you be
laughed at by the tribe? Hear--oh hear!--and let your heart listen!
Never again will the gods send you this chance to be great--this is
your day and your night!"

"Their devils keep guard--the flames of their hell no man can fight!"

"Ka-yemo!--I am holding you close--I give myself to you!--one arrow
only must you send when the witch maid is killed, and Tahn-te is
killed,--one arrow, and forever you are the highest, and I am your
slave to give you love! Ka-yemo!"

The light of the moon was sending a glow above Na-im-be mountains. The
moon itself was not yet seen, but enough light was on the mesa for the
pleading girl to see the face of the man she adored.

The face was averted and turned from her. In terror he bent the arrow
shafts across his knee, and flung the bow far down into the shadows.

"_Ka-yemo!_"--she moaned as the last vestige of her idol was destroyed
by his own hand;--"do you give me then to the Castilian? Must _I_ pay
the debt?"

"Against the gods of their hell I will not send arrows," he
muttered--"He may not claim you--the sign sent to me here is a strong
sign--a god of fire is a strong god--and I am only a man! It may be
that if we go to their padre--and if we confess--"

She could see that he was blindly groping in his mind for some
chance--some little chance, to be forgiven--to be forgiven by the
Castilians whose feet would be on his neck--and on hers!

It was his day and his night, and he had thrown it away! Never again
could the day dawn in joy for those two.

She drew him to her as the light grew, and looked in the face she had
loved from babyhood. It was a long look, and a strange one. She was
thinking of the archer above them who waited to send death to a man
and a maid!

"What is it?" he asked as her fingers slipped from his shoulder along
his arm and clasped his hand with the closeness, the firmness of
settled resolve.

"It is that you have chosen," she said quietly. "It is the right of
the man to choose;--and it will be well. It is the right of the woman
to follow: and before the moon comes again from the blanket of the
east we will know--and the gods will know, that the choice is a good
choice!"

She held his hand and led him upwards;--steadily, yet without haste.
The edge of the moon showed red, and the moon was to be clear of the
mountains when Tahn-te came to the portal of the star--thus had his
mother told the girl while Yahn listened like a coiled snake close to