The sky hung grey, with wisps of cloud. It vaulted a valley, and was propped by hills, long as billows of the open main. In part the hills stood wooded, in part they wore a robe of grass and stunted bush. The valley had a grassy floor, like a miniature plain. It spread jade-green beneath that sky. Far off soared, darkly purple, one mountain peak.

The huts, round in shape and fairly spacious, were built of upright stakes with an interweaving of wattled reeds. Close at hand huddled sheds and enclosures for flock and herd, and all stood together by the strand of a silver stream. Flock and herd, watched by herdsmen, wandered through the valley or drank at the stream. Near the huts boys were fishing, standing mid-leg in the running water. Seated among pebble and boulder a row of old men watched and with thin voices mocked or encouraged.

Evening drew on and the herdsmen brought the sheep and cattle to the folds. A woman came out of the largest hut, a strong woman with dark-red hair. Hand over eyes, her gaze swept the northern and western horizon. Bare hill met grey sky. She spoke to the herdsmen. They hearkened to her and answered, leaning on their staves. Said one, “We heard nothing and saw nothing at the other end where we were.” Another spoke in a surly voice, “If I were a war-man again and out of this valley, I would not come back!” A third said, “You might see, O Marzumat, from the top of the hill—” The woman nodded and turned away. She called to a boy and a girl at play near the folds, and they ran to her and walked with her.

Near the huts rose a hill, bare to the top, hard in this light as a mountain of jade. The woman and her children climbed it. At the top a wind blew, a swirling, melancholy wind. She looked again from this height, to the north and west. Nothing broke the earth-line, nothing came. The children, too, stared from point to point. The wind blew their hair into their eyes, whipped their bare limbs. They jumped up and down for warmth. “The dark is coming,” said the woman. “Not Saran and the others!”

Said the boy: “Let us go have supper! Bhuto is going to sing to us of how Bin-Bin killed the giantess!”

They went down the hillside. The boy and girl capered and danced upon the path. “Saran will bring me a bow and arrows and a dance-necklace!” cried the first; and “Saran will bring me a dance-necklace and an earring!” answered the second. They turned upon the red-haired woman. “What else will he bring, Mother?”

“Sheep and cattle and men to keep them, spears and shields and pieces of copper, grain and skins, and ornaments to wear.”

The boy danced and capered. “I am going to grow big! I am going to be war-head like Saran my father! I am going to fight other-people! I am going to bring home every kind of thing!”

They came to the level of huts, folds, and whispering stream. Earth and air that had been grey and green were now grey and purple. Fires burned in the larger huts, and the smoke, puffing out of the hole in the thatch, drifted and eddied. A smell of seething flesh wrapped the place. In pots of baked clay women were cooking the meat of sheep and goats.

Young, and in prime, and old, there were many women. Within wall and without wall showed the signs of their industries. They were weavers and made from the hair of the flocks a texture that to an extent took the place of the immemorial garments of beast-skins or of woven grass. They were potters, and they skilfully constructed baskets, great and small. Tanners, their tannery told where it was situated, a little down the stream. Living now upon creatures which they had corralled and mastered, the group, women and men, were mastered by the mastered and become wanderers and pasture-seekers. When this valley showed eaten up and small for the herds, another would be sought. Therefore there was little planting about the reed huts. But what farming and gardening was practised belonged, of old times, to women, and theirs were the stone mills for the bruising and grinding of grain. The indoor gear was counted theirs, and the rule of the house. Women and men, the group reckoned descent and took name from the side of the mother.

The woman who had climbed the hill was a chief woman. There were old women, wrinkled and wise, as there were old men, who sat by the fire or in the sun and were listened to and in much obeyed. But this woman, through native energy and also because she was paired with the strongest man, had achieved authority before she was old. The valley called her Marzumat.

