"They moved off, and the wind walking on the pine needles covered what
they said, but I remembered what I had heard because they smelled
of mischief.

"Two nights later I remembered it again when the Delight-Makers came out
of the dark in three bands and split the people's sides with laughter.
They were disguised in black-and-white paint and daubings of mud and
feathers, but there was a Dine among them. By the smell I knew him. He
was a tall man who tumbled well and kept close to Kokomo. But a Dine is
an enemy. Tse-tse-yote had told me. Therefore I kept close at his heels
as they worked around toward the house of Pitahaya, and my neck
bristled. I could see that the Dine had noticed me. He grew a little
frightened, I think, and whipped at me with the whip of feathers which
the Koshare carried to tickle the tribesmen. I laid back my ears--I am
Kabeyde, and it is not for the Dine to flick whips at me. All at once
there rose a shouting for Tse-tse, who came running and beat me over the
head with his bow-case.

"'They will think I set you on to threaten the Koshare because they
mocked me,' he said. 'Have you not done me mischief enough already?'

"That was when we were back in the cave, where he penned me till
morning. There was no way I could tell him that there was a Dine among
the Koshare."

"But I thought--" began Oliver, he looked over to where Arrumpa stood
drawing young boughs of maple through his mouth like a boy stripping
currants. "Couldn't you just have told him?"