The fields were deserted.  Everybody had left them except himself.  Tyope pushed aside the stone implement and turned to go.  After leaving the corn he turned to the right, and gradually stooping went toward a grove of low pines.  Into that grove he penetrated slowly, cautiously, avoiding the least noise.  It was clearly his intention to conceal himself.  Once inside of the thicket of pine boughs he cowered, and after listening again and satisfying himself that nobody was around, he plunged his right arm beneath the branches that drooped down to the surface.  When he withdrew it his hand grasped a bow.  He placed this bow near his feet and dived a second time under the branches, pulling out another object, which proved to be a quiver made of panther-skin filled with arrows.  He examined each of these arrows carefully, trying their heads of flint and obsidian, and replaced them in such a manner that the feathered ends projected from the quiver.  A third time he ransacked the hiding-place, and produced from beneath the boughs a short wooden war-club.  His last essay brought to light a cap of buffalo-hide thick enough to repel an arrow fired at short range, and so fashioned as to protect the forehead to the eyebrows, while behind, it descended low upon the neck.  This cap, or helmet, he forthwith placed upon his head.  Then he slung the quiver across his shoulders, wound the thong of the club around his right wrist, grasped the bow with the left hand, and rose to his feet.

Daylight was gone.  Only a flat golden segment blazed above the western peaks.  The peaks themselves, with the mountains, formed a huge mass of dark purple.  Over the valley night hovered already, but a streak of mist trailing here and there like a thin veil marked the course of the little brook.  It was so dark that Tyope could move without any fear of being seen.  He nevertheless maintained a stooping position as long as he was on open ground.  Once in the corn he followed its rows instead of traversing them, as if afraid of injuring the plants.  He also examined carefully the edge of the brook before crossing it to the south side.  Once on the declivity leading up to the mesa, he climbed nimbly and with greater unconcern, for there the shadow was so dense that nobody could notice him from below.

From the brink of the table-land Tyope looked back upon the Rito.  He stopped not so much in order to see, for it was too dark, but in order to listen.  Everything was quiet.  A bear snarled far away, but this did not concern the listener.  He strolled on through the scrubby timber of the mesa until he arrived at a place where tall pines towered up into the starry sky, when he stopped again and remained for quite a while looking up at the heavens.  The great bear—­the seven stars, as the Pueblos term it—­sparkled near the northern horizon, and Tyope seemed to watch that constellation with unusual interest.  Now a hoarse dismal yelping struck his ear, the barking of the coyote, or prairie wolf.  Twice, three times, the howl was repeated in the distance; then Tyope replied to it, imitating its cry.  All was still again.