The next spring Red-boy and Slender-maiden went to the village on San Pedro and planted the land that had belonged to Red-boy’s mother. Here they lived for five years, raising good crops and having plenty of deer from the surrounding mountains.
One day in August Slender-maiden and her sister-in-law were making baskets under the cotton-woods by the creek. Slender-maiden’s five-year old daughter was sleeping under a willow nearer the stream where the breeze was cooler. Suddenly a roar was heard and a wall of water, mud, and torn-up trees rushed out of the canyon. The women jumped up, but before they could reach the sleeping child the water had rolled over in a brown flood. The women themselves were able to escape by climbing into the cotton-woods.
Saddened by this loss and disconcerted by the washing over of the farm by the waters of a thunder-shower, Slender-maiden and her husband moved to the White Mountain country and settled on Cedar Creek near her people. Here they lived for ten years. There were now five children, the youngest of which was a girl.
One day a messenger came from White River asking that Slender-maiden’s husband come to treat a sick man. Red-boy knew the songs and ritual of a healing ceremony. He went with his wife, and camped by the man who had been suddenly taken ill. He was burning with fever and covered with an eruption. The songs were of no avail for before dawn the man was dead. The body was almost immediately placed in a cleft of the rocks in a nearby canyon and covered with sticks and stones.
That afternoon Slender-maiden and her husband moved down White River and a few days later to Black River in which she and her husband bathed. That night her head ached and she begged her husband to leave, lest he too contract the disease. When twelve days later the fever left her, she saw her husband sitting by, tired and worn with watching over her.
“Why did you not leave me?” she asked.
“Because I have loved you for many years,” he replied.
In a few days he too was ill and then Slender-maiden, still weak, watched him until he was taken to the canyon for burial. When the plague had passed, Slender-maiden’s children and near relatives were all dead except the youngest girl who had been left with an aunt on Cedar Creek.
Slender-maiden cut her hair, of course, and wore only a skirt and a poncho of cloth. Even when the year was up she did not allow her hair to grow. Her husband’s clansmen, noting her disinclination to marry again, respected her wishes and did not assign her a husband. She continued the cultivation of her small farm and the care of her daughter.
The requests of her adolescence ceremony for long life were answered. So old is she that she must walk with a cane. Her hair is white, not with the symbolic white earth but with age. Her daughter, in middle age, unmarried, highly respected, but much sought for herself and her considerable herds, attends to her physical needs. For the remainder, Slender-maiden lives with her memories of a happy youth.