Marzumat had few idle bones in her body. When now she went indoors, into the largest of the huts, she came to the hearth, she helped with the pots of meat. One great pot, steaming like a fire-mountain, must be lifted from the place of mightiest heat. With a rude handle, unwieldy and heated, it presented a weight for strong arms. Marzumat lifted it, swung it clear from the flame, and set it upon the unreddened hearth. With two or three of her fellows she took meal, mixed it with milk and water, made cakes, and, kneeling, baked them upon slabs of stone sunk in coals. Those around her talked; the place was filled with voices. Marzumat could speak on occasion, but to-night she was silent, her mind following Saran and the war-men.

The formless dark came down. Women lighted the torches of resinous wood, and women brought and filled from the huger pots bowls of fire-dried clay and trough-like trenchers of wood, and a woman, standing in the doorway, blew the summoning ram’s horn. All—women, old men and children and the herdsmen—ate together, in this greatest hut where the mess had been cooked, or just without, seated on the ground, in the light of the torches. Noticeably, there lacked young men and men in their prime. Among the herdsmen sat young men and middle-aged men. But certain of these were simple of look or in some way weak or maimed, and others had copper rings about their necks. That meant that the ring-wearers did not belong by nature to the group, but had been seized from some other group. No longer were they hunters or war-men. They were tamed to keeping the flocks and herds of the captors, companions to the weaker and duller of the captors’ own group. The intractable were killed, as were the too weak or dull. Class and caste were in the world.

The fire and the torches threw a smoky and uneven light. The sky hung black and low, a roof of cloud. The stream murmured over pebbles. It was the lambing season, and from the folds rose a continuous low noise, from the ewes and their young. In the circle of fire and torchlight shadows were thrown against the walls. The shadows rose and fell; now they were dwarfs and now they were giants and now they were something in between. The shadows were chiefly those of women. Women forms passed from darkness into light, from light into darkness, from darkness again into light. Marzumat was seated now and the fire-shine struck her brow and breast and knee. Behind her, on the wall, spread and towered her shadow.

Supper eaten, occurred a lingering, for the night was cold and the fire was warm. The smaller children went away, to creep under sheep-skins and fall asleep; the babes were hushed already, except a sick one that wailed in a hut a stone-cast away. A fire burned in the hut, and a woman passed to and fro before it, the babe in her arms. Certain herdsmen went to the folds and pens, others sat still about the fire in the open air. The older children, the old men, the many women remained in the zone of warmth and light. Talk was chiefly of the war-band that had gone forth against other-people dwelling by the purple mountain. Valley people and mountain people each had eyes for an intermediate rolling and verdant, desirable pasturage. Mountain war-men had struck a valley herd that had put hoof into this region, taking the beasts and killing the herdsmen. Now there was to be retaliation, and all the strong men had gone forth to retaliate and something beyond. Not in the memory of the valley people had there been such a Punitive Expedition!

Marzumat’s children, the girl and the boy, hung around a man with pale-blue eyes and a hawk nose and beard and hair as white as the fleece of a lamb. “Bhuto, Bhuto! Sing us about how we used to do!”

Bhuto sang out of the history of the group. In part he knew and in part he made up. He fixed his eyes upon the night beyond the fire, he marked time with a large foot and a veinous hand. He had a sonorous voice, a capacious memory, and a seeing eye. To-night the strain, the wishing-to-know felt throughout the cluster, was apprehended by him more clearly than by most. So his voice deepened, his words rang, the acts he narrated seemed neither far off nor obscure. Presently the whole cluster was listening. Bhuto chanted of long-since raids and war-bands.

The boy and girl sat beside his knees. Bhuto came to a traditional pause. Part one of the ballad was done.

The girl spoke. “Bhuto, why are there no war-women? Why do not women go with war-bands and fight other-people?”

“Once they did,” answered Bhuto. “That was long ago.”

“Why did they stop?”

“It was seen that peoples died—not here a man and here a woman—but peoples.”

“How did they die?”

“They were not born. So it was seen that women must not be killed and killed. So the women and men held a great council, and after that there were war-men, but not war-women.”

