redulously. "Do you remember, sa uishe, when one Moshome was holding
my hands while another struck at me with his club? You took a big stone
and hit him so that he fell and I could kill the other. Afterward you
took the bow away from the dead Moshome, and you did as much with it as
I did with mine. Yes, indeed, you are strong, but you are wise too, and
good." He fastened his eyes on her with a deep, earnest look, and the
girl turned away her face. She felt embarrassed.

"We shall be happy when you have built your house and you dwell in it as
my koitza," Okoya whispered.

Mitsha cast her eyes to the ground, and a faint glow appeared on her
bronzed cheeks. The young man was not misled by her manner, he knew well
enough that she liked him to speak in this way.

"Sanaya goes to Shipapu," said he, moving closer to her, "and I must
have a koitza. You said you would be mine and I should be your husband.
It was the night of the council on the Tyuonyi. Do you remember?"

"I do, and so it will be," she said, raising her head. Her large eyes
beamed upon him with an expression of softness and deep joy. "But
whither shall we go? Here we are strangers; and the Puyatye, although
they are very good to us, speak a tongue we do not understand. Shall we
return to the Tyuonyi and live with my mother and the hanutsh?"

"Are you sure that your mother is still alive? Are you sure that there
is a single one of our people alive?" Okoya objected.

Again the eyes of Mitsha grew moist; she turned her head away and Okoya
heard her sobs. Well did he understand her grief; it was stirred for the
fate of her parents. Had he, had she, known all that had happened on the
Rito!

A tremendous shout arose from the dancing crowd below. The distribution
of gifts was beginning anew. Again the majority of the missiles were
directed toward the Queres; a perfect shower of provisions, cooked and
raw, pattered down upon the strangers. A large ear of corn tumbled into
Mitsha's lap, and she handed it to Okoya, whispering,--

"The Shiuana are good."

"They are. They are good also to the yaya, for they take her away to
Shipapu, where there is no hunger as on the shore of the great stream."

He sighed, and gazed to the west, where the San Francisco mountains
stood. Beyond them, along the northern base of the Sierra de Sandia, in
the sandy bottom of the Rio Grande, uninhabited at this time, they had
suffered from hunger and heat. There misery had reached its cli