II

THE SUMMER BIRDS OF K'YÄKIME

Now the Priest had a very beautiful daughter, with long, black hair and skin the color of honey. She was like some lovely creature of the forest, and as they are, very shy. She would not grind corn with the other maidens of the village, and she never seemed to see the young men when they were dancing. All day long she would sit in her room alone and grind corn; or, climb to the house top and watch the sky.

Of course the people did not know what had happened. In the roof of her room there was a little open skylight, and during a summer shower one of the Rain-Gods, sailing by on a purple cloud, heard her singing: — 
 

 The god looked down from the cloud and saw the maiden. He descended in the rain-drops, and spoke to her.

After that she waited by the skylight, and he came again and again. One evening he took her to his people in the clouds, and they were married. But as she was just a little Indian maiden, and not at all used to the ways of the gods, they thought it best that she live at her father's house in K'yâkime; and the god would come to her every time it rained, or when the dew fell at night, always on his ladder of water he would come to her. She was very happy, and did not care for the people of her village whose eyes could not see the god, her husband.

The spring-time came to the plains and the hillsides, the bright flowers covered the ground, and a little boy was born in the room with the skylight.

Now as his father was one of the Rain-Gods he was not like other children. Before he was many days old, he ran about and spoke to his mother. When one month had passed by he was like a child of six years of age, and he would climb to the house tops, and run about the village, and out into the fields hunting birds and small animals. And although he had only little stones with which to kill them, he never failed to bring something to his mother.

There were always many feathers for the prayer-sticks, and his old grandfather would place them in his corn-field, and take them up to the shrine of the War-Gods on To'yállanne. But it distressed the child to see that the feathers were always dull in color. "O, grandfather," said he, "Let us paint the feathers blue, green and red, and yellow, bright yellow like the star-flowers." But the old man shook his head, and told the boy that it would be wrong to change the plumage of the songsters of the gods.

Another month passed by, and the boy grew straight and strong like the young aspens in the mountains. He saw the bows and the arrows that the men carried. He saw too, that the arrows went more swiftly than the stones he threw. He could always kill small animals with his pebbles, but he found that he could not kill the large ones in that way.

One night when he was sitting on the house-top with his mother, he asked her to tell him where to find the wood that bows were made of; and where to gather the sticks for arrows.

The woman looked out across the plain and was silent. The boy begged her to tell him. "I will be a great hunter, little Mother, and your house will be supplied with meat, and you will have soft robes of deerskin, and my grandfather much good medicine."

Finally she said,  —  "My poor, little son, you can not find the wood for bows or the sticks for arrows. You are only a child, and must wait. There is a great hollow in the rocks where the morning sun shines on the pink cliffs of To'yállanne, and at the bottom of that hollow there is a cave. Around the shelter in the rocks are growing the trees out of which bows are made, and there also grow the bushes from which arrow shafts are cut. There are so many of these that there are enough for all the hunters of our people; but they can not get them, because there is a terrible Bear that lives in the cave, and he is so fierce that no one dares to go near there."

The boy listened to all that his mother had said, and that night he lay awake and thought of the Bear and the bow and the arrow shafts.

Early the next morning his mother took her water jar and her gourd dipper, and went down the path to the spring. The boy watched her from the house-top, and then quietly and swiftly ran to the river side, and crawled along the bank of the river until he reached the little valley that leads to the eastern side of To'yállanne. There he climbed up and up until he reached the rocks and the great hollow. In the sheltered place were growing the fine yellow wood for the bows, and all around were the straight sprouts for the arrow shafts.

The boy looked around. It was so still and so beautiful, surely there could be nothing to harm him there. His mother must have been mistaken about the Bear.

"I'll just climb up a little higher and cut a stick," he said. And he started to climb into the mouth of the cavern; but his father, the Rain-God, saw him, and threw a flash of lightning, and it closed the cave altogether.

The boy sat on a rock and blinked. The cloud sailed by and the cave opened again. He did not understand the warning, and so he got up and took hold of the rocks to pull himself to the higher level. Another flash of lightning struck the wall above his head. This time he rubbed his eyes as the light had almost blinded him, and he waited until the second cloud had floated away. Then, as he thought surely a storm was breaking, he made a jump and a rush, and fell right into the cave by the side of the Bear who was sleeping. The huge animal stood upon his hind legs and grabbed the boy, and began to squeeze him.

"O, don't squeeze me so hard! It hurts. Don't squeeze me so hard, and I will give you something very precious."

"What," said the Bear, "What is that you say?"

