"Mota, it is a long way I have been, and I am sorely tired. Let me rest
and have something to eat, and tonight I will tell you where I have been
and what I have seen. How is the grandmother?"

"She is dying, Itatli. She has grown worse every day, and now cannot sit
up, and she lies all day so still - all but her eyes. She tries to
speak, and I am sure she has something on her mind that she wants to
tell us. She will not live long."

Slowly they climbed the hill, with an occasional sentence now and then.
Arrived at the hut, the Indian entered, leaned his bow against the wall,
near the baskets, and stood regarding the inanimate figure, a sombre
expression stealing over his face as he gazed. The woman's eyes were
closed, and she seemed to be asleep, nothing but her short, quick
breathing showing she was still alive. For some minutes the man stood
thus, then turned and strode out of the hut, picking up his bow as he
passed it, and carrying it with him. Without a word to his wife, who had
begun to cook a piece of the deer meat, and was busily at work over the
out-door fire, he occupied himself with his bow and arrows, testing the
strength of the cord, made of the intestines of a wild-cat, and
examining closely the arrow-heads, tipped with poison, taken from the
rattlesnake; but all in an intermittent way, for every few moments he
raised his head and gazed long and steadily over the plain to the far
distant hills on the southern horizon.

At last his wife called to him that the meal was ready. He went over to
the fire and began to eat, while the woman took some of the broth, which
she had made out of the meat, put it into a small earthen pot, and
carried it to her grandmother, in the hope that she might be able to
force a little of it down her throat. It was of no use: the dying woman