es. Sore was the wounding and loud cried the
foolish, when lastly the people were arranged in procession for the
razing of their tails.

But those who stood at the end of the line, shrinking farther and
farther, fled in their terror, climbing trees and high places, with loud
chatter. Wandering far, sleeping ever in tree tops, in the far-away
Summerland, they are sometimes seen of far-walkers, long of tail and
long handed, like wizened men-children.

But the people grew in strength, and became more perfect, and more than
ever went to war. They grew vain. They had reached the Place of the
Middle. They said, "Let us not wearily wander forth again even though
the earth tremble and the Twain bid us forth."

And even as they spoke, the mountain trembled and shook, though
far-sounding.

But as the people changed, changed also were the Twain, small and
misshapen, hard-favored and unyielding of will, strong of spirit, evil
and bad. They taught the people to war, and led them far to the
eastward.

At last the people neared, in the midst of the plains to the eastward,
great towns built in the heights. Great were the fields and possessions
of this people, for they knew how to command and carry the waters,
bringing new soil. And this, too, without hail or rain. So our ancients,
hungry with long wandering for new food, were the more greedy and often
gave battle.

It was here that the Ancient Woman of the Elder People, who carried her
heart in her rattle and was deathless of wounds in the body, led the
enemy, crying out shrilly. So it fell out ill for our fathers. For,
moreover, thunder raged and confused their warriors, rain descended and
blinded them, stretching their bow strings of sinew and quenching the
flight of their arrows as the flight of bees is quenched by the
sprinkling plume of the honey-hunter. But they devised bow strings of
yucca and the Two Little Ones sought counsel of the Sun-father who
revealed the life-secret of the Ancient Woman and the magic powers over
the under-fires of the dwellers of the mountains, so that our enemy in
the mountain town was overmastered. And because our people found in that
great town some hidden deep in the cellars, and pulled them out as rats
are pulled from a hollow cedar, and found them blackened by the fumes of
their war magic, yet wiser than the common people, they spared them and
received them into their next of kin of the Black Corn....

But the tremblings and warnings still