dy forward. The Shikama Chayan assumed a
dark, threatening look. The name of Shotaye had aroused dark suspicions
among the medicine-men. Their chief now asked slowly, measuredly,--

"You accuse a woman of having done harm to the tribe?" Henceforward he
and his two colleagues were the pivots around which the further
proceedings were to revolve. The tapop was forgotten; nobody paid
attention to him any longer.

"I do; I say that Shotaye, the woman belonging to Tzitz hanutsh, has
carried destruction to the tribe."

"In what way?"

"In preventing the rain from falling in season."

"And she has succeeded!" ejaculated Tyope, in a low voice,--so low that
it was not heard by all.

The Shkuy Chayan continued the interrogatory. Nobody else uttered a
word; not even the Hishtanyi spoke for the present. The latter disliked
the woman as much as any of his colleagues; but he mistrusted her
accusers as well, and preferred, after having taken the initiatory
steps, to remain an attentive listener and observer, leaving it to his
associates to proceed with the case. The Shkuy, on the other hand, was
eager to develop matters; he had been secretly informed some time ago of
what was known concerning the witchcraft proceedings of Shotaye, and he
hated the woman more bitterly than any of his colleagues did; and as the
charge was the preventing of rain-fall, it very directly affected his
own functions,--not more than those of the Hishtanyi, who is ex-officio
rain-maker, but quite as much.

For drought not only affects the crops; it exerts quite as baneful an
influence upon game; and game, as food for man, is under the special
care of the Shkuy Chayan. He is the great medicine-man of the hunt.
Drought artificially produced, as the Indian is convinced it can be
through witchcraft, is one of the greatest calamities that can be
brought upon a tribe. As a crime, it is worse than murder, for it is an
attempt at wholesale though slow extermination. The sorcerer or the
witch who deliberately attempts to prevent rain-fall becomes the object
of intense hatred on the part of all. The whole cluster of men assembled
felt the gravity of the charge. Horror-stricken, they sat in mute
silence, awaiting the result of the investigation which the Shkuy Chayan
proceeded to carry on.

"How do you know that the aniehna"--he emphasized the untranslatable
word of insult, and his voice trembled with passion--"has worked such
evil to the people?" The query was d