and smoke; the
storm-struck earth writhed anew beneath pelting thunder-bolts; no tremor
this time, but an upheaval that rent the rocks and flung the cities down.
It was an hour of darkness and terror. Roars of thunder mingled with the
more awful bellowing beneath; crash on crash told that houses and temples
were falling in vast ruin; the mountainsides were loosened and the rush
of avalanches added to the din; the air was thick, and through the clouds
the people groped their way toward the fields; rivers broke from their
confines and laid waste farms and gardens! The gods had indeed abandoned
them, and the spirit of the king's daughter took its flight in company
with thousands of souls in whose behalf she had suffered uselessly.

The king was crushed beneath his palace-roof and the sacerdotal
executioner perished in a fall of rock. The survivors fled in panic and
the Ishmaelite tribes on their frontier entered their kingdom and
pillaged it of all abandoned wealth. The cities never were rebuilt and
were rediscovered but a few years ago, when the maiden's skeleton was
also found. Nor does any Indian cross Superstition Mountains without a
sense of apprehension.

TA-VWOTS CONQUERS THE SUN

The Indian is a great story-teller. Every tribe has its traditions, and
the elderly men and women like to recount them, for they always find
listeners. And odd stories they tell, too. Just listen to this, for
example. It is a legend among the tribes of Arizona.

While Ta-Vwots, the hare god, was asleep in the valley of Maopa, the Sun
mischievously burned his back, causing him to leap up with a howl. "Aha!
It's you, is it, who played this trick on me?" he cried, looking at the
Sun. "I'll make it warm for you. See if I don't."

And without more ado he set off to fight the Sun. On the way he stopped
to pick and roast some corn, and when the people who had planted it ran
out and tried to punish him for the theft he scratched a hole in the
ground and ran in out of sight. His pursuers shot arrows into the hole,
but Ta-Vwots had his breath with him, and it was an awfully strong
breath, for with it he turned all the arrows aside. "The scamp is in
here," said one of the party. "Let's get at him another way." So, getting
their flints and shovels, they began to dig.

"That's your game, is it?" mumbled Ta-Vwots. "I know a way out of this
that you don't know." With a few puffs of his breath and a few kicks of
his legs he reached a great fis