Soon, every one knew that famine impended, and that so few houses would grow even enough harvest for another seeding, that the year after would also be hard to survive. They gathered every wisp of wild seed plants in the uncultivated bottoms; but these wild seeds, too, had come up thin, and the crop of mesquite pods was pitiful. The women labored faithfully, and the children watched over the scattered maize; yet though the grain ripened, the scattered stalks were too few to keep any house through the winter. Some families did not pick even an ear. A moon after harvest time, the crop was consumed; by winter, the last of the other stores. The men fished daily, but the sloughs and ponds had never filled and were soon seined out, and the river’s yield was uncertain and far insufficient. Every one was gaunt; the children lay listlessly about; sickness grew.
Earth-tongue’s wife, and his older brother’s, had planted with his mother in his father’s ancestral field, which lay low and was long-proved rich. So they fared better than many. Nevertheless, before spring the emaciated bodies of two children and an old woman had been burnt and Earth-tongue had three times sung himself hoarse as they lay dying.
The young men went out with their bows, and now and then returned with a bird or gopher or badger, but oftener empty-handed. People who had new belongings went to the Walapai to trade for mescal and deer meat. Whole families trudged to visit the Chemehuevi, until they brought back word that these hosts too were eaten out. At last not a day passed without columns of smoke from pyres visible somewhere in the valley. It was a terrible year and long remembered before the end of another summer brought partial abatement.
So numerous had been the deaths from bowel flux and cough, that shaman after shaman fell a victim to the anger of the kin of those he had attempted to save. Yellow-thigh, a powerful man and not very old, had lost two patients during the famine, and three more at intervals since. Mutterings were frequent; but no one had found opportunity, or dared, to work vengeance on him. One morning, Earth-tongue and a friend, sauntering up valley on some errand, turned to a house before which Yellow-thigh lay, for those there were kinsmen of his. No men were about; and as the two visitors stood in the door, his friend on sudden impulse whispered to Earth-tongue, “Let us kill him.” So they sat down for a little and passed the news of the day, then arose, Earth-tongue reaching for his bow and four cross-pointed arrows, with the remark that they were going to shoot doves. The shaman grunted assent and the pair passed out.
For a time they traversed the brush, planning the deed. At the mesa edge they broke two stones to sharp edges, and then returned. Yellow-thigh lay under the shade-roof with closed eyes, breathing regularly. The friend went by him to look into the house, and finding it empty, nodded. Earth-tongue, who had approached, bent suddenly down and struck with all his might at the sleeper’s head. The shaman pushed himself to a sitting position as the blood began to pour from the mangled side of his face. The friend started back, then plunged forward to finish the man, and swung; but his excited arm brought the weapon down only on the victim’s knee. Then he staggered off, scarcely able in fright and emotion to drag his own legs. Earth-tongue, seeing the shaman still sitting, strode forward again and with both hands drove the point of the stone through the top of his skull. Two women who had been going through each other’s hair in the shadow of the brush fence outside, half turned at the noise and shrieked, while Earth-tongue dashed after his companion, seized his hand, and dragged him forward. They ran through the willows and at last lay down to pant in hiding; and here, after they had quieted, Earth-tongue laughed at his friend’s faltering stroke and steps. Then they went on, still keeping to cover, until around the second bend they swam the river.
On the other side, old men were gaming with poles and hoop, and others watched. The two sat down and looked on. Three times, four times, until it was early afternoon, the players bet and threw their poles and one or the other finally took up the stakes. Then Earth-tongue said, “I have killed a shaman, the large man at Sloping-gravel.”
“Yes, kill him,” answered one of the old men, thinking he was boasting of an empty intent; and a spectator added, “Indeed, it would be well. Too many persons are dying.”
“I have killed him,” Earth-tongue said again, and they began to believe him. So they went to the houses. Soon word came that the shaman was dead; and then his kinsmen arrived, angry and threatening, and accusations flew back and forth, while Earth-tongue stood unmoved and silent but wary. The kinsmen finally challenged to a stick fight the next day, and withdrew to burn the dead man.
The people of the settlement commended Earth-tongue and promised to engage for him; and in the morning they and all his kin and the kin of those whom the shaman had brought to their death, gathered in the center of a large playing field. Each man carried a willow as thick as his forearm and reaching to his neck; and in his left hand, a shorter parrying stick. The challengers appeared, somewhat fewer in number and with tear-marked faces, but enraging their opponents by crying the names of their dead parents and grandparents. Then the two bodies, spreading into irregular lines, rushed at each other. Each man swung at an antagonist’s head, now with his staff held in one hand, now in both. Blows beat down on heads through the guard, rained on shoulders, bruised knuckles, and the willows clashed amid the shouts. Now and then a staff broke and a contestant ran back to seize a new one. The fighters sweated, panted, rubbed blood out of their eyes and staggered forward and back as the lines swayed in the clamor. Once or twice a maddened fighter, running in under his opponent’s strokes, seized his hair to belabor him with his parry-club; whereupon shouts of “Bad, bad! no! no! release!” arose and a multitude of rescuers’ blows drove him back. The shaman’s side were getting the worst of it, but rallied again and again without being driven wholly to their end of the field. Strokes became fewer and feebler. Weary arms could no longer rise. Fighter after fighter leaned on his stick, or sat on the ground in the rear. Each side taunted the other to come on again; and at last they drew apart, every man panting, bruised, and weary, but satisfied at the damage he had inflicted. No heads had been broken and no one died, though some were sick for a few days from maggots that had bred in the scalp under their clotted hair; and then talk died down and the enmity gradually subsided. Earth-tongue won the praise of all the Mohave who were not directly involved.
Once, runners came from the Yuma to invite to an attack on the Cocopa at the mouth of the river. A hundred and twenty Mohave went down. The kohota or play-chief of the northern Mohave asked for captives, although he already had several; and Earth-tongue was one of the men whom he requested to carry food and water for the prisoner’s return journey, and to guard against their escape.