people, always desirous of contributing to the happiness of their children, ordered a grand hunt for the very next day. So everybody was busy forthwith in making throwing-sticks and boomerangs.
The next day all the able-bodied youth of the town, selecting the hero of whom we have told as their leader, took their way to the great plain south of Moki, and there, spreading out into an enormous circle, they drove hundreds of rabbits closer and closer together among the sagebrush in the center of the valley. Some of them succeeded in striking down one—some of them three or four—but ere long everyone observed that each time the youth threw his stick he struck a rabbit and secured it, until he had so many that he was forced to call some boys who had followed along to carry them for him.
Already inflamed by their jealousies to great anger, what was the chagrin of this crowd of dandies, now that this youth whom they so heartily despised actually surpassed them even in hunting rabbits! They gnashed their teeth with rage, and one of them in a moment of excitement, when two or three rabbits were trying to escape, took deliberate aim at the youth and threw his boomerang at him. The youth, who was wily, sprang into the air so high, pretending meanwhile to throw his boomerang, that the missile missed his vital parts, but struck his leg and apparently broke it, so that he fell down senseless in the midst of the crowd; and the people set up a great shout—some of lamentation, some of exultation.
“Let him lie there and rot!” said the angry suitors, catching up their own rabbits and making off for the pueblo. But some of the old men, who deplored this seeming accident of the youth, ran as fast as they could toward the town—fearing to raise him lest they should make his hurt worse—for medicine.
When the youth had been left alone, he opened his eyes and smiled. Then, taking from his pouch a medicine unfailing in its effects, applied it to the bruised spot and quickly became relieved of pain, if not even of injury. Rising, he looked about and found the rabbits where, panic-stricken, the boys had dropped them and fled away. He made up a huge bundle, and not long before sunset, behold! singing merrily, he came marching, though limping somewhat, through the plain before the foothills of Moki, bearing an enormous burden of rabbits. He climbed the mesa, greeted everyone pleasantly as though nothing had occurred, took his way to his home, and became admired of all the women of Moki, young and old, as a paragon of valor and manhood.
It became absolutely necessary after that, of course—for these fainthearted dandies tried no more tricks with the youth—for anyone who would marry a Moki maiden to show himself a man in some way or other; and, as the ugliest and most neglected of children generally turn out sharpest because they have to look out for themselves, so it happens that to this day the husbands of Moki are generally very ugly; but one thing is certain—they are men.
Reflect on these things, ye young ones and youths.
Thus shortens my story.
How the Corn-Pests Were Ensnared
You may know the country that lies south of the valley in which our town stands. You travel along the trail which winds round the hill our ancients called Ishana-takʻyapon—which means the Hill of Grease, for the rocks sometimes shine in the light of the sun at evening, and it is said that strange things occurred there in the days of the ancients, which makes them thus to shine, while rocks of the kind in other places do not—you travel on up this trail, crossing over the arroyos and foothills of the great mesa called Middle Mountain, until you come to the foot of the cliffs. Then you climb up back and forth, winding round and round, until you reach the top of the mountain, which is as flat as the floor of a house, merely being here and there traversed by small valleys covered with piñon and cedar, and threaded by trails made not only by the feet of our people but by deer and other animals. And so you go on and on, until, hardly knowing it, you have descended from the top of Middle Mountain, and found yourself in a wide plain covered with grass, and here and there clumps of trees. Beyond this valley is an elevated sandy plain, rather sunken in the middle, so that when it rains the water filters down into the soil of the depressed portion (which is wide enough to be a country in itself) and nourishes the grasses there; so that most of the year they grow green and sweet.
Now, a long, long time ago, in this valley or basin there lived a village of Prairie-dogs, on fairly peaceable terms with Rattlesnakes, Adders, Chameleons, Horned-toads, and Burrowing-owls. With the Owls they were especially friendly, looking at them as creatures of great gravity and sanctity. For this reason these Prairie-dogs and their companions never disturbed the councils or ceremonies of the Burrowing-owls, but treated them most respectfully, keeping at a distance from them when their dances were going on.
It chanced one day that the Burrowing-owls were having a great dance all to themselves, rather early in the morning. The dance they were engaged in was one peculiarly prized by them, requiring no little dexterity in its execution. Each dancer, young man or maiden, carried upon his or her head a bowl of foam, and though their legs were crooked and their motions disjointed, they danced to the whistling of some and the clapping beaks of others, in perfect unison, and with such dexterity that they never spilled a speck of the foam on their sleek mantles of dun-black feather-work.
It chanced this morning of the Foam-dance that a Coyote was nosing about for Grasshoppers and Prairie-dogs.
