_basket._)

THE CHISERA

(_A little stiffly._) You have no need of gifts. Am I not young, even
as you? Should _you_ pray for your lover any more or less for the
sake of a few beads?

SEEGOOCHE

(_Anxiously._) Be not angry, Chisera. They would repay you for the
dancing and the singing.

(_The_ CHISERA _gathers up the gifts that the older women have
brought and goes into the hut. The girls take up their gifts,
puzzled._)

SEEGOOCHE

I am afraid you have vexed her with your foolish quest.

BRIGHT WATER

Has the Chisera a lover also, that she speak so?

SEEGOOCHE

It is not possible and we not know of it, for since her father's
death if any sought her hand in marriage, he must come to my husband
in the matter of dowry.

WACOBA

No fear that any will come while she is still the Chisera.

BRIGHT WATER

She is the wisest of us all.

TIAWA

Wisdom is good as a guest, but it wears out its welcome when it sits
by the hearth-stone.

BRIGHT WATER

She has great power with the gods.

WACOBA

So much so that if she had a husband, he dare not beat her lest she
run and tattle to them.

SEEGOOCHE

She is our Chisera, and there is not another like her between
Tehachappi and Tecuya. If she were wearied with stooping and
sweating, if she were anxious with bearing and rearing, how could she
go before the gods for us?

TIAWA

Aye, that is the talk in the wickiups, that we must hold her apart
from us to give her room for her great offices, but I have always
said--but I am old and nobody minds me--I have always said that if
she had loved as we love and had borne as we have borne, she would be
the more fitted to entreat the gods that we may not lose.

SEEGOOCHE

(_As the_ CHISERA _comes out of the hut._) If you are angry, Chisera,
turn it against our enemies of Castac.

THE CHISERA

You know that I cannot curse.

TIAWA

Is it true, Chisera, that you make no bad medicine?

THE CHISERA

Many kinds of sickness I can cure, and give easy childbirth. I can
bring rain, and give fortune in the hunt, but of the making of evil
spells I know nothing.

SEEGOOCHE

But your father, the medicine man--he was the dread and wonder of the
tribes.

THE CHISERA

Aye, my father could kill by a spell, and make a wasting sickness
with a frown, but he thought such powers not proper to women:
therefore he taught me none.

WACOBA

But you will bring a blessing