was at flood and
the blood pricked to the mating fever, the maids chose their flowers,
wreathed themselves, and danced in the twilights, young desire crying
out to young desire. They sang what the heart prompted, what the flower
expressed, what boded in the mating weather.

"And what flower did you wear, Seyavi?"

"I, ah,--the white flower of twining (clematis), on my body and my hair,
and so I sang:--

"I am the white flower of twining,
Little white flower by the river,
Oh, flower that twines close by the river;
Oh, trembling flower!
So trembles the maiden heart."

So sang Seyavi of the campoodie before she made baskets, and in her
later days laid her arms upon her knees and laughed in them at the
recollection. But it was not often she would say so much, never
understanding the keen hunger I had for bits of lore and the "fool talk"
of her people. She had fed her young son with meadowlarks' tongues,
to make him quick of speech; but in late years was loath to admit it,
though she had come through the period of unfaith in the lore of the
clan with a fine appreciation of its beauty and significance.

"What good will your dead get, Seyavi, of the baskets you burn?" said I,
coveting them for my own collection.

Thus Seyavi, "As much good as yours of the flowers you strew."

Oppapago looks on Waban, and Waban on Coso and the Bitter Lake, and the
campoodie looks on these three; and more, it sees the beginning of winds
along the foot of Coso, the gathering of clouds behind the high ridges,
the spring flush, the soft spread of wild almond bloom on the mesa.
These first, you understand, are the Paiute's walls, the other his
furnishings. Not the wattled hut is his home, but the land, the winds,
the hill front, the stream. These he cannot duplicate at any furbisher's
shop as you who live within doors, who, if your purse allows, may have
the same home at Sitka and Samarcand. So you see how it is that the
homesickness of an Indian is often unto death, since he gets no relief
from it; neither wind nor weed nor sky-line, nor any aspect of the
hills of a strange land sufficiently like his own. So it was when the
government reached out for the Paiutes, they gathered into the Northern
Reservation only such poor tribes as could devise no other end of their
affairs. Here, all along the river, and south to Shoshone Land, live
the clans who owned the earth, fallen into the deplorable condition of
hangers-on