l answer me without inquiring why
and wherefore. Do you hear, uak?"

Shyuote hung his head; he felt afraid.

"I forbid you to say anything about what I say to you to your mother,"
continued the other, grasping the left arm of the boy.

Shyuote shook off the grip, and also shook his head in token of refusal.
The old man seized the arm again and clutched it so firmly with his bony
fingers that the lad screamed from pain.

"Let me go!" he cried. "You hurt me, let me go!"

"Will you do as I bid you?" asked his tormentor.

"Yes," sobbed the child. "I will obey. My mother shall not know
anything. Let me go, you hurt!"

The man loosened his grip slightly.

"To your father you shall say that I, the Koshare Naua,"--the boy looked
up at him at these words in astonishment,--"send word to him through you
to come to my house on the night after the one that will follow this
day, when the new moon sets behind the mountains. Do you hear me, boy?"

Shyuote stared at the interlocutor with mouth wide open, and with an
expression of fear and surprise that evidently amused the other. He gave
him a last look, a sharp, threatening, penetrating glance; then his
features became less stern.

"Have no fear," he said in a milder tone. "I will not do you any harm;
but you must do as I say. Go to your nashtio now, and tell him what I
said." With this he wheeled about and left the boy as abruptly as he
had appeared. Shyuote stood gaping and perplexed.

He felt very much like crying. His arm still ached from the grip of the
old man, and while he was rubbing the sore spot his anger rose at the
harsh and cruel treatment he had suffered. He thought of rushing home to
his mother forthwith and telling her all about the bad old man, and how
he had forbidden him to say anything to her. Still, the Koshare Naua was
not to be trifled with, and Shyuote, young and childish as he was, had
some misgivings about betraying his confidence. His father had told him
that the Naua, or chief leader of the Koshare, was a very wise and
therefore a very powerful man. Zashue, who as soon as Shyuote was born
had pledged the child to become one of the Delight Makers, was educating
the lad gradually in his duties; and Shyuote had already imbibed enough
of that discipline to feel a tremendous respect for the leader of the
society to which he was pledged to belong. He suppressed the thoughts of
rebellion that had arisen, and strolled on, crossing the creek and
hunting