e many years, and knew
that the Great Mystery had set his foot on the trail to Te-gat-ha that
he, and not another, should find her!

From traders, and from an occasional Navahu prisoner, Tahn-te had
learned Navahu words, and Navahu god thoughts, and now he strove with
eagerness to speak their language, even though haltingly, and question
of her coming to him--to him!

To a new master she had been sold by the old people who had owned her
long, and many of the Navahu had gone north for deer--and perhaps for
buffalo, and she had been taken with them. So far had they travelled
that Tse-c[=o]me-u-pin, the sacred, had been pointed out to her--and
as a bird will seek its own place of nesting, had she sought the
Te-hua land by fleeing to the sacred mountain. In the night time she
had fled from her new master,--from a tall pine where she had climbed,
had she seen them search the trail for her. In vain they had searched,
and alone she had wandered many days. Almost had she reached the
Te-hua towns of the river when some traders of Te-gat-ha had found her
in the forest. To their own town they had taken her and had traded her
for shell beads and for corn--the rest Tahn-te knew!

He strung his bow while he listened,--and while the thunder shook the
earth he slipped through the crevices of the rock and lay hidden at
the edge of a mountain morass where the reeds grew tall, and wild
things fed--ahead of the storm small animals might cross the open
there to reach the shelter of the rock walls--and K[=a]-ye-povi must
not go unfed.

A rabbit he killed and covered each track of his feet from the place
where he picked it up. When he took it to her it had been cleaned and
washed in a little cascade below the shelter he had found for her.
With him he took also dry twigs and dry pinyon boughs, that the fire
made might not carry the odor of green wood.

The sheets of rain were flowing steadily towards them from the west,
the earth trembled as the God of Thunder spoke, and the lances of fire
were flung from the far sky and splintered on the rocks of the
mountain.

The maid lay, wide eyed and still, where he had left her. That she
feared was plain to be seen, and at his coming tears of gladness shone
in her eyes.

To see that light in her face as he came back to her brought to him a
joy that was new and sweet. He did not speak to her. He made the fire
in silence, but at every crash of the storm he smiled at her, and made
prayers, and th