After the ceremony the shaman takes each runner aside and subjects him to a rigid examination in regard to his recent food and his relations with women.  Fat, potatoes, eggs, and anything sweet are prohibited, because all these things make the men heavy; but rabbits, deer, rats, turkeys, and chaparral-cocks are wholesome, and such nourishment enables them to win.

An augury as to which side will win is also taken.  Water is poured into a large wooden tray, and the two balls are started simultaneously and rolled through the water over the tray.  The party whose ball first reaches the other end will surely win.  This test is gone through as many times as there are to be circuits in the race.

A race is never won by natural means.  The losers always say that they have been bewitched by the others.  Once I was taking the temperature of some foot-runners before they started, and their opponents, seeing this, lost heart, thinking that I had made their contestants strong to win the race.  Often one of the principal runners becomes disheartened, and may simulate illness and declare that their rivals have bewitched him.  Then the whole affair may come to nothing and the race be declared off.  There are stories about injurious herbs that have been given in pinole or water, and actually made some racers sick.  It may even happen that some dishonest fellow will pay to the best runner of one party a cow if he lets the other party win.  But, as a rule, everything goes on straightforwardly.  No one will, however, wonder that there are six watchmen appointed by each side to guard the runners from any possible peradventure, and to see that everything goes on in a proper, formal way.  Tipsy persons are not admitted, and women in a delicate condition are carefully kept away, as the runners become heavy even by touching such a woman’s blanket.

On the day of the race the forenoon is spent in making bets, the managers acting as stakeholders.  These people, poor as they are, wager their bows and arrows, girdles, head-bands, clothes, blankets, beads, ari, balls of yarn, corn, and even sheep, goats, and cattle.  The stakes of whatever nature are tied together—­a blanket against so many balls of yarn, a stick of ari against so many arrows, etc.  At big races the wagers may amount to considerable heaps of such articles, and the position of manager requires a man of decision and memory, for he has to carry all the bets in his head and makes no written record of them.  The total value of the wagers may reach a thousand dollars, and what to the Indians are fortunes may change hands in accordance with the result of the race.  One man on one occasion had $50 worth of property at stake.