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The Trail Book by Mary Austin
Book, page 72 / 196


"Oh!--" Dorcas Jane began to say and broke off. "Tell us what it was!"
she finished.

Moke-icha considered.

"Breast of turkey roasted, and rabbit stew with pieces of squash and
chia, and beans cooked in fat,--very good eating; and of course thin,
folded cakes of maize; though I do not care much for corn cakes unless
they are well greased. But because it was a love-gift I ate all of it
and was licking the basket-tray when Tse-tse came back. He knew the
fashion of her weaving,--every woman's baskets had her own mark,--and as
he took it from me his face changed as though something inside him had
turned to water. Without a word he went down the hill to the chief's
house and I after him.

"'Moke-icha liked your cooking so well,' he said to the turkey girl,
'that she was eating the basket also. I have brought it back to you.'
There he stood shifting from one foot to another and Willow-in-the-Wind
turned taut as a bowstring.

"'Oh,' she said, 'Moke-icha has eaten it! I am very glad to hear it.'
And with that she marched into an inner room and did not come out again
all that evening, and Tse-tse went hunting next day without me.

"The next night, which was the third before the feast of planting, being
lonely, I went out for a walk on the mesa. It was a clear night of wind
and moving shadow; I went on a little way and smelled man. Two men I
smelled, Dine and Queresan, and the Queresan was Kokomo. They were
together in the shadow of a juniper where no man could have seen them.
Where I stood no man could have heard them.

"'It is settled, then,' said Kokomo. 'You send the old man to Shipapu,
for which he has long been ready, and take the girl for your trouble.'

"'Good,' said the Dine. 'But will not the Ko-share know if an extra man
goes in with them?'

"'We go in three bands, and we have taken in so many new members that no
one knows exactly.'


 
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