The boarders, weather-bound and dull, grew sullenly mutinous; and on the third of these stormy days, gathering in the ranch parlor after the mid-day meal, their discontent found vent in banning right and left this "land of sun, silence, and adobe."
"Beastly weather!" muttered the Grumbler, drawing into the stove with a discontented shiver.
"A precious sample, this, of your fine climate, Brown," jeered Bixbee, turning mockingly to the disheartened landlord, who, reckless of expense, commanded of the chore-boy fresh relays of fuel, and incontinently crammed the parlor air-tight, already red-hot.
"I say, fellows," drolled the Harvard man, "let's make tracks for Boston, and round up the winter with furnace heat and unlimited water privileges, as the house-broker has it."
"And with cut-throat plumbers thrown in," suggested the Grumbler with a malicious grin.
"See here, you folks, draw it mild," laughed the star boarder, crossing the room with a finger between the leaves of a volume which he had been reading by the dim afternoon light of this lowering day. "Here, now, is something that fits your case to a T. Let me read you how they doctored your complaint in these parts, æons before you were born."
"Anything for a change," muttered Bixbee, and, with the general consent, Leon read the following:
"'When the people came out of the cold, dark womb of the underworld, then the great sun rose in the heavens. In it dwelt Payatuma, making his circuit of the world in a day and a night. He saw that the day was light and warm, the night dark and cold. Hence there needed to be both summer and winter people.
"'He accordingly apportioned some of each to every tribe and clan, and thus it is down to the present day. Then those above (that is, the Sun-father and the Moon-mother), mindful lest the people on their long journey to the appointed abiding-place succumb to weariness and fall by the way, made for them a koshare, a delight-maker. His body was painted in diagonal sections of black and white, and his head, in lieu of the regulation feather-decorations, was fantastically arrayed in withered corn-leaves.
"'This koshare began at once to dance and tumble. Then the people laughed, and were glad. And ever from that day, in their wanderings in search of a satisfactory settling-place in the solid centre of the big weary world, the koshare led them bravely and well.