The people of the settlement commended Earth-tongue and promised to engage for him; and in the morning they and all his kin and the kin of those whom the shaman had brought to their death, gathered in the center of a large playing field. Each man carried a willow as thick as his forearm and reaching to his neck; and in his left hand, a shorter parrying stick. The challengers appeared, somewhat fewer in number and with tear-marked faces, but enraging their opponents by crying the names of their dead parents and grandparents. Then the two bodies, spreading into irregular lines, rushed at each other. Each man swung at an antagonist’s head, now with his staff held in one hand, now in both. Blows beat down on heads through the guard, rained on shoulders, bruised knuckles, and the willows clashed amid the shouts. Now and then a staff broke and a contestant ran back to seize a new one. The fighters sweated, panted, rubbed blood out of their eyes and staggered forward and back as the lines swayed in the clamor. Once or twice a maddened fighter, running in under his opponent’s strokes, seized his hair to belabor him with his parry-club; whereupon shouts of “Bad, bad! no! no! release!” arose and a multitude of rescuers’ blows drove him back. The shaman’s side were getting the worst of it, but rallied again and again without being driven wholly to their end of the field. Strokes became fewer and feebler. Weary arms could no longer rise. Fighter after fighter leaned on his stick, or sat on the ground in the rear. Each side taunted the other to come on again; and at last they drew apart, every man panting, bruised, and weary, but satisfied at the damage he had inflicted. No heads had been broken and no one died, though some were sick for a few days from maggots that had bred in the scalp under their clotted hair; and then talk died down and the enmity gradually subsided. Earth-tongue won the praise of all the Mohave who were not directly involved.
Once, runners came from the Yuma to invite to an attack on the Cocopa at the mouth of the river. A hundred and twenty Mohave went down. The kohota or play-chief of the northern Mohave asked for captives, although he already had several; and Earth-tongue was one of the men whom he requested to carry food and water for the prisoner’s return journey, and to guard against their escape.