On the fourth day the crowd increased.  Custom lays idle all field tools of an ato on the burial day of an adult of that ato; but the day Som-kad’ was buried the field work of the entire pueblo stood still because of common respect for this man, so old and wise, so rich and influential, and probably 200 people were about the house all the day.  By noon two well-defined groups of chanting old women had formed —­ one sitting in the house and the other in front of it.  Wordless, melancholy chants were sung in response between the groups.  The spaces surrounding the house became almost packed —­ so much so that a dog succeeded in getting into the doorway, and the threatenings and maledictions that drove it away were the loudest, most disturbed expressions noted during the four days.

Before the house, which faced the west, lay the large pine coffin lid, while to the south of it, turned bottom up, was the coffin with fresh chips beside it hewn out that morning in further excavation.  Children played around the coffin and people lounged on its upturned bottom.  Near the front of the house a pot of water was always hot over a smoldering, smoking fire.  Now and then a chicken was brought, light wood was tossed under the pot, the chicken was beaten to death —­ first the wings, then the neck, and then the head.  The fowl was quickly sprawled over the blaze, its feathers burned to a crisp, and rubbed off with sticks.  Its legs were severed from the body with the battle-ax and put in the pot.  From its front it was then cut through its ribs with one gash.  The back and breast parts were torn apart, the gall examined and nodded over; the intestines were placed beneath a large rock, and the gizzard, breast of the chicken, and back with head attached dropped in the pot.  During the killing and dressing neither of the two men who prepared the feast hurried, yet scarcely five minutes passed from the time the first blow was struck on the wing of the squawking fowl until the work was over and the meat in the boiling pot.  The cooking of a fowl always brought a crowd of boys who hung over the fragrant vessel, and they usually got their share when, in about twenty minutes, the meat came forth.  Three times in the afternoon a fowl was thus distributed.  Cooked pork was passed among the people, and rice was always being brought.  Twice a man went through the crowd with a large winnowing tray of cooked carabao hide cut in little blocks.  This food was handed out on every side, people tending children receiving double share.  The people gathered and ate in the congested spaces about the dwelling.  The heat was intense —­ there was scarcely a breath of air stirring.  The odor from the body was heavy and most sickening to an American, and yet there was no trace of the unusual on the various faces.

New arrivals came to take their last look at Som-kad’, now a black, bloated, inhuman-looking thing, and they turned away apparently unaffected by the sight.