les today. When he had smoked and had been smoked, as had been
Eagle, he told the sorrowing fathers and mothers that he had looked
behind every copse and cliff shadow, but of the Maidens he had found no
trace.

"They are hidden more closely than ever sparrow hid," he said. Then he,
too, flew away to his hills in the west.

"Our beautiful Maiden Mothers," cried the matrons. "Lost, lost as the
dead are they!"

"Yes," said the others. "Where now shall we seek them? The far-seeing
Eagle and the close-searching Falcon alike have failed to find them."

"Stay now your feet with patience," said the fathers. Some of them had
heard Raven, who sought food in the refuse and dirt at the edge of town,
at daybreak.

"Look now," they said. "There is Heavy-nose, whose beak never fails to
find the substance of seed itself, however little or well hidden it be.
He surely must know of the Corn Maidens. Let us call him."

So the warriors went to the river side. When they found Raven, they
raised their hands, all weaponless.

"We carry no pricking quills," they called. "Blackbanded father, we seek
your aid. Look now! The Mother-maidens of Seed whose substance is the
food alike of thy people and our people, have fled away. Neither our
grandfather the Eagle, nor his younger brother the Falcon, can trace
them. We beg you to aid us or counsel us."

"Ka! ka!" cried the Raven. "Too hungry am I to go abroad fasting on
business for ye. Ye are stingy! Here have I been since perching time,
trying to find a throatful, but ye pick thy bones and lick thy bowls too
clean for that, be sure."

"Come in, then, poor grandfather. We will give thee food to cat. Yea,
and a cigarette to smoke, with all the ceremony."

"Say ye so?" said the Raven. He ruffled his collar and opened his mouth
so wide with a lusty kaw-la-ka--that he might well have swallowed his
own head. "Go ye before," he said, and followed them into the court of
the dancers.

He was not ill to look upon. Upon his shoulders were bands of white
cotton, and his back was blue, gleaming like the hair of a maiden dancer
in the sunlight. The Master-Priest greeted Raven, bidding him sit and
smoke.

"Ha! There is corn in this, else why the stalk of it?" said the Raven,
when he took the cane cigarette of the far spaces and noticed the joint
of it. Then he did as he had seen the Master-Priest do, only more
greedily. He sucked in such a throatful of the smoke, fire and all, that
it almost strang