How should they have had?--I am telling a tale of the long ago; much water has run under the bridges since, both those of Avignon and those of Padua, and every gallon of it brought down something from the southern Alps, hence, as nothing rolls uphill, century by century the passes have been growing lower than they were when our two youngsters essayed their adventure.
It was evening, the men of the Sun-Disc Clan had returned from their hunting and fishing. The women and children were squatted about the fires. A clear, peculiar outcry broke from the girl in the tree-top, the watch-woman; just such a cry comes from the sentinel bird of a flock of feeding wild-fowl. The whole community was upon its feet in a moment, peering under arched hands.
Afar off against the yellow side of a dry gully of the foot-hills which arose between the last of the chestnut forest and the first of the spruce were to be descried a couple of moving specks.
They, whoever they might be, were miles away: made visible for a moment by the chance of their crossing a bare rock-face which had caught the last of the sunlight, thrown up distinctly against this ruddy yellow background and defined by the magical clearness of an open sunset following a day of rain.
The braves handled their assegais awaiting the word of the old chief, a ring-man who had taken his first scalp forty years before and wore the necklace of five bears'-claws which testified to participation in a later and yet sterner fight. He gave no order and kept his eyes upon the moving specks.
These had dipped into a hollow. "They have seen our smokes," said he. "If they are friends they will come right on, if they are unfriends they will not show again and the young men must deal with them to-night."
"Who but unfriends would come from that side?" asked a very tall young brave. There was a touch of covert insolence in the tone although the question was natural enough.
The speaker was a person of some consideration, for when he spoke others held their peace and listened (watching still, be sure).--He was one Honk-Ah, a great-nephew of the old chief, a man of notable activity and more ambition; one who aspired to the deputy-chieftainship; an aspiration which had been kept in check for two years past by the presence of his cousin Pŭl-Yūn, a brave equally active and more popular, less subject to fits of disfiguring passion; a man marked out for leadership as well by his birth--being grandson to the chief-regnant--as by his qualities.