* * * * *

The reader will forgive a digression.  We will leave Tyope and his companions on the brink of the Rito, and abandon them for a while to their sombre thoughts; nay, we will leave the Rito even, and transport ourselves to our own day.  I desire to relate a story, an Indian folk-lore tale of modern origin, which is authentic in so far that it was told me by an Indian friend years ago at the village of Cochiti, where the descendants of those who once upon a time inhabited the caves on the Rito de los Frijoles now live.  My object in rehearsing this tale is to explain something I have neglected; namely, the real conception underlying the custom of taking the scalp of an enemy.

The Indian friend of whom I am speaking, and whose home I inhabited for quite a while, came over to the little dingy room I was occupying one winter evening.  The fire was burning in a chimney not much better than the one Shotaye possessed at the Tyuonyi.  He squatted down on his folded blanket, rolled a cigarette, and looked at me wistfully.  I felt that he was disposed for a long talk, and returned his glance with one of eager expectation.  Casting his eyes to the ground, he asked me,—­

“You know that the Navajos have done us much harm?”

“Yes, you and your brother Shtiranyi have told me so.”

He curled his lip at the reference to his brother’s knowledge, and said sneeringly,—­

“Shtiranyi is young; he does not know much.”

“Still he told me a great deal about the wars you had with the Moshome Dinne.”

“Did he ever tell you of the hard times the people of Cochiti suffered three generations ago?”

“Never.”

“He knows nothing of them.  He is too young.  I,”—­he assumed an air of solemn importance,—­“I will tell you something; something true, something that you can believe; for the old men, those from a long time ago, tell it, and what they say is so.  The Mexicans never hear of it, and to the Americans we don’t tell such things, for they think they are too smart, and laugh at what we say.”

“Is the story really true?” I inquired, for I saw that something interesting was coming.

“As true as if I had seen it myself.  But I was not born when it happened.  Cochiti was larger then, a big village, twice as big as it is to-day.  But the Navajos were very powerful.  They attacked us in the daytime in the fields.  They killed the men who went to gather firewood, and they stole our cattle.  At night they would come to the Zaashtesh and carry off the women and the girls.  There lived at the time a young koitza who had recently married, and she liked her husband.  One evening after dark this woman went to the corral.  There the Moshome seized her, closed her mouth with their hands, dragged her from the village, tied and gagged her, and placed her on a horse; then they rode off as fast as they could, far, far away to the northwest