The war-men quitted the plain and threaded the hills, but they did not carry these women with them. The dead and the yet living, they left behind all of this group. It had been a small, small settlement, seekers of fortune newly arrived in the land. The valley men took with them their own flock and the few beasts that the cluster had owned, but then these could say naught, nor awaken the wrath of Mao-Tan....
They marched back to the valley over parched herbage. The tale that they told to the huts was of a band of robbers who had fought until one and all were slain.... As to their greeting from the women of the valley, it was cooler than once it had been. Maihoma was dead. Gilhumat ground corn in silence.
The weather was hot. Mao-Tan and In-Tan were perhaps somewhere in green meadows by waterfalls. But the Ji-Ji liked heat and dryness and a feeling in the air like a singing bow-string. The first day and night went by in a general taciturnity. The second day Saran and Marzumat encountered under a tree by the field of corn.
“Maihoma that is dead was a fair woman,” said Saran. He was pale and his nostrils opened and shut.
“So?” said Marzumat. “All of us die, and even fair women.”
The two stared each at the other. The sky like fire, and the Ji-Ji active, and man and woman at odds....
The next day held quiet. Most of the men went to the booth behind the grove. Endar, going, said to women in the bean-field that In-Tan’s image occupied them. He said that it was going to be a great In-Tan, twice as tall as a man. They meant to set it up in front of the men’s booth, and it would be a great help in keeping women from the place. Endar’s black beard moved, and his white teeth flashed, and his eyes crinkled up.
Women, truly, went not to the place, but two, passing at no great distance, heard first Endar and then Saran haranguing, and coming to the fields reported what they had heard. It had not been much, a few shouted-out words, chance-caught. “Lesson.... Teach a lesson!... Show power, and then have peace!” The women knew no more than that of the harangue. It was to be presumed that the men were talking of raid and foray against other-people.
That day passed. The next day all the war-men went early to the grove and the booth. A woman, weaving, spoke to a woman making baskets. “When I waked at first light, the men were taking spears and clubs to the great booth. I asked what they were doing and they said they were going to make a hunting-dance before the In-Tan they are cutting from a tree.”
The sun walked up the sky in a dazzling robe and throwing arrows of heat. Women were in the bean-field and the corn-field. They wove at rude looms. With bone needle and fibre thread they were sewing garments. They were making baskets; they were preparing to fire a rude kiln and bake therein vessels of clay. The meat had been killed for the next meal; they had brought it from the pens, they were quartering and dressing it. They were at work upon this and at work upon that, or they were resting from work. Some were crooning to babes. The bondwomen worked without being able to say, “Now I shall rest awhile!” The noise of all their industries blended into a steady, droning, humming, not unpleasing sound. Here and there a woman sang, and through the whole fluted the voices of children.