On the day following the ayash tyucotz Shotaye left her cave in quest of vegetable medicaments.  We have seen how she met Okoya, and how they greeted one another.  The boy’s sullen manner amused her; she attributed his morose ways to the effects of an over-lively night.  Onward she went, down to the edge of the brook, then turned to the right up the course of the streamlet.  That the skies threatened to become overcast and that rain might overtake her during the day mattered little.  Whenever the Indian is bent upon the performance of some task, sunshine or rain, moonlight or snow, are matters of indifference.  Shotaye strolled on regardless of things above or below.  People were of as little interest to her as the clouds.  The latter could do her errand no harm, and that errand everybody might know if they chose to follow her.

Wandering up the gorge of the Rito and along its northern limit, the woman soon reached the upper part, where the cliffs crowd the water’s edge, where the southern slopes become more rugged and the valley terminates.  There a series of gigantic steps, formed by high and beetling rocks, closes the Rito to the west.  Down that mass of ledges the brook trickles from its source, and a trail, formerly much used by the Navajos on their raids, creeps up, meandering over and between crags, ledges, and shelves of bare rock.  This trail was seldom trodden at that time, and then only by armed men, for it was regarded as dangerous.  Notwithstanding the proximity of the settlement at the Rito, the Navajos—­Dinne, or Moshome—­lurked here quite often, and many an unfortunate had lost his life while ascending the trail alone.

Shotaye was therefore travelling an exceedingly hazardous road, but she did not think of danger.  Many a time before had she clambered up and down this rocky labyrinth, and while the Dinne fairly swarmed, nothing had ever happened to her.  It is true that she was exceedingly wary, and had in her innumerable excursions gathered quite as much knowledge of the tricks of war as the most experienced scout, so that she felt almost intuitively the approach of danger.  She had gradually become imbued with the idea that she was invulnerable.  To-day, therefore, she moved along this dangerous trail with the greatest apparent nonchalance.  Furthermore her thoughts so completely absorbed her that while ascending from the level of the Rito she unconsciously went on thinking of nothing else but of what Say Koitza had told her in the cave, and of the plans for relief which she had begun to devise, or at least to revolve in her mind.

The trail is not only rough and long, it is very steep in places; and the woman stopped for rest, sitting on a ledge of rocks.  Below her the vale was no longer visible; a dark chasm yawned at her feet; out of it the cliffs of the Tyuonyi rose like the heads of giants.