ÿang-wit'e. I know not if that be true, but there were none so cunning as they to play it. And this is the manner of the game: there should be two sticks, or better, two bits of bone of the fore leg of a deer, made smooth and small to fit the palm. One of them is all white and the other has sinew of deer stained black and wound about it. These the players pass from hand to hand, and another will guess where is the place of the white, and he who guesses best shall win all the other's goods. It is good sport playing, and between man and man it comes even in the end, for sometimes one has the goods and sometimes another, but when my people played with the rabbit people it was not good, for the rabbits won every time. Then my people drew together, all the Indians of every sort, and made a great game against the rabbit people. There were two long rows across the mesa, and between them were all the goods piled high, all the beads and ornaments of shell, all the feather work and fine dressed deerskin, all the worked moccasins, the quivers, the bows, all the blankets, the baskets, and the woven mats. So they played at sunrise, so at noon, so when it was night and the fires were lit. So on into the night, and when it was morning the game was done, for the Indians had no more goods. Ay-aiy!" said the Basket Woman, "long will the rabbit people sorrow for that day, for it was then that the Indians first contrived together how they might be rid of them. Then they gathered up the milkweed," and she reached out and plucked a tall stem of it growing beside her, white flowered and slender, with fine leaves like grass. "Then they broke it so," and she laid it across a stone and beat it lightly with a stick, "then they drew out the threads soft and white, and so they rolled it into string."