“Oh!” exclaimed the háni, clutching the arm of her elder sister; “listen!”
“Ho‑o‑o‑thlai‑a!” again roared the demon, and again Teshaminkia.
“Oh, oh! sister elder, what did I tell you! Why did we come out today!” and both ran away; then stopped to listen. When they heard nothing more, they returned to the spring and went to washing their clothes on some flat stones.
But Átahsaia grabbed up his weapons and began to clamber down the mountain, muttering and chuckling to himself as he went: “Ahhali! Yaa-tchi!” (“Good lunch! Two for a munch!”).
Around the corner of Great Mesa, on the high shelves of which stands the Town of the Cliffs, are two towering buttes called Kwilli-yallon (Twin Mountain). Far up on the top of this mountain there dwelt Áhaiyúta and Mátsailéma.
You don’t know who Áhaiyúta and Mátsailéma were? Well, I will tell you. They were the twin children of the Sun-father and the Mother Waters of the World. Before men were born to the light, the Sun made love to the Waters of the World, and under his warm, bright glances, there were hatched out of a foam-cup on the face of the Great Ocean, which then covered the earth, two wonderful boys, whom men afterward named Ua nam Atch Píahk’oa (“The Beloved Two who Fell”). The Sun dried away the waters from the highlands of earth and these Two then delivered men forth from the bowels of our Earth-mother, and guided them eastward toward the home of their father, the Sun. The time came, alas! when war and many strange beings arose to destroy the children of earth, and then the eight Stern Beings changed the hearts of the twins to sawanikia, or the medicine of war. Thenceforth they were known as Áhaiyúta and Mátsailéma (“Our Beloved,” the “Terrible Two,” “Boy-gods of War”).
Even though changed, they still guarded our ancients and guided them to the Middle of the World, where we now live. Gifted with hearts of the medicine of war, and with wisdom almost as great as the Sun-father’s own, they became the invincible guardians of the Corn-people of Earth, and, with the rainbow for their weapon and thunderbolts for their arrows—swift lightning-shafts pointed with turquoise—were the greatest warriors of all in the days of the new. When at last they had conquered most of the enemies of men, they taught to a chosen few of their followers the songs, prayers, and orders of a society of warriors who should be called their children, the Priests22 of the Bow, and selecting from among them the two wisest, breathed into their nostrils (as they have since breathed into those of their successors) the sawanikia. Since then we make anew the semblance of their being and place them each year at mid-sun on the top of the Mountain of Thunder, and on the top of the Mountain of the Beloved, that they may know we remember them and that they may guard (as it was said in the days of the ancients they would guard) the Land of Zuni from sunrise to sunset and cut off the pathways of the enemy.
Well, Áhaiyúta, who is called the elder brother, and Mátsailéma, who is called the younger, were living on the top of Twin Mountain with their old grandmother.
Said the elder to the younger on this same morning: “Brother, let us go out and hunt. It is a fine day. What say you?”
“My face is in front of me,” said the younger, “and under a roof is no place for men,” he added, as he put on his helmet of elk-hide and took a quiver of mountain-lion skin from an antler near the ladder.
“Where are you two boys going now?” shrieked the grandmother through a trap-door from below. “Don’t you ever intend to stop worrying me by going abroad when even the spaces breed fear like thick war?”
“O grandmother,” they laughed, as they tightened their bows and straightened their arrows before the fire, “never mind us; we are only going out for a hunt,” and before the old woman could climb up to stop them they were gaily skipping down the rocks toward the cliffs below.
Suddenly the younger brother stopped. “Ahh!” said he, “listen, brother! It is the cry of Átahsaia, and the old wretch is surely abroad to cause tears!”
“Yes,” replied the elder. “It is Átahsaia, and we must stop him! Come on, come on; quick!”
“Hold, brother, hold! Stiffen your feet right here with patience. He is after the two maidens of Héshokta! I saw them going to the spring as I came down. This day he must die. Is your face to the front?”
“It is; come on,” said the elder brother, starting forward.
“Stiffen your feet with patience, I say,” again exclaimed the younger brother. “Know you that the old demon comes up the pathway below here? He will not hurt them until he gets them home. You know he is a great liar, and a great flatterer; that is the way the old beast catches people. Now, if we wait here we will surely see them when they come up.”
So, after quarrelling a little, the elder brother consented to sit down on a rock which overlooked the pathway and was within bow-shot of the old demon’s cave.
Now, while the girls were washing, Átahsaia ran as fast as his old joints would let him until the two girls heard his mutterings and rattling weapons.
“Something is coming, sister!” cried the younger, and both ran toward the rocks to hide again, but they were too late. The old demon strode around by another way and suddenly, at a turn, came face to face with them, glaring with his bloodshot eyes and waving his great jagged flint knife. But as he neared them he
