HE

(_Loosing hope._) He was mad, Chisera, he had eaten rattle-weed. But
my daughter did not mock you. Think of my daughter!

THE CHISERA

When does your daughter ever think of me?

SEEGOOCHE

(_Broken and drooping._) Every day she thinks of you. When she is
a-hungered, when her man brings her nothing from the hunt--as--you
have said, Chisera. When she digs roots with the old women and no one
prevents her for the sake of a child to be born.

THE CHISERA

(_With relish._) Does she dig roots?

SEEGOOCHE

With the barren women. Also her beauty goes, she is so thin with the
famine.

THE CHISERA

(_Baring her arm._) I also am thin.

(_From this moment some perception of the pervasive misery of the
situation enters her mind and begins to color her speech._)

CHIEF

Hunger and sickness and war have come into the camp because you kept
not your heart, Chisera. Yet a greater than all these shall come upon
you if you forget your tribal obligation.

THE CHISERA

(_Rising on one knee._) What obligation have I owed, Chief Rain Wind,
and not remembered it?

CHIEF

That which lies upon all that have power with the Friend of the Soul
of Man. Only the gods can save us, and only you know the true and
acceptable road to them.

THE CHISERA

(_Rising and moving toward her hut._) I am overweary for the road;
let Simwa find it.

(_An arrow, with a feather and a fragment of bark attached to it,
is shot into the camp from the direction of the fighting._
PADAHOON _takes it up and carries it to the_ CHIEF, _the others
crowding about._)

CHIEF

What was that?

PADAHOON

A message from the Fighting Men.

CHIEF

Read me the token.

PADAHOON

A vulture's feather and a bark of _whenonabe_. Defeat and flight.

WOMEN

Ai! Ai!

(_They throw up their arms in despair._)

CHIEF

They will not be far behind their arrows.

(_All listen. A faint whoop is heard._ PADAHOON _answers with his
mouth covered with his hands. The rest of the women and children
come out of the rocks. Fighting Men come clambering up the steep.
They show torn clothing and streaks of blood. The women bring
them the water-bottles as they drop upon the ground._ WACOBA'S
_husband_, PAMAQUASH, _with an arrow in his side, leaps once in
air and drops dead. His wife sinks on the ground beside him,
rocking and moaning. One breaks his unstrung bow across h