"The Country of Dry Washes lies between the Cinoave on the south and the People of the Bow who possessed the Salmon Rivers, a great gray land cut across by deep gullies where the wild waters come down from the Wall-of-Shining-Rocks and worry the bone-white boulders. The People of the Dry Washes live meanly, and are meanly spoken of by the People of the Coast who drove them inland from the sea borders. After the Rains, when the quick grass sprang up, vast herds of deer and pronghorn come down from the mountains; and when there were no rains the people ate lizards and roots. In the moon of the Frost-Touching-Mildly clouds came up from the south with a great trampling of thunder, and flung out over the Dry Washes as a man flings his blanket over a maiden. But if the Rains were scant for two or three seasons, then there was Hunger, and the dust devils took the mesas for their dancing-places.
"Now, Man tribe and Wolf tribe are alike in one thing. When there is scarcity the packs increase to make surer of bringing down the quarry, but when the pinch begins they hunt scattering and avoid one another. That was how it happened that the First Father, who was still called Younger Brother, was alone with Howkawanda when he was thrown by a buck at Talking Water in the moon of the Frost-Touching-Mildly. Howkawanda had caught the buck by the antlers in a blind gully at the foot of the Tamal-Pyweack, trying for the throw back and to the left which drops a buck running, with his neck broken. But his feet slipped on the grass which grows sleek with dryness, and by the time the First Father came up the buck had him down, scoring the ground on either side of the man's body with his sharp antlers, lifting and trampling. Younger Brother leaped at the throat. The toss of the antlers to meet the stroke drew the man up standing. Throwing his whole weight to the right he drove home with his hunting-knife and the buck toppled and fell as a tree falls of its own weight in windless weather.
"'Now, for this,' said Howkawanda to my First Father, when they had breathed a little, 'you are become my very brother.' Then he marked the coyote with the blood of his own hurts, as the custom is when men are not born of one mother, and Younger Brother, who had never been touched by a man, trembled. That night, though it made the hair on his neck rise with strangeness, he went into the hut of Howkawanda at Hidden-under-the-Mountain and the villagers wagged their heads over it. 'Hunger must be hard on our trail,' they said, 'when the wolves come to house with us.'
"But Howkawanda only laughed, for that year he had found a maiden who was more than meat to him. He made a flute of four notes which he would play, lying out in the long grass, over and over, until she came out to him. Then they would talk, or the maiden would pull grass and pile it in little heaps while Howkawanda looked at her and the First Father looked at his master, and none of them cared where the Rains were.
"But when no rain fell at all, the camp was moved far up the shrunken creek, and Younger Brother learned to catch grasshoppers, and ate juniper berries, while the men sat about the fire hugging their lean bellies and talking of Dead Man's Journey. This they would do whenever there was a Hunger in the Country of the Dry Washes, and when they were fed they forgot it."
The Coyote interrupted his own story long enough to explain that though there were no buffaloes in the Country of the Dry Washes, on the other side of the Wall-of-Shining-Rocks the land was black with them. "Now and then stray herds broke through by passes far to the north in the Land of the Salmon Rivers, but the people of that country would not let Howkawanda's people hunt them. Every year, when they went up by tribes and villages to the Tamal-Pyweack to gather pine nuts, the People of the Dry Washes looked for a possible trail through the Wall to the Buffalo Country. There was such a trail. Once a man of strange dress and speech had found his way over it, but he was already starved when they picked him up at the place called Trap-of-the-Winds, and died before he could tell anything. The most that was known of this trail at Hidden-under-the-Mountain was that it led through Knife-Cut Cañon; but at the Wind Trap they lost it.
"I have heard of that trail, 'said the First Father of all the Dogs to Howkawanda, one day, when they had hunted too far for returning and spent the night under a juniper: 'a place where the wind tramples between the mountains like a trapped beast. But there is a trail beyond it. I have not walked in it. All my people went that way at the beginning of the Hunger.'
"'For your people there may be a way,' said Howkawanda, 'but for mine--they are all dead who have looked for it. Nevertheless, Younger Brother, if we be not dead men ourselves when this Hunger is past, you and I will go on this Dead Man's Journey. Just now we have other business.'
"It is the law of the Hunger that the strongest must be fed first, so that there shall always be one strong enough to hunt for the others. But Howkawanda gave the greater part of his portion to his maiden.
"So it happened that sickness laid hold on Howkawanda between two days. In the morning he called to Younger Brother. 'Lie outside,' he said, 'lest the sickness take you also, but come to me every day with your kill, and let no man prevent you.'