“But Bin-Bin killed the giantess—”

“Yes. Every people had a giantess who would not stay at home. The one Bin-Bin killed was a war-head. She was tall as a tree and she could run like a deer and see at night like an owl, and when she shouted the wood shook! But Bin-Bin killed her. Now women all stay with the houses and the flocks and herds. If other-people come here and make fight, they will fight. But they do not make war-bands. Men do that. Men have bows and arrows and shields and spears.”

The girl fell silent, sitting with her chin upon her knees. Bhuto began to chant the second half of the ballad.

A great distance away, as these people counted distance, behind the curtain of hills, at the foot of the mountain peak, the cloud-roofed day and evening had gone after another fashion. It had gone with struggle, fury, jubilation, terror, death, and subjection.

The war-band from the valley numbered a hundred men. The group upon which they fell in the hour before dawn fought back, men and women. But it was taken by surprise and bewildered, and many could not reach their weapons, and many were pierced with spears almost before they rose from sleep. The hundred wrought havoc, slew and bound. When the east showed purple, resistance lay dead, or glared, with tied hands, from a space into which, naked, it had been driven like a beast. The old men, the old women, the young children, were put to death. Many strong men and women lay slain. Resistance, raging, biting at its bonds, came to be the resistance of not more than the hundred could handle as captives. They set the huts afire, but not before there was gathered from them spoil and booty. This group had possessed flocks and herds. Flocks and herds were taken for riches for the group in the valley. The valley men had never before had so complete a victory. This was different from mere raids against herds or herdsmen, or chance contests upon plain or hill, away from the houses, away from the heaped goods!

The attackers sat down and ate and drank and rested from labour in the light of the burning huts, under the shadow of the purple mountain. They rejoiced when they looked at the heap of spoil, and at the sheep and the cattle and the human dead and the captives.

The leader of the hundred was a strong man, tall and ruddy, with the seeming of one who would march in front. In other lives, before war between human beings had well developed, he would have been a leader of the chase, a mighty hunter of the four-footed, a chief in expeditions, explorations. Now he was war-head.

He and all the other men from the valley rested through a smoky, a fire-filled night. When the day came they prepared their leave-taking. Yet another distance away dwelled another group, that, seeing a glow in the night, might send their war-men in strength. War was an endless chain, though these minds were not advanced enough to find that out.

Back among the huts in the valley the night passed, the day following passed, another night passed. The cloud-roof sank to the horizon, the sky above sprang high and clear. Dawn arose with purple figures in the east that looked like girdles and necklaces of tinted shells and pebbles. Dawn in the north and west showed a cool pallor, a blank wall behind the long hills.

The women came singly or in clusters from the huts, the herdsmen from where they had slept apart in a structure built against the sheep-fold, the older children with the women. All looked to the north and west, as they had done many times since the hundred went out. Now they were rewarded—now they saw the war-men coming back!

They saw them upon the top of a bare hill, drawn against the pale wall, and following them captives, and sheep and goats and cattle and asses, and these last heaped and burdened with the lighter spoil. The people of the huts shouted, leaped in the air, clapped their hands together.

“Marzumat! They are coming!”

“Bina! They are coming!”

“Ito! They are coming!”

The war-men had with them horns, a rude drum and cymbals. Faint clangour and blaring fell from the hill-top to the huts by the stream. The frieze showed black against the pale wall, then the east brightened and gave it colour. The line bent, came down over the shoulder of the hill. The horns blew, the cymbals clanged, the drum beat louder and louder. In the huts were yet a drum, cymbals fashioned of copper, ox-horns. The women snatched these—all who could run and hasten poured from the huts by the stream, hurried with cries and music of welcome over the valley floor. They went with a dancing step, and Marzumat at the head lifted the cymbals and clanged them together. The two bands met by the stream, where the mist was slowly lifting.

The war-head’s name was Saran. He and Marzumat met first. “Hail, Saran! Hail, Saran!” she cried with laughter and jubilee. “Hail, Marzumat!” he answered, and shook his copper-pointed spear and struck it against his shield of plaited osier bound with leopard-skin.

