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They were the delegates who had come to listen at last to the oracle which was to be revealed to them through the mouth of the great shaman. Their number was not yet complete; the Tapop, Tyope, the Koshare Naua were there, but neither the Caciques nor the Chayani nor the Maseua had put in an appearance. Everybody was silent, hardly a word was heard from time to time, seldom a whisper.
If there were danger of this the warriors, to whom he belonged, that is, the special group of war magicians, would have been the first to be informed of it; and they would all be now in the estufa preparing themselves for duty, and the maseua first of all. Instead of it the old man was up and about as usual. No, it could not be; and he accordingly said,
"Silence!" ordered the little governor, but nobody paid any attention. "Satyumishe Maseua," now shouted the principal shaman, "keep order, the nashtio Koshare wants to speak!" The tall man rose calmly; he went toward the cluster of wrangling men and grasped Kauaitshe by the shoulder. "Be quiet," he ordered. Nobody withstood his determined mien. All became silent.
Both stand still, terrified at the sight. At last one of them exclaims, "It is one from the Zaashtesh!" They run together to the spot, heedless of the danger which may yet be lurking about. They bend over the dead, then look at each other speechless, confused. At last they find words, and exclaim simultaneously, "It is our father, Topanashka Tihua!" "It is sa nashtio maseua!"
He was not outlawed; no punishment was dealt to him; he was simply suffered to remain on that lower level to which he had naturally dropped. The principal question agitating the council was the nomination of a maseua, or head war-chief. The caciques intimated that Hayoue would be their choice, and all concurred in the selection.
With this the matter went into the hands of the great medicine-man and the head war-chief. The former was almost an equivalent to the Hishtanyi Chayan among the Queres, the latter the exact equivalent of the maseua.
"Not as we do," replied Okoya; "yet he is sad." "It is well. He is right to feel sad. Sad for himself, for you, for all of us." "Sa umo was so good," whispered the boy, and tears came to him again; but he controlled his feelings and swallowed his sobs. He did not wish the other to see him weep. "Indeed sa umo maseua was good," Hayoue emphasized, "better than any of us, truer than any of us!
This was bad news indeed. She muttered, "This is bad, very bad. If the maseua knows it, then the tapop will not be long without notice." "The tapop knows nothing," breathed Say. "But how can the maseua have been informed without the knowledge of the other?" Shotaye asked with surprise. "He is my father," replied Say, and wept aloud.
Toward the south it was warm and bright, so Maseua and his brother said to their children, the men of our tribe, 'Go you where there is more light; and the summer people they directed to go along the Rio Grande; the winter people they sent south also but far around by the east over the plains where the great buffalo is roaming, where the wind blows and it is cold and dry.
It was not our brethren from the north, it was the Moshome Dinne." He uttered the name with marked emphasis. "They killed the maseua of your tribe." We recognize in the interpreter the same old man who served the Tehuas in their first interviews with Shotaye.
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