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While she stood and gazed around, her attention was directed to a young couple passing in front of her. The handsome lad with the dark, streaming hair was Okoya, and she recognized him proudly as the best-looking youth on the ground, Hayoue perhaps excepted. But then, was not Hayoue, Okoya's father's brother? But who was the girl by Okoya's side?
"Men can do harm with their hands and with their weapons; and against those you have your fist and the shield. Those Above" he pointed at the skies "can harm us; they can kill us. But men why, we can defend ourselves." Okoya felt shocked at words which sounded to him like sacrilegious talk. Timidly and morosely he objected, "Don't you know that there are witches!" "Witches! There are no witches."
His speech was picturesque, but not consciously poetic; for the Indian speaks like a child, using figures of speech, not in order to embellish, but because he lacks abstract terms and is compelled to borrow equivalents from comparisons with surrounding nature. Hayoue listened attentively; occasionally, however, he smiled. At last Okoya stopped and looked at his friend in expectation.
Although very fond of the other sex, Hayoue was still honest and trustworthy in everything else. Her son had evidently spoken to his uncle about Mitsha, and in Say's estimation he could not have chosen a better person in whom to confide. Hayoue, she knew, harboured toward Tyope sentiments akin to her own. His advice to Okoya must therefore have been sound.
Once on the ground he walked still trembling and suspiciously scanning the cliff wherein the Corn people had their abodes as straight as possible toward the big house. Nobody interfered with him; not even his two defenders noticed that he had gone; they both remained standing silent, with hearts beating anxiously. "Okoya," the woman called from below, "come and eat.
"That urchin," he said, "is more afraid of me than of Zashue and you together. The brat is no good, and will never do for anything but a Koshare. How different is Okoya!" Say had again squatted near the hearth. She gathered the crying child into her arms. The little girl continued to sob for a while, and at first refused to eat.
There were a number of them at the Rito around the big house, along the fields, and on the trails leading up to the mesa. Okoya went to the nearest one and placed two twigs crosswise on it, poising them with a stone. Then he scattered sacred meal, which he always carried with him in a small leather wallet, and thanked the Sanashtyaya, our mother, with an earnest ho-a-a, ho-a-a.
In his thoughts the hatred which she pretended to display against the Koshare appeared no longer sincere; it seemed to him hypocrisy, duplicity, deception. Such deceit could mean only the darkest, the most dangerous, designs. With the Indian the superlative of depravity is witchcraft. Okoya revolved in his mind whether his mother was not perhaps his most dangerous enemy.
Then the old man raised his head, and spoke slowly and in solemn tones, "It is well; all you have said to me is well, my children. The daughter of my hanutsh is a good girl, she is a handsome girl, she is a strong girl. Therefore she is as a woman ought to be. Okoya is like her; they belong to each other; and it is wise for a son of Tanyi to wed a daughter of Tyame.
As soon as these warriors were all on the Ziro kauash, the Tehua spies, after warning those behind them, crept cautiously into the rear of the advancing foe. All the able-bodied men from the Tyuonyi had not been permitted to join the expedition. Hayoue was not among them, neither was Okoya.
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