The Dogs greeted this proposition with vociferous acclamation, and the council dispersed.
On the following day, toward evening, the youth again presented himself at the home of the maiden. “My friends,” said he to the family; “I am, as you know, or can easily perceive, extremely poor. I have no home nor source of food; yet, as I anticipate that I shall be long on this journey, and as I neither possess nor know how to use a bow and arrow, I come to humbly beseech your assistance. I will undertake this thing which has been proposed to me; but, in order that I may be enabled the more easily to do so, I desire that you will present to me a sufficiency of food for my journey; or, if you will lend it to me, I shall be satisfied.”
Now, the maiden’s people were among the first in the nation, and well-to-do in all ways. They most willingly consented to give the young man not only a sufficiency of food for days, but for months; and when he went away that night he had all that he could carry of meal, coarse and fine, piki or Moki wafer-rolls, tortillas, and abundant grease-cakes, which he well knew would be most tempting to Dogs.
On the fourth day thereafter—for he had been making his weapons: some flint knives and a good hard war-club—at evening, he again called at each of the holes and places the Dogs of the town inhabited, and he said to all of them: “I shall leave forthwith on my journey, having provided myself with a sufficiency of food for much feasting on the way. Like yourselves, I have become inured to hardship and am swift of foot, and by midnight I shall be halfway to Zuni. As soon as the people are asleep, that they may not pelt you with stones and drive you back, follow on the trail to Zuni as fast as you can. I will await you by the side of the Black Mountains, near the Spring of the Nighthawks, and there I will cook the provisions, that we may have a jolly feast and the more strongly proceed on our journey the day following.”
The Dogs gave him repeated assurances of their willingness to follow; and, heavily laden with his provisions, the youth, just at dusk, climbed unobserved down the nether side of the mesa and set out through the plains of sagebrush, over the hills far east of Moki, and so on along the plateaus and valleys leading to this our town of Zuni. At the place he had appointed as a rendezvous he arrived not long before midnight, lighted a fire, unstrapped his provisions, and began to cook mush in great quantities.
Now, after the lights in the windows of Moki began to go out—shutting up their red eyes, as it were, as the maidens of Moki shut up their bright eyes—there was tremendous activity observed among the Dogs. But they made not much noise about it until every last Dog in town—as motley a crowd of curs and mongrels as ever were seen, unless one might see all the Dogs of Moki today—descended the mesa, and one by one gathered in a great pack, and started, baying, barking, and howling louder and louder as they went along over the eastern hills on the trail which the youth had taken.
By-and-by he heard them coming; te‑ne‑e‑e‑e they sounded as they ran; wo‑wo‑o‑o‑o they came, baying and barking in all sorts of voices, nearer and nearer. So the youth prepared his provisions, and as the nearest of them came into the light of the fire, cried out: “Ho, my friends, ye come! I am glad to see ye come! Sit ye round my campfire. Let us feast and be merry and lighten the load of my provisions. Methinks we will all carry some of them when we start out tomorrow.”
Thereupon he liberally distributed mush, tortillas, and paper bread—inviting the hot, tired Dogs to drink their fill from the spring and eat their fill from the feast. The Dogs, being very hungry, as Dogs always are—and the more so from the memory of many a long fast—fell to with avidity (and you know what that means with Dogs); and the Short-legs and Beagles would not have fared very well had the youth not considered them and held back a good supply of provisions against their tardy appearance.
Finally, when all were assembled and had eaten, if not to their satisfaction—that was impossible—yet to their temporary gratification, a merry, noisy, much-wriggling crowd they became. Some lay down and rested, others were impatient for the journey; so that even before daylight the youth, making up his bundle of provisions, again set forth at a swift trot, followed by this pack of Dogs which ran along either side of him and strung out on the trail the length of a racecourse behind him.
Before night, see this valiant youth quietly hiding himself away in one of the deep arroyos around the western end of Grand Mountain, and the foothills of Twin Mountain, near which, as you know, the trail from Moki leads to our town. He is giving directions to the Dogs in a quiet manner, and feeding them again, rather more sparingly than at first that they may be anxious for their work.
He says to them: “My friends and brothers, lay yourselves about here, each one according to his color in places most suited for concealment—some near the gray sage-bushes; and you fellows with fine marks on your backs keep out of sight, pray,
