master. Slim as an arrow, he would come up from his morning dip in the
Rito, glittering like the dark stone of which knives are made, and his
hair in the sun gave back the light like a raven. And there was no man's
way of walking or standing, nor any cry of bird or beast, that he could
not slip into as easily as a snake slips into a shadow. He would never
mock when he was asked, but let him alone, and some evening, when the
people smoked and rested, he would come stepping across the court in the
likeness of some young man whose maiden had just smiled on him. Or if
some hunter prided himself too openly on a buck he had killed, the first
thing he knew there would be Tse-tse-yote walking like an ancient
spavined wether prodded by a blunt arrow, until the whole court roared
with laughter.

"Still, Kokomo should have known better than to try to make him one of
the Koshare, for though laughter followed my master as ripples follow a
skipping stone, he laughed little himself.

"Who were the Koshare? They were the Delight-Makers; one of their secret
societies. They daubed themselves with mud and white paint to make
laughter by jokes and tumbling. They had their kiva between us and the
Gourd People, but Tse-tse-yote, who had set his heart on being elected
to the Warrior Band, the Uakanyi, made no secret of thinking small of
the Koshare.

"There was no war at that time, but the Uakanyi went down with the
Salt-Gatherers to Crawling Water, once in every year between the
corn-planting and the first hoeing, and as escort on the trading trips.
They would go south till they could see the blue wooded slope below the
white-veiled mountain, and would make smoke for a trade signal, three
smokes close together and one farther off, till the Men of the South