The news that Kauaitshe, the delegate from Tzitz hanutsh, was fasting had reached the cave-dwellings of his cluster late in the afternoon.  Zashue had carried it thither, communicating the intelligence secretly to his mother and sister.  They were speaking of it, the old woman with apprehensions, and Zashue in his usual frivolous manner, when Hayoue entered.

“Do you know,” said he, “that the nashtio of Tyame is doing penance?”

“So does ours,” remarked Zashue, growing serious.  He began to see matters in a different light.

“What may this all be about?” wondered the younger brother.

The elder brother shrugged his shoulders, sighed, and rubbed his eyes; and all four kept silent.

“Is it perhaps from the uuityam?” asked Hayoue; and his mother exclaimed,—­

“Surely it is.”

“Then something must have occurred,” continued Hayoue; and with a side-glance at his brother, “I wonder if Tyope is fasting also?”

Zashue denied it positively, and added, “The Naua is out of doors.”

“In that case it is our people again who have to suffer.”  His passion was aroused; he cried, rather than spoke “The Shyuamo never suffer anything.  Who knows but the shuatyam, Tyope, and the old one have again done something to harm us!” Ere Zashue could reply to this sally the young man had left the cave.

When Hayoue stood outside he noticed Shotaye sitting on her doorstep.

“Guatzena, sam[=a]m,” he called over to her.

“Raua A,” the woman answered, extending her hand toward him as if she wished to give him something.

He went over to her, took the object, and looked at it.  It was the rattle of a snake.

“Where did you get this?” he asked.

“I found it above, where a rattlesnake had been eaten.  Do you want it?”

He shook the rattle and inquired,—­

“Will you give it to me?”

“Yes.”

“It is well; and now I will tell you something that you don’t know yet.  Our father, Kauaitshe, is fasting.”

“He is right,” Shotaye remarked; “it will make him leaner.”

Both laughed, but Hayoue said with greater earnestness,

“Tyame is doing penance also.”

“Then he is with his woman from Shyuamo,” flippantly observed Shotaye; “it will make Turquoises cheaper.”  She turned away with an indifferent air.  Her careless manner struck the young man, and when he saw that she would not speak, but only gazed at the sky, he went off with the present he had received.  He felt differently; he took the matter very seriously.  He directed his steps toward the tall building where it might be possible to ascertain something else.  Hayoue was afraid of the Turquoise people and their designs.