Áhaiyúta and Mátsailéma, with their grandmother, lived where now stands the ancient Middle Place of Sacrifice on Thunder Mountain.
One day they went out hunting prairie-dogs, and while they were running about from one prairie-dog village to another, it began to rain, which made the trail slippery and the ground muddy, so that the boys became a little wrathful. Then they sat down and cursed the rain for a brief space. Off in the south it thundered until the earth trembled, and the lightning-shafts flew about the red-bordered clouds until the two brothers were nearly blinded with the beholding of it. Presently the younger brother smoothed his brow, and jumped up with an exclamation somewhat profane, and cried out: “Elder brother, let us go to the Land of Everlasting Summer and steal from the gods in council their thunder and lightning. I think it would be fine fun to do that sort of thing we have just been looking at and listening to.”
The elder brother was somewhat more cautious; still, on the whole, he liked the idea. So he said: “Let us take our prairie-dogs home to the grandmother, that she shall have something to eat meanwhile, and we will think about going tomorrow morning.”
The next morning, bright and early, they started out. In vain the old grandmother called rather crossly after them: “Where are you going now?” She could get no satisfaction, for she knew they lied when they called back: “Oh, we are only going to hunt more prairie-dogs.” It is true that they skulked round in the plains about Thunder Mountain a little while, as if looking for prairie-dogs. Then, picking up their wondrously swift heels, they sped away toward that beautiful country of the corals, the Land of Everlasting Summer.
At last,--it may be in the mountains of that country, which are said to glow like shells of the sea or the clouds of the sunset,--they came to the House of the Beloved Gods themselves. And that red house was a wondrous terrace, rising wall after wall, and step after step, like a high mountain, grand and stately; and the walls were so smooth and high that the skill and power of the little War-gods availed them nothing; they could not get in.
“What shall we do?” asked the younger brother.