"Let me go!" cried the boy, "And I will give you something more precious than the Moon."

The Bear held him closer still. "What have you to give me that is more precious than the Moon?"

"Wait a minute! O, I am all out of breath." The boy tried to think of what he could give the Bear that was more precious than the Moon, for the only really precious thing he had was his mother.

"Did you climb way up here to bring me a present?" asked the Bear, as he loosened his hold ever so little.

"No. I climbed up here to get a piece of wood for a bow and sticks for arrows," said the boy. "But I have something at my home that is O, so beautiful!"

"Tell me what it is at once, or I will crush you," growled the Bear.

"It is my mother. She is more beautiful than the Moon."

"I will not let you go unless you will give her to me," roared the old Bear.

"I will," said the boy.

"Then I will give you a present," said the Bear. He freed the boy and then walked out among the yellow wood trees. Crack, crack, he broke down a beautiful young tree, and gnawed off the ends of it, and brought it to the boy. Then he gathered a lot of fine, straight sticks for arrows. He gave them also to the boy.

"Do you know how to make a bow, my son?" asked the old one.

"No, I don't very well," replied the boy.

"Well," said the Bear, "I have cut the ends of the yellow wood and it is about the right length. Now take it home, and shave down the inside until it is thin enough to bend quickly at both ends, and then lay it over the coals of fire so that it will get hard and dry. That is the way to make a good bow."

"All right," said the boy, and taking the sticks and the piece of yellow wood, started to climb down.

"Have you forgotten about my present? When shall I come for her?" asked the Bear.

"O, about sun-set tomorrow my mother will be waiting for you."

"I'll be there," said the Bear.

So the boy hurried home with his bundle of sticks and his bow stave, and when he saw his mother he called out, — "Just see what I have brought home. And the Bear himself is coming tomorrow evening!"

"O, foolish little boy!" cried his mother. "The Bear might have eaten you !"

"But I'm home again, mother !" And he shouted for joy and rolled in the sand.

All the next day he worked and made his bow. He stripped his arrow shafts, and smoothed and straightened them before the fire. He made the points of obsidian, which is very black and hard, and after he had bound them in the ends with sinew, and felt their sharpness, he was glad. Then he tied on the feathers, and just as the sun was setting, they were ready, and he put them on the house-top to dry.

No sooner had he done this than he heard a growling noise, and the Bear stood at the foot of the ladder.

"So you are here," the boy said. "I thought you would never come."

"Is my present ready?" asked the Bear.

"O, my mother is waiting for you in the house; but first come and see what a fine bow I have made." And as he said this, the boy picked up the beautiful bow of yellow wood.

The old Bear trudged up the ladder to the house-top. He took the long bow from the boy, and he tried it. "Tang-g-g!" sang out the cord.

"It is good," he said. "But let me see your arrows?"

The boy showed them to the Bear.

"What is that black stuff on the ends?" demanded the Bear.

"Obsidian," said the boy.

"That is nothing but black coals," said the Bear.

"They are good sharp arrow points," said the boy, pretending to be angry.

"You are quite wrong, little boy." And the Bear laughed at him in a most unpleasant manner. "Why, they would crumble up if they hit that water jar over there."

"All right then," said the boy; "Just you let me try one of those coals on you!"

The old Bear said that it would just blow into ashes, and all the time laughing at the boy in his great voice, he walked across the roof and stood in the corner. The boy took one of the arrows and fitted it to the bow. "Tang-g-g!" sang the bow, and the arrow went straight into the old Bear's heart.

"Wah!" howled the Bear, and he gave a great snort, and rolled over on the house-top and died.

"Ha!" shouted the boy. "Come quickly, mother, I have killed the Bear of To'yállanne."

The little mother ran to the house-top, and with her ran her father, the old Priest of the Bow. When they saw the great Bear lying there before them, and the child waving his bow in the air, they gave thanks to the Gods of the Universe.

"We must plant prayer-sticks," said the old grandfather.

"The little one must plant them in the field," said the mother.

So the boy, the son of the Rain-Maker, took the prayer-sticks, and went to the summer fields all covered with flowers. But no sooner had he entered the field, than flutter, flutter, little wings began to fly out from the plume-offerings and they began to grow smaller and smaller until they disappeared. These wings that flew out were the wings of the Sacred Birds of Summerland, and because of the wish of the boy, they were blue, green and red, and yellow too, yellow like the star-flowers in the field.

 
THE SUMMER BIRDS OF K'YÁKIME.

The Sacred Birds of Summerland were blue, green, red and yellow too, yellow like the corn flowers in the field.