Henry Beston

“ Roaring rain of the southwest country, rain of the giant drops, rain that in the twinkling of an eye turns little rivers to deep streams. The thunder bird rode the wild dark, the wind, and the sheets of rain, the arrows of lightning fell from the bows of the thunder spirits. ”

“ Kai, and said slowly, “If I were you, I would hide them there a while. The god whom we call the Mischief Maker is in the land, and if he finds the twins, he may do them harm. Keep them at home, Daughter of Pesh-li-kai.” ”

“ Every summer buffalo hunters left the village to go buffalo hunting on the plains, and before they went, the men and boys of the village danced the buffalo dance.
In the year that the boys were ten years old, the dance took place at night. As the houses of the town were built against the back wall and the sides of the open hollow, there was a fine open space in front under the overhanging arch, and there the Indians built a great fire. ”

“ When the spring was at end, and the young corn was well started in the fields below the mesa, the twins asked for the Sacred Silver Stone.
“We have kept you alive, and that is enough,” said the Hopis angrily. “Do you suppose we should ever part with the Sacred Silver Stone?”
The twins said little, but remembered [Pg 43] the frost magic which their father had given them in the first buckskin bag. In the middle of the night, when the stars were shining on the desert, and everybody in the pueblo was asleep, the twins opened the bag. ”

“ A day or two after the dance, the mother of the twins went down into the canyon to look for certain roots used in making a dye. As she was scanning the ground, she saw a ground owl sitting at the mouth of its burrow playing cat’s cradle with a thin buckskin thong. The Navahos say that the spider taught the owl this game, and that the owl taught it to men.
“Daughter of Pesh-li-kai,” said the ground owl, “where are your sons?” ”

“ Seeing the cloud-burst coming, the Indians working in the fields dropped their sticks and hoes and ran as fast as they could for the ladders. Kai ran pell-mell with the rest. The instant she reached the town she looked about for her sons.
They were nowhere to be found.
Presently a neighbor remembered seeing them going down the ladders carrying their bows and arrows. Another neighbor was sure that they had gone to [Pg 25] hunt wild turkeys in the waste land back of the canyon rim.
The twins had forgotten their mother’s warning, and were out somewhere in the storm. ”

“ And they gave the twins an almost roofless room in an old part of their pueblo, and told them to go and work in the fields.
All the early spring, the lame boy and the blind boy worked hard helping the Hopis plant their corn. The corn of the Pueblo Indians is not straw-yellow like ours, but of all colors ”