All met with acclaim, shouting out triumph and welcome. The older children took part. The native-born herdsmen joined in. Those herdsmen who were born on the farther side of a mountain or a river made slighter welcome. But of these some had been taken young and hardly remembered their own people, and some had been broken in, or, indifferent, took luck as they found it. Besides, the group against which the war-men had gone was not their group, and that being so, was outside their range of sympathies. So the herdsmen, too, shouted.

Of the war-men who had gone forth, seven or eight made no returning. For these the valley, when it had caught breath, burst into ceremonial mourning. Out of the mass sound emerged a sharper crying, a wailing of those most fond of the slain men, mourning that persisted when the other ceased. The other ceased because, death to the contrary, here was so much victory and spoil! Jubilation remounted. In the background rose the lowing and bleating of the captured herds. There was a great, swarming noise, and movement to and fro.

The first welcome gone by, there came into fuller notice the fruits of the raid, the greatest in the memory of the group. Those who had stayed by the huts saw the new flocks and herds, and that possessions would be increased. There would be need of a larger valley, of a plain! Hearts swelled with self-acclaim. The confused bleating and lowing was sweet as flutes and pipes in their ears.

There was pushed forward one part of the human spoil. The war-men exhibited the other-men whom they had taken. New herds would have new herdsmen. Trees that must be hacked down, drudging work that must be done, would not take war-men’s valuable time! Moreover, there was now experienced, and would be further experienced, a dark pleasure in authority, in power exercised over another. So long had human beings had power over beasts that exhilaration was passing from that situation. Authority there had lost its first lusciousness. Once it had had that taste. But with the taking of beings formed like themselves zest had come back to the palate.

The valley group was accustomed to such captives. It was among accepted things that bands of men, roving afar, meeting other bands of men, should capture, when they did not kill, and keep the captured for use. That was old story, old song. The women, the old men, and the striplings made loud admiration over these riches also, and the evidenced prowess of valley men. The swarm worked again and there came into the foreground the before-time obscured, other row of captives.

Silence fell among the valley people, astonishment upon those who had stayed, upon those who had gone, embarrassment. Marzumat was the first to speak. “Women—”

Saran answered with a wave of his arm. “Women we took and brought to you women. We take men to work for us and save us trouble. Now you shall have women to work for you and do as you tell them. Why not?” He spread his arms. “We took them for you, O women,—a gift!”

The throng worked. Insensibly, the women of the group drew together, leaving each woman the side of some man. They became compact, unitary, the woman with the dark-red hair in front. Presently the women of the valley were massed here, the men there. Between stood or lay, fallen upon the ground, the captive women. They were twelve in number.

Marzumat spoke. “Never, O Saran,—never, men of the valley, never, O women, was there heard of such a thing! You have committed evil! Mao-Tan will say to In-Tan, ‘Let us smite them!’”

Her voice rose loudly, her arms were spread to the skies. Behind her the serried women echoed assent. The war-men moved a little, to and fro. “Talk for us, O Saran!”

Marzumat’s voice went on. “Men may take other men. If women, fighting side by side with war-men are killed, they are killed. Mao-Tan says, ‘It cannot be helped.’ But men may not take women and bind them and say to them, ‘Come!’ or ‘Go!’ Mao-Tan!—Mao-Tan!”

Saran faced Marzumat. He threw out his hands. “We took trouble, O Marzumat! We set up a stone and burned food upon it, and poured drink for Mao-Tan. We danced and sang before her. Then we did the same for In-Tan. In-Tan will keep Mao-Tan from being angry. Otherwise she might be angry for a while! But we saw In-Tan sitting like an eagle upon a tree and heard him talking like the wind. He said, O Marzumat, that valley people were his people, and that Mao-Tan was not angry!”

The war-men made a deep, corroborating sound. They had seen the eagle and heard the whistling and searching noise, and Saran’s imagination leading, they had divined the words. A black-bearded man, next to Saran in moral weight, gave articulate testimony. “O women of the valley! In-Tan said that Mao-Tan and he held in hatred other-people, and cared not what befell them, whether they were women or whether they were men!”

