him. The man took her by the shoulder, laughing still, and spun her up
standing. Half a bowshot away I heard Tse-tse-yote. 'Down! Down!' he
shouted. The girl dropped like a quail. The Dine, whirling on his heel,
met the arrow with his throat, and pitched choking. I came as fast as I
could between the boulders--I am not built for running--Tse-tse had
unbound the girl's hands and she leaned against him.

"Breathing myself before drinking, I caught a new scent up the Gap where
the wind came from, but before I had placed it there came a little
scrape on the rocks under the roof of Lasting Water, small, like the
rasp of a snake coiling. I had forgot there were three Dine at Ty-uonyi;
the third had been under the rock drinking. He came crawling now with
his knife in his teeth toward Tse-tse. Me he had not seen until he came
round the singing rock, face to face with me...

"When it was over," said Moke-icha, "I climbed up the black roof of
Lasting Water to lick a knife cut in my shoulder. Tse-tse talked to the
girl, of all things, about the love-gift she had put in the cave for me.
'Moke-icha had eaten it before I found her,' he insisted, which was
unnecessary. I lay looking at the Dine I had killed and licking my wound
till I heard, around the bend of the Gap, the travel song of the Queres.

"It was the Salt Pack coming back, every man with his load on his
shoulders. They put their hands in their mouths when they saw Tse-tse.
There was talk; Willow-in-the-Wind told them something. Tse-tse turned
the man he had shot face upward. There was black-and-white paint on his
body; the stripes of the Koshare do not come off easily. I saw Tse-tse
look from the man to Kokomo and the face of the Koshare turned grayish.
I had lived with man, and man-thoughts came to me. I had tasted blood of
my master's enemies; also Kokomo was afraid, and that is an offense to