“Are there any other bad men at the Tyuonyi?” Okoya asked; but low, as if he were afraid of the answer.

“There may be others,” Hayoue muttered, “but those two are certainly the worst.”

Okoya felt disappointed; Tyope, he saw, must indeed be a bad creature.

“Do you know whether Tyope is mourning?” asked his uncle.

“I have not seen him,” grumbled the other.

“I am sure he will look as if his mother had died,” scolded Hayoue.  “He is a great liar, worse than a Navajo.  He puts on a good face and keeps the bad one inside.  I would like to know what the Shiuana think of that bad man.”

“Have we any bad women among us?” Okoya said, to change the conversation.

“Hannay is bad!” his uncle cried.

A pang went through the heart of the other youth.  His prospective father and mother in-law appeared really a pair of exquisite scoundrels.

“Are there any others?”

“I don’t know, still I have heard.”  Hayoue looked about as if afraid of some eavesdropper,—­“what I tell you now is only for yourself,—­that Shotaye is bad, very bad!  After being Tyope’s wife for a while, I should not be surprised if—­”

“Does she speak to those that can do us harm?” Okoya interrupted in a timid whisper.

“It may be.  There is no doubt but she is a harlot; I know it myself, and every man on the Tyuonyi knows it.  Other women are also spoken of, but nobody says it aloud.  It is not right to speak thus of people when we do not know positively.  I have not seen Shotaye since our father died.  She is mourning perhaps, for her cave is shut and the deerskin hangs over the doorway.  She is likely to be inside in quiet until the trouble is over and the men can go to her again.”

Okoya rose to go.

“Are you coming along?” he asked his uncle.

Hayoue shook his head; he still wished to remain alone.

“It may be,” he said, “that we shall have to leave in two days against the Tehuas, and I shall remain so that I may be ready when the tapop calls upon us.  You rely upon it, satyumishe, we shall go soon, and when it so happens that we both must go you shall come with me that I may teach you how the scalp is taken.”

Thus dismissed, Okoya sauntered back down the valley.

When opposite the caves of the Water clan he furtively glanced over to the one inhabited by Shotaye.  The deerskin, as Hayoue had stated, hung over the opening, and no smoke issued from the hole that served as vent and smoke-escape.  The woman must be mourning very deeply, or else she was gone.  She did not often enter his thoughts, and yet he wished Shotaye might come now and see his mother.  He was convinced, without knowing why, that his mother would have been glad to see her.