Saran continued. “We take men to work for us; why should you not have women to work for you and do as you tell them? They are not our men. They are not our women. Other-group-men, other-group-women! Old Bhuto says that, long-time-ago, it was a new thing to make other-men work for us and be our herdsmen. At first, Bhuto says, we had men who did not like that. But soon they felt like the rest of us.—We thought, O Marzumat, that we would please you! O women of the valley! they can carry water for you and grind the corn. It is pleasant to rest while another works! Many things are right when they are other-people. They will call you ‘mistress’ and do as you tell them—”

The body of the valley women seemed slightly to sway. Two or three voices were lifted. “Let us take them! Let us keep them! There grows so much work to do!” The women and the war-men seemed to slant toward each other.

The black-bearded man spoke again in a loud and cheerful voice. “They are riches, O women! It is pleasant to be saved weariness. It is sweeter than honey and like the wearing of ornaments to sit and see other-people do what we bid! Now men have the most ornaments and rest longer under the trees!”

A woman burst into laughter. “Mao-Tan knows that that is so!”

But Marzumat spoke again. “Men take other-men. But women have not taken other-women. Now, to-day, shall men lay hands upon women and cry, ‘Our prize and our riches’?”

“If we took them, O Marzumat, O women, did we not take them for you? It is your bidding that they will do! They are your prize and your riches! Take them now, and is it not as if you had taken them yonder”—he gestured with his spear toward the purple mountain—“taken them yonder yourselves, and brought them to the valley?”

“What you say is true, O Saran!”

The women behind her echoed, “It is true.” If, then, it was true, and if Mao-Tan was not jealous for women?... Ornaments were desirable, and ease from work was desirable—riches were desirable—and power—power more than anything was desirable!... The soul of Marzumat inclined toward service from those other-women.

“They are a gift!” said Saran. “If Mao-Tan is not angry, why should Marzumat be so?”

Why indeed? Marzumat lifted her hands. “I do not know.—Where are the children of these women?”

“Not all had children.—These people are other-group people. In-Tan does not care for them—Mao-Tan does not care for them! The women are yours. We only took them for you.”

The day was bright and sunny, the valley a cheerful green. The men were back from danger with victory. The valley had new wealth; every one wanted to be rejoicing, to be counting the goods.... The twelve other-group women, young women and women in their prime, stood or crouched, sullen and vengeful in their bonds. Only one spoke. “May our gods slay your gods! May our gods kill and devour your children! Vile, vile,—you are vile and your gods are vile!”

Anger broke against her, anger of women and of men. She had cried out loudly. Moving as she did out of the cluster of her fellows, she had come to face Marzumat and the children of Marzumat. Her arms being bound she could not gesture with hand or finger. But she jerked her head, and her eyes burned toward those she fronted. “Mo-Tal hear me!” she cried. “Slay their gods and them! Mo-Tal! Mo-Tal! Slay their children!”

Marzumat grew all red. Her brows drew together, a vein in her forehead swelled, her nostrils widened, her teeth were uncovered, and her dark-red hair appeared to bristle. She stood for a moment tense and still, then, moving forward, she struck the mountain woman a blow that brought her to the earth. “Mao-Tan turn your talk upon yourself!”

The valley women behind her laughed with anger, and also now with willingness to triumph. “Their gods are not strong like our gods! They can do naught!—Let us keep them and make them work!”

“Agreed!” said Marzumat, the red yet in her face and the vein showing in her forehead.

The lambing season, the spring season, the season of fresh green and of birds that sang from every flowering bush passed into a summer hot and dry. The stream shrank to a silver thread, the flocks found but parched herbage. Sometimes clouds came up, but they never overspread the blue vault. They rolled away, and the earth again lay bare beneath the sun. The sun bleached the huts, turned brown the growth upon the hillsides, and the standing trees. The herdsmen went afar with the bands of the four-footed. The bondwomen carried water over the wide, pebbled stretch from which the stream had gone, or kneeling before hollowed stones, beat and ground the corn into meal. The weather made a fever in the blood. It was weather in which effect followed like a hound at the heels of cause.

