Okoya felt wildly excited and could barely restrain himself.  Thirst for revenge joined the intense wish to become a warrior.  But Hayoue’s placed a damper on his enthusiasm, else he might have left that night alone, with bow and arrow and a stone knife, to hover about the Puye until some luckless Tehua fell into his hands.  He saw, however, that nothing could be done without the consent and support of the higher powers, and that he must curb his martial ardour and abide by the decisions of Those Above.  The present topic of conversation being exhausted, both sat in silence for a while, each following his own train of thoughts.  Okoya was the first to speak again.

“Does your hanutsh mourn?”

“The women have gone to weep with the dead,” replied Hayoue.  “I too am mourning,” he added sorrowfully; “but I mourn as is becoming to a man.  Crying and weeping belong only to women.”

“I have cried,” whispered Okoya timidly, as he looked at his friend with a doubting glance.  He was ashamed of the confession, and yet could not restrain himself from making it.  Hayoue shrugged his shoulders.

“You are young, satyumishe, and your heart is young.  It is like the heart of a girl.  When you have seen many dead men and many dying, you will do as I do,—­you will not cry any more.”  He coughed, and his face twitched nervously; with all his affectation of stoicism he had to struggle against tears.  In order to suppress them completely he spoke very loudly at once,—­

“Tzitz hanutsh has nothing to do with the dead, and yet the women lament and its men think over the loss that the tribe has sustained.  I tell you, Okoya, we have lost much; we are like children without their mother, like a drove of turkeys whose gobbler tiatui or mokatsh have killed.  Now,”—­his eyes flashed again and he gnashed his teeth,—­“now Tyope and the old Naua are uppermost.  Just wait until the men have returned from the war-path, and you will see.  Evil is coming to us.  Did you notice, satyumishe, on the night when they carried sa nashtio maseua back to the Tyuonyi how angry the Shiuana were; how the lightning flamed through the clouds and killed the trees on the mesa?  I tell you, brother, evil is coming to our people, for a good man has gone from us to Shipapu, but the bad ones have been spared.”

Okoya shuddered involuntarily.  He recollected well that awful night.  Never before had a storm raged on the Rito with such fury.  Frightful had been the roar of the thunder, prolonged like some tremendous subterranean noise.  Incessant lightning had for hours converted night into day, and many were the lofty pines that had been shattered or consumed by the fiery bolts from above.  The wind, which seldom does any damage at such places, had swept through the gorge and over the mesas with tremendous force, and lastly the peaceful, lovely brook, swollen by the waters that gushed from the mountains in torrents, as well as by the rain falling in sheets, had waxed into a roaring, turbid stream.  It had flooded the fields, destroying crops and spreading masses of rocky debris over the tillable soil.  Yes, the heavens had come upon the Rito in their full wrath, as swift and terrible avengers.  Both of them remembered well that awful night, and dropped into moody silence at the dismal recollection.