Since Say’s illness coincided with the beginning of the rainy season, the principal activity of the Koshare immediately preceded the outbreak of the fever.  Urged by hate and desire for revenge, Shotaye combined the two facts in her mind, and drew the conclusion that the disease was due to the magic power of the Koshare, directed against Say for some unknown reason and purpose.

If the Koshare were guilty, it was not only useless, it was dangerous even, to call upon any chayan for relief.  The Delight Makers were the chief assistants of the shamans in any public ceremony, and indispensable to them in many ways.  Beside, Say Koitza could not have applied to a chayan without her husband’s knowledge, and that husband was a Koshare.

So after explaining to the invalid her suspicions and inferences, she suggested direct inquiry about the principals in the supposed evil actions against her.  That inquiry could be conducted only through sorcery itself, and Say at first trembled.  She feared, and not without good cause, an appeal to evil powers.  Still Shotaye spoke so plausibly; she assured so strongly her friend of her own discretion and fidelity, and was so insistent upon her constant success in everything she had undertaken as yet,—­that the woman yielded at last against her own convictions.  Something within her seemed to speak and say, “Do not tread forbidden paths, speak to your husband first.”  But the arguments on the other side were too strong, her own physical condition too weak; she grasped the expected relief regardless of the warnings of her conscience.

Among the objects connected with evil magic, a certain kind of maize had the power of speech attributed to it.  It is the dark-coloured variety, called in the Queres language ka monyi tza.  Ears of this corn belonging to a witch are said to speak in the absence of their owner, and to tell of her whereabouts and doings.  Shotaye knew this, and herself but indifferently versed in the black art, concluded that the black corn would also reveal, if properly handled, the agent whose manipulations caused Say Koitza’s sufferings.  She hoped also that by combining the dreaded grain with another more powerful implement of sorcery, owl’s plumage, she would succeed in eliciting from the former all the information desired.  The woman was quite ignorant of the evil ways in which she was about to wander; but she was bold and daring, and the hope of injuring her enemies was a greater inducement than the desire to relieve her friend.  The proposed manipulation was directed in fact much more against her former husband than against the disease.

But how to obtain the necessary objects!  How to secure black corn, and how and where to get the feathers of an owl!  Both were so well known and so generally tabooed that inquiry after them would forthwith arouse suspicion.  Black maize might be procured on the sly; but the other could be found by chance only,—­by meeting with the body of a dead owl on the heights surrounding the Tyuonyi.