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Updated: May 31, 2025
His heart stood still; so wonderful was the discovery he was making that he was benumbed, body and soul! For that woman who so confidently stood in the midst of the enemies of her tribe, and who spoke to them with an air of assurance bordering upon authority, uttering his own name time and again, was Shotaye!
In the recess formed by the angle of the cliffs which contained her home, the usual bustle of the evening hours prevailed; and laughter, merry and boisterous, issued from a cave opposite that where Shotaye, concealed by folds of the half-lifted curtain, stood watching with eye and ear. In those caves fronting hers dwelt the family of Zashue, Say's husband.
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.
Hope, ambition, revenge, vanished from his thoughts, and with them all energy left him. The appearance of that woman crushed him utterly. Shotaye appeared to him by the side of the great war shaman of his enemies like some fiend, to be sure, but a fiend of so much higher rank than his own that it was futile to cope with her.
Nobody liked her, and yet many applied to her for relief in secret; for Shotaye possessed great knowledge of plants and other remedies, and she had a keen practical sense. But people dreaded her; she lived alone in her cave among the abodes of the Water people, and nobody knew but she might know more than the official medicine-men themselves.
In short there were flaws on both sides, and Shotaye being the house-mistress held the main power. One fine evening when Tyope presented himself in the grotto occupied by his wife, she refused to recognize him any longer. He protested, he stormed, he menaced her; it was of no avail. Shotaye told him to go, and he left. Henceforth the two were mortal enemies.
As soon as Shotaye saw into whose hands she had fallen, she felt completely reassured. Even if she were carried off a prisoner, it was no misfortune. When, moreover, she discovered that the stranger had not even such an object in view, but was after the scalp of some Navajo, she experienced a feeling of delight.
The tuyo, however, merely nodded to her kindly, uttered in a commanding tone a few words to those present, and went out to attend to his duties of convening the council. But the Tano Indian remained with Shotaye until late in the night.
The other responded hastily, "And I tell you, Zashue Tihua, that I saw your wife sitting by the hearth with Shotaye," his voice trembled at the mention of her name, "and I heard when that mean, low aniehna" his eyes flashed, giving a terrible expression to his already monstrously disfigured countenance "spoke to the yellow corn!" "Did you understand what she said?" Zashue interjected.
Soon the gorge opened at her feet, showing a placid, lovely picture, the little valley down below, huge pines raising their dark columns by the side of light-green corn-patches, and the tall pile of the big houses looming up like an enormous round tower. But Shotaye was not affected by scenery.
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