He will be made second if there is
fighting,--think you not so?"

Yahn apparently did not think, but she did listen.

"We know how it was with his father Awh-we--" said one. "In that day
of trial he failed that once in the battle with the Yutah. The old
men let him pull weeds in the corn when the next war came."

The strong fingers of Yahn broke the bird's claw, and she tossed it
from the terrace edge, and selected another.

"But the new young wife Koh-pe may make the son of his father brave
for all that," and Saeh-pah who was not young and not winsome, watched
Yahn, and felt content when she saw the Apache eyes grow narrow and
the teeth set. "A wife with many robes and many strings of shells and
blue stones, makes a man strong to fight for them. Ka-yemo will be a
strong man now."

"He is of my clan--Ka-yemo!" said Yahn panting with pent up fury, "he
can fight,--all of our blood can fight!--if the war is here we can
show you of the Panyoo clan how the Tain-tsain clan can fight with the
new enemy!"

They all knew that Yahn Tsyn-deh could indeed fight, she wore eagle
feathers and had a right to wear them since a season of the hunt on
the Navahu border when a young warrior had stolen her for his lodge,
and with his own club set with flint blades, had she let his spirit go
on the shadow trail, and to her own village had she brought the scalp
and the club, also his robe and beads of blue and of green stone--and
she made the other women remember it at times.

"Ho!--and will it be you who bears a spear and a shield and a club on
that day?" asked Saeh-pah the skeptic.

"I fight that day--or any day, as strong as the fight any man of yours
can ever make!" This retort of Yahn was met with half frightened
giggles by the other women. Saeh-pah had been unlucky in the matter of
men. Yet, her list of favorites had not been limited, and the sarcasm
of Yahn was understood.

"It is good there is some one brave to meet the strangers!" and the
smile of Saeh-pah was not nice. "Maybe you go to ask for a man--maybe
it is why you learn their words--maybe the Tain-tsain clan will ask
for a white man for you!"

"When _I_ ask--I will not be made a laugh, and sent home with a
gift,"--and the other women squealed with shrill laughter and had
great joy over the quarrel. The eyes of Saeh-pah blazed. She tried to
speak but her fury gave voice only in throaty growls, and an older
woman than all of them stepped between them in protest.

"