le. Her only
anxiety was now the return of her husband.

Zashue came home at last, good-humoured as ever, but with a lively
appetite akin to hunger. His wife received him in a subdued manner
bordering on obsequiousness; she was more than ever bent on anticipating
any desire on his part. All the while afraid of detection, every kind
word spoken to her caused remorse, every joke pained her in secret. It
recalled what she had done to his companions, perhaps to him also.

The incantations of the chayani and the fasts of the Koshare seemed to
have no effect whatever upon the course of the rain-clouds. The heavens
clouded regularly every day; they shed their moisture all around the
Tyuonyi, but not a drop fell in the valley-gorge. Now the three chief
penitents of the tribe, the Hotshanyi, the shaykatze, and the uishtyaka,
were called upon to use their means of intercession with Those Above.
They fasted, prayed, and made sacrifices alternately for an entire moon;
still it rained not. In New Mexico local droughts are sometimes very
pertinacious. Plants withered, the corn and beans suffered, languished,
and died. The tribe looked forward to a winter without vegetable food.
But Say Koitza was secretly glad, for drought killed her disease. She
felt stronger every day, and worked zealously, anxious to please her
husband and to remove every suspicion. Shotaye called on her frequently;
she, too, felt proud of the success of her cure, sure of the revenge she
had taken upon her enemies.

When a few rains swept at last down upon the vale, it was too late for
the crops. Only the few stores kept in reserve and the proceeds of the
hunt could save the tribe from a famine. Women and children put on red
wristbands to comfort their hearts in the prospective distress, for a
winter without vegetable supplies was until then an unknown disaster.
Say Koitza also placed strips of red buckskin around her arms.
Ostensibly she mourned for her tribe; in reality it was to relieve her
heart from the reproaches of her own conscience.

But when winter set in and the fever had not put in its appearance, her
mind gradually changed. She lost all fear of discovery, and finally felt
proud of what she had done. Had she not preserved herself for her own
husband, for her children? Instead of performing a crime, it was a
meritorious act. Shotaye encouraged her in such thoughts. To her it was
less the recovery of her friend than the blow dealt the Koshare,
partic