“How so?” cried Tyame.

“Through Shotaye, their sister,” replied the old man, slowly.

It was not silence alone that followed this utterance.  A stillness ensued so sudden, so dismal, and so awful that it seemed worse than a grave.  Every face grew sinister, every one felt that some dread revelation was coming.  Tyope held his head erect, watching the face of the old maseua.  Topanashka’s features had not moved; he was looking at the Koshare Naua with an air of utter unconcern.  The Hishtanyi Chayan, on the contrary, raised his head; and the expression of his features became sharp, like those of an anxious inquisitor.  In the eye of the Shkuy Chayan a sinister glow appeared.  He also had raised his head and bent the upper part of his body forward.  The Shikama Chayan assumed a dark, threatening look.  The name of Shotaye had aroused dark suspicions among the medicine-men.  Their chief now asked slowly, measuredly,—­

“You accuse a woman of having done harm to the tribe?” Henceforward he and his two colleagues were the pivots around which the further proceedings were to revolve.  The tapop was forgotten; nobody paid attention to him any longer.

“I do; I say that Shotaye, the woman belonging to Tzitz hanutsh, has carried destruction to the tribe.”

“In what way?”

“In preventing the rain from falling in season.”

“And she has succeeded!” ejaculated Tyope, in a low voice,—­so low that it was not heard by all.

The Shkuy Chayan continued the interrogatory.  Nobody else uttered a word; not even the Hishtanyi spoke for the present.  The latter disliked the woman as much as any of his colleagues; but he mistrusted her accusers as well, and preferred, after having taken the initiatory steps, to remain an attentive listener and observer, leaving it to his associates to proceed with the case.  The Shkuy, on the other hand, was eager to develop matters; he had been secretly informed some time ago of what was known concerning the witchcraft proceedings of Shotaye, and he hated the woman more bitterly than any of his colleagues did; and as the charge was the preventing of rain-fall, it very directly affected his own functions,—­not more than those of the Hishtanyi, who is ex-officio rain-maker, but quite as much.

For drought not only affects the crops; it exerts quite as baneful an influence upon game; and game, as food for man, is under the special care of the Shkuy Chayan.  He is the great medicine-man of the hunt.  Drought artificially produced, as the Indian is convinced it can be through witchcraft, is one of the greatest calamities that can be brought upon a tribe.  As a crime, it is worse than murder, for it is an attempt at wholesale though slow extermination.  The sorcerer or the witch who deliberately attempts to prevent rain-fall becomes the object of intense hatred on the part of all.  The whole cluster of men assembled felt the gravity of the charge.  Horror-stricken, they sat in mute silence, awaiting the result of the investigation which the Shkuy Chayan proceeded to carry on.