A woman stood in the doorway of one of the huts. She looked at the grinding women, but looked somewhat absently. It was not a novelty now—other-group women grinding the valley corn! Presently, however, she remarked an absence. “Where is Gilhumat?”

A woman looked up from the grinding, shaking elf-locks from her eyes. “Endar, the black-bearded, shot an arrow at a great bird. The bird fell over the hill-top. Endar bade Gilhumat stop her grinding and go find the bird.”

The woman in the doorway turned her head over her shoulder. “Marzumat, come hither!”

Marzumat came out of the dusk. “Endar,” said the first woman, “shot a bird and it fell over the hill-top. Endar bade Gilhumat stop her grinding and go find the bird!”

“Where is Endar?”

“Lying under the tree yonder.—There is Gilhumat now!”

They watched Gilhumat coming down the hillside. She bore upon her shoulders a large bird, its plumage showing copper hues in the sun. Marzumat looked at her with her brows knitted, her lips parted. Gilhumat approached the level ground, came upon it, and to the tree under which Endar had stretched his length. She lowered the bird from her shoulder and it lay motionless beside the war-man. Gilhumat returned to her grinding.

The woman with the dark-red hair breathed quickly. Leaving the doorway she moved through the beating sun to the tree where lay Endar. “Endar!”

Endar sat up. “What is it, O Marzumat?”

“When did it begin with valley people that a man, killing meat, can send a woman to bring in that bird or beast? I ask you when, Blackbeard?”

Blackbeard scratched his head. “I was asleep, O Marzumat!—It was not a freewoman, but a bondwoman.”

“Bondwomen are ours, not yours!—O Mao-Tan! a woman to be bidden by a man to do his work and save him trouble! The sky will fall! If it falls or not, O Endar, do that again and valley women will deal with you!”

Saran appeared beside them. “She is angry,” explained Endar, “because I bade one of those mountain women do a small thing! War-men may bring the meat, but they must not put hand in the pot!”

The outer corners of his eyes moved up, his white teeth flashed, he laughed and stretched his arms. The huge muscles showed.

Marzumat’s eyes narrowed. “My heart will not be heavy,” she said, “when Mao-Tan gives Endar to the beasts to eat!”

Endar’s laughter stopped. He put up his arm and with the fingers of the other hand made a sign in the air. “Do not wish evil upon me! In-Tan hear me say it! I will bring the next bird myself!”

The tree under which he lay edged a grove that stretched toward the stream. Marzumat went away into this and Saran moved with her.

“What harm,” said the latter, “if Gilhumat brought the bird that Endar shot? Endar is next to me in the valley.”

His tone was sullen. Marzumat stood still. They were in the heart of the grove, out of earshot unless they raised their voices loudly. The people of the valley had hardly as yet developed restraint in quarrel. But something in this man and woman kept them from shouting each at the other, made them prefer the space of trees to the trodden earth by the huts.

“Ah—ah!” said Marzumat. “You have not set Gilhumat, that is bondwoman to women, to do your work.—But you have followed Maihoma when she was sent at twilight to draw water!”

Saran’s eyes, too, narrowed. “Is a great war-man not to speak to spoil that he brings?”

“‘Spoil’! O Mao—Tan! I wish that you had never brought that ‘spoil’!”

“We brought it. You took it.”

“You speak the truth!—Mao-Tan, Mao-Tan! I wish that the spoil was back in the mountain!”

“Will you, O Marzumat, send it back?”

Marzumat stood with parted lips. Moments went by, leaves dropped in the grove, a bird flew overhead. Through an opening between the trees showed the huts and in the burning sun the bondwomen grinding at the mills.... The woman who, the first day, had called upon her own god to smite the valley people and their children was seen grinding.... “They are useful,” said Marzumat. “But men are not to bid them work. And men are not, O Saran, to follow them in the twilight when they go to draw water!”

