and grumbled.
But no sooner had the Two begun their sport on the roof, than the rain fell in one vast sheet all about them; and it was not long ere the house was so full that the old grandmother—locked in as she was—bobbed her poor pate on the rafters in trying to keep it above the water. She gulped water, and gasped, coughed, strangled, and shrieked to no purpose.
“What a fuss our old grandmother is making, to be sure!” cried the boys. And they kept on, until, forsooth, the water had completely filled the room, and the grandmother’s cries gurgled away and ceased. Finally, the thunder-stone grew so terrific, and the lightning so hot and unmanageable, that the boys, drawing a long breath and thinking with immense satisfaction of the fun they had had, possibly also influenced as to the safety of the house, which was beginning to totter, flung the thunder-stone and the lightning-shaft into the sky, where, rattling and flashing away, they finally disappeared over the mountains in the south.
Then the clouds rolled away and the sun shone out, and the boys, wet to the skin, tired in good earnest, and hungry as well, looked around. “Goodness! the water is running out of the windows of our house! This is a pretty mess we are in! Grandmother! Grandmother!” they shouted. “Open the door, and let us in!” But the old grandmother had piped her last, and never a sound came except that of flowing water. They sat themselves down on the roof, and waited for the water to get lower. Then they climbed down, and pounded open the door, and the water came out with a rush, and out with a rush, too, their poor old grandmother—her eyes staring, her hair all mopped and muddied, and her fingers and legs as stiff as cedar sticks.
“Oh, ye gods! ye gods!” the two boys exclaimed; “we have killed our own grandmother—poor old grandmother, who scolded us so hard and loved us so much! Let us bury her here in front of the door, as soon as the water has run away.”
So, as soon as it became dry enough, there they buried her; and in less than four days a strange plant grew up on that spot, and on its little branches, amid its bright green leaves, hung long, pointed pods of fruit, as red as the fire on the breast of the redbird.
“It is well,” said the boys, as they stood one day looking at this plant. “Let us scatter the seeds abroad, that men may find and plant them. It seems it was not without good cause that in the abandonment to our sport we killed our old grandmother, for out of her heart there sprung a plant into the fruits of which, as it were, has flowed the color as well as the fire of her scolding tongue; and, if we have lost our grandmother, whom we loved much, but who loved us more, men have gained a new food, which, though it burn them, shall please them more than did the heat of her discourse please us. Poor old grandmother! Men will little dream when they eat peppers that the seed of them first arose from the fiery heart of the grandmother of Áhaiyúta and Mátsailéma.”
Thereupon the two seized the pods and crushed them between their hands, with an exclamation of pleasure at the brisk odor they gave forth. They cast the seeds abroad, which seeds here and there took root; and the plants which sprang from them being found by men, were esteemed good and were cultivated, as they are to this day in the pepper gardens of Zuni.
Ever since this time you hear that mountain wherein lived the gods with their grandmother called Thunder Mountain; and often, indeed, to this day, the lightning flashes and the thunder plays over its brows and the rain falls there most frequently.
It is said by some that the two boys, when asked how they stole the lightning-shaft and the thunder-stone, told on their poor old grandfather, the Centipede. The beloved Gods of the Rain gave him the lightning-shaft to handle in another way, and it so burned and shrivelled him that he became small, as you can see by looking at any of his numerous descendants, who are not only small but appear like a well-toasted bit of buckskin, fringed at the edges.
So shortens my story.
The Warrior Suitor of Moki
We take up a story. Of the times of the ancients, a story. Listen, ye young ones and youths, and from what I say draw inference. For behold! the youth of our nation in these recent generations have become less sturdy than of old; else what I relate had not happened.
To our shame be it told that not many generations ago there lived in Moki a poor, ill-favored outcast of a young man, a not-to-be-thought-of-as-hero youth, yet nevertheless the hero of my story; for this youth, the last-mentioned in the numbering of the men of Moki in those days, alone brought great grief on the nation of Zuni.
And it happened that in Walpi, on the first mesa of the Mokis, there lived an amiable, charming, and surpassingly beautiful girl, whose face was shining, eyes bright, cheeks red like the frostbite on the datila;12 whose hair was abundant and soft, black and waving, and done up in large whorls above her ears—larger than those of the other maidens of her town or nation—and whose beautiful possessions were as many as were the charms of her person.
What wonder, then, that the youths of the Moki towns should be enamored of her, and seek constantly, with much urgent bespeaking, for the favor of her affections? Yet she would none of them. She would shake her head with a saucy smile, and reply to everyone, as well as to every recommendation of one from her elders: “A hero for me or no one! Any one of
