"True enough, at the next festival the Koshare set the whole of Ty-uonyi shouting with a sort of play that showed Tse-tse scared by rabbits in the brush, and thinking the Diné were after them. Tse-tse was furious and the turkey girl was so angry on his account that she scoldedhim, which is the way with women.
"You see," explained Moke-icha to the children, "if he wanted to be made a member of the Warrior Band, it wouldn't help him any to be proved a bad scout, and a bringer of false alarms. And if he could be elected to the Uakanyi that spring, he would probably be allowed to go on the salt expedition between corn-planting and the first hoeing. But after I had carried back the little Delight-Maker to Kokomo, there were no signs of the four-colored arrow, which was the invitation to the Uakanyi, and young men whom Tse-tse had mimicked too often went about pretending to discover Diné wherever a rabbit ran or the leaves rustled.
"Tse-tse behaved very badly. He was sharp with the turkey girl because she had warned him, and when we hunted on the mesa he would forget me altogether, running like a man afraid of himself until I was too winded to keep up with him. I am not built for running," said Moke-icha, "my part was to pick up the trail of the game, and then to lie up while Tse-tse drove it past and spring for the throat and shoulder. But when I found myself neglected I went back to Willow-in-the-Wind who wove wreaths for my neck, which tickled my chin, and made Tse-tse furious.
"The day that the names of those who would go on the Salt Trail were given out--Tse-tse's was not among them--was two or three before the feast of the corn-planting and the last of the winter rains. Tse-tse-yote was off on one of his wild runnings, but I lay in the back of the cave and heard the myriad-footed Rain on the mesa. Between showers there was a soft foot on the ladder outside, and Willow-in-the-Wind pushed a tray of her best cooking into the door of the cave and ran away without looking. That was the fashion of a love-giving. I was much pleased with it."
"Oh!--" Dorcas Jane began to say and broke off. "Tell us what it was!" she finished.
Moke-icha considered.
"Breast of turkey roasted, and rabbit stew with pieces of squash and chia, and beans cooked in fat,--very good eating; and of course thin, folded cakes of maize; though I do not care much for corn cakes unless they are well greased. But because it was a love-gift I ate all of it and was licking the basket-tray when Tse-tse came back. He knew the fashion of her weaving,--every woman's baskets had her own mark,--and as he took it from me his face changed as though something inside him had turned to water. Without a word he went down the hill to the chief's house and I after him.
"'Moke-icha liked your cooking so well,' he said to the turkey girl, 'that she was eating the basket also. I have brought it back to you.' There he stood shifting from one foot to another and Willow-in-the-Wind turned taut as a bowstring.
"'Oh,' she said, 'Moke-icha has eaten it! I am very glad to hear it.' And with that she marched into an inner room and did not come out again all that evening, and Tse-tse went hunting next day without me.
"The next night, which was the third before the feast of planting, being lonely, I went out for a walk on the mesa. It was a clear night of wind and moving shadow; I went on a little way and smelled man. Two men I smelled, Diné and Queresan, and the Queresan was Kokomo. They were together in the shadow of a juniper where no man could have seen them. Where I stood no man could have heard them.