Saran’s tanned face paled which was Saran’s way of showing anger. “How will you help that, red-haired one? You have strong arms. But will you bind our arms—mine and Endar’s? Will the valley women bind the war-men’s arms—set them to keeping sheep, away from the huts and the spoil?”

Red flowed over Marzumat’s face and throat and breast. “It is in my mind that we might bind many of you!”

“Not so many that the rest could not loose!” Saran stretched out his arm, regarded the play of muscle. “And we have the spears, the shields, the bows and arrows! Men are stronger to fight than women. As for Mao-Tan—Mao-Tan is very strong, but so is In-Tan. In-Tan has grown as strong as Mao-Tan.”

Out of the blue had come a flash and thunder, a shock unimaged before. Each stared at the other, each pale, each breathing short. Marzumat broke the silence. “What talk is this? The Ji-Ji, the ill spirits, have taken this place!... And all the same, I warn you, O Saran, not to follow Maihoma by twilight or by sunlight!”

With that she burst from the grove, and went over the shadeless earth, past the succession of huts, to the place where the bondwomen were grinding the corn. She spoke to a woman grinding. “You are bondwoman to women, not to men! Why, then, did you hearken to Endar when he called you, or go bring the bird he had shot?”

Gilhumat shook her hair back from her face, straightened her body from the grinding. “Why?... All of you are other-people, hated by Mo-Tal! Bring for Endar?—grind for Marzumat? Where is the difference to Gilhumat?” Her features twitched. “I had rather bring for men than grind for women! Women—women who bind their own hands and eat their own flesh! To do Endar’s bidding?—to do Marzumat’s bidding? Mo-Tal hear me, it hurts less to do the first!”

Marzumat made as if to strike her. “Do that also,” said Gilhumat. “Then weep when evil comes!”

The other withdrew her hand. “I will not strike you for your words, Gilhumat! But if you turn again from the task we set to a task a man sets, I will strike you many times! And what I say to Gilhumat I say to every grinding woman!”

“Say on,” said Gilhumat; and with her handstone crushed the grains of corn spread upon the hollowed surface.

That overheated day went by, another day, other days, and all were heated, with clouds that puffed up from the horizon, deceived and went away, leaving the earth unclad and the sun a fire. A number of valley women, working in the morning in a bean-field, observed a war-man of no great account take a basket of fish from his own shoulders and put it upon those of a bondwoman. That same day Gilhumat was seen to answer Endar’s crooked finger and, leaving her grinding, carry for him the bundle of osiers for mending broken shields. This was told to Marzumat, who gave Gilhumat the promised blows. But that did not turn away the Ji-Ji from the place! She left the punished woman, foaming at her from the ground, and as she entered the great hut saw in the dusk, in the distance, Saran with Maihoma.

That night there broke a great thunderstorm. The Ji-Ji might be praised for bringing rain and coolness, but blamed for the most frightening noises and a sky of white fire! For the night the valley group forgot differences within itself and huddled together in mind as huddled the bodies of the sheep in the folds. All to be thought of was the Ji-Ji, and if the upper spirits would hold back the Ji-Ji from all lengths. The Ji-Ji struck down trees and smote one of the cattle pens. The Ji-Ji threw hugely long, crooked spears of white fire and uttered noises that made women and men and children stop eyes and ears. Then at dawn the Ji-Ji went away.

They left the air cool and bright. Old times seemed to come back to the valley, though new times could not be wholly killed either. Old times thought to-day that new times might be held in bounds.

Copper was wanted by the war-men for spear-heads. Copper was dug out of the hills to the south. Half of the war-men went on an expedition to get copper. They were gone a week. Those who stayed at home seemed in a quiet mood, in what, later in time, might be called a spiritual mood. Back of the grove stood a large, rude, booth-like structure appropriated by valley men to their sole use. Here they kept ritual costumes and here they feathered arrows, and adorned with red and black pigments quiver and shield, and did other work purely pertaining to great hunters whether of beast or man. The men who did not go for copper resorted to this place, returning to the centre at mealtime. Day after day they kept the good mood. The women heard that they were working upon an image of In-Tan. That seemed a good thing to do!

