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“‘For your people there may be a way,’ said Howkawanda, ‘but for mine–they are all dead who have looked for it. Nevertheless, Younger Brother, if we be not dead men ourselves when this Hunger is past, you and I will go on this Dead Man’s Journey. Just now we have other business.’

“It is the law of the Hunger that the strongest must be fed first, so that there shall always be one strong enough to hunt for the others. But Howkawanda gave the greater part of his portion to his maiden.

“So it happened that sickness laid hold on Howkawanda between two days. In the morning he called to Younger Brother. ‘Lie outside,’ he said, ‘lest the sickness take you also, but come to me every day with your kill, and let no man prevent you.’

“So Younger Brother, who was able to live on juniper berries, hunted alone for the camp of Hidden-under-the-Mountain, and Howkawanda held back Death with one hand and gripped the heart of the First Father of all the Dogs with the other. For he was afraid that if he died, Younger Brother would turn wolf again, and the tribe would perish. Every day he would divide what Younger Brother brought in, and after the villagers were gone he would inquire anxiously and say, ‘Do you smell the Rain, Friend and Brother?’

“But at last he was too weak for asking, and then quite suddenly his voice was changed and he said, ‘I smell the Rain, Little Brother!’ For in those days men could smell weather quite as well as the other animals. But the dust of his own running was in Younger Brother’s nose, and he thought that his master’s mind wandered. The sick man counted on his fingers. ‘In three days,’ he said, ‘if the Rains come, the back of the Hunger is broken. Therefore I will not die for three days. Go, hunt, Friend and Brother.’

“The sickness must have sharpened Howkawanda’s senses, for the next day the coyote brought him word that the water had come back in the gully where they threw the buck, which was a sign that rain was falling somewhere on the high ridges. And the next day he brought word, ‘The tent of the sky is building.’ This was the tentlike cloud that would stretch from peak to peak of the Tamal-Pyweack at the beginning of the Rainy Season.

“Howkawanda rose up in his bed and called the people. ‘Go, hunt! go, hunt!’ he said; ‘the deer have come back to Talking Water.’ Then he lay still and heard them, as many as were able, going out joyfully. ‘Stay you here, Friend and Brother,’ he said, ‘for now I can sleep a little.’

“So the First Father of all the Dogs lay at his master’s feet and whined a little for sympathy while the people hunted for themselves, and the myriad-footed Rain danced on the dry thatch of the hut and the baked mesa. Later the creek rose in its withered banks and began to talk to itself in a new voice, the voice of Raining-on-the-Mountain.

“‘Now I shall sleep well, ‘said the sick man. So he fell into deeper and deeper pits of slumber while the rain came down in torrents, the grass sprouted, and far away Younger Brother could hear the snapping of the brush as the Horned People came down the mountain.

“It was about the first streak of the next morning that the people waked in their huts to hear a long, throaty howl from Younger Brother. Howkawanda lay cold, and there was no breath in him. They thought the coyote howled for grief, but it was really because, though his master lay like one dead, there was no smell of death about him, and the First Father was frightened. The more he howled, however, the more certain the villagers were that Howkawanda was dead, and they made haste to dispose of the body. Now that the back of the Hunger was broken, they wished to go back to Hidden-under-the-Mountain.