“Speak the tongue of the Dinne,” the other sternly commanded, and a flash burst from beneath his eyebrows, almost as savage as that of a wolf.  “Thou hast courted the people of my tribe.  They have not sought after thee.  Thou knowest their language.  Speak it, therefore, and then we shall see.”  He straightened himself, displaying a youthful figure full of strength and elasticity.

Tyope took this change of manner very composedly.  He answered quietly in the same dialect,—­

“If thou wilt, Nacaytzusle, I can speak like thy people also.  It is true I came for them, but what I wanted”—­he emphasized the word—­“was as much for their benefit as my own.  Thou, first of all, wast to gain by my scheme.”  His eyes closed, and the glance became as sharp as that of a rattlesnake.

Nacaytzusle poked the embers with a dry stick as if thinking over the speech of the other.  Then he asked,—­

“Thou sayest thou hast wanted.  Wantest thou no more?”

“Not so much as hitherto,” Tyope stated positively.

“What shall it be now?” inquired the Dinne.

“I will speak to thee so as to be understood,” explained the man from the Rito, “but thou shalt tell thy people only so much of it as I shall allow thee to say.  Thou art Dinne, it is true, and their tongue is thy language, but many a time hast thou seen the sun set and rise while the houses wherein we dwell on the brook were thy home.  When they brought thee to us after the day on which Topanashka slaughtered thy people beyond the mountains, thou didst not remain with us long.  The moon has not been bright often since thou left us to join thy people.  Is it not so, Nacaytzusle?  Answer me.”

The Navajo shrugged his shoulders.

“It is true,” he said, “but I have nothing in common with the House people.”

“It may be so now, but if thou dost not care for the men, the women are not without interest to thee.  Is it not thus?”

“The tzane on the brook,” replied the Navajo, disdainfully, “amount to nothing.”

“In that case”—­Tyope flared up and grasped his club, speaking in the Queres language and with a vibrating tone—­“why don’t you look for a companion in your own tribe?  Mitsha Koitza does not care for a husband who sneaks around in the timber like a wolf, and whose only feat consists in frightening the old women of the Tyuonyi!”

The Navajo stared before him with apparent stolidity.  Tyope continued,—­

“You pretend to despise us now, yet enough has remained within your heart, from the time when you lived at the Tyuonyi and slept in the estufa of Shyuamo hanutsh, to make my daughter appear in your eyes better, more handsome, and more useful, than the girls of the Dinne!”

The features of the Dinne did not move; he kept silent.  But his right hand played with the string of the bow that lay on the wolf’s skin.