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.
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