The herdsmen went afar with the flocks, the bondwomen did as they were bid to do, ground the corn and carried the water. Certain of them, like certain of the herdsmen, ceased to make protest outward or inward. Gilhumat said nothing, but kneeling, crushed the grains beneath her handstone. Maihoma carried water from the stream to the huts. She moved slowly, with a body stiff and sore, for Marzumat, the chief woman, had beaten her terribly, as she had beaten Gilhumat. The valley women went about their manifold business, pursued vocation and avocation with a feeling of serenity.

The war-men came back, laden with copper. At the same time came again the heated weather. It seemed also that the Ji-Ji had only been asleep....

After five days of heat and Ji-Ji in an awakened condition, things changed again. One of the larger flocks, grazing far to the west, wandered out of the valley upon a plain behind the chain of hills. Here a band of other-men fell upon them. There had been three herdsmen. Two were slain. The third, a swift-foot, escaping, won back to the valley with the news.

The war-men who had gone for copper and the war-men who had stayed at home went out, swift-foot, to the west, out of the valley, through the hills to the plain. It was a small, newly arrived group that they found there, a wretched cluster of huts, wattle and dab, with little more in the way of possessions than the stolen flock. But the men and the women fought like wolves. Even the children bit and tore. But the group was very small.

The valley men killed and those they did not kill they bound. Fighting over, they ransacked the place, but found little spoil beyond their own recovered flock. Only in one hut they found jars filled with a fermented drink new to them and stronger than the drink the valley made.

The weather was hot and dry. The mood of the copper-digging and of the making of In-Tan’s image was passed. The struggle-lust and delight in killing, the more complex delight of binding fast the unslain, was over with for the time. Victory had slaked thirst for revenge. The goods were back with usury. The minds of the valley men were for the moment empty. They sat upon the earth and lifted to their lips the jars of drink.

It seemed to the valley men that their minds enlarged. There came to them from In-Tan, or perhaps only from Ji-Ji, a blissful sense of power and daring. They were such great war-men!

The captives remained bound in a space between the huts. The two or three men among them were those who, in the face of odds, had thrown down their weapons. The rest—the women—had fought to the end, but had been encumbered by the children. Now the children were dead, those two or three weaker men cowed. But the women reviled from their bonds. It was shameful that they should thus revile such great war-men, favourites of gods and Ji-Ji!

They looked at the women over the rims of the jars of drink. They had not looked so at the women of the purple mountain, the women they had taken to the women of the valley for a gift. But it seemed a long time since that day! Points of view must change in a changing world.... The hot weather and the Ji-Ji and the drink—never the little light man in the heart falling asleep while the little dark man stirred and grew.... The war-men began to reason, and it seemed to them that they reasoned loftily. The world was divided into one’s own people and other-people to whom nothing was owed. In-Tan certainly and probably Mao-Tan approved the division. Now, women—own-group women and other-women.... Certainly own-group women chose absolutely when they would pair and with whom they would pair. That was order-of-nature. No one questioned it.... But these other-group women.... If you could make war with other-women—if you could kill them—if you could bind them to their own door-posts—if you could take them for bondwomen to grind corn and carry water.... What else might you not do if you were sure that order-of-nature would not rise and blast you? Casuists sprang up and inner and outer arguing against any such abstractions as natural sanctities. The war-men tilted the jars of drink and found that the liquor helped to free them from abstractions. It gave them fire, it added height on height to their courage. It helped them to questions such as “For what, then, was greater strength given?” and “Do sanctities apply to the conquered?” It helped to the answers and the answers were according to their desires. Saran and Endar were the subtlest disputants.... All drank again and the pitchy fire within broke its bounds. Presently they were quite free from abstractions. They moved toward the other-group women....

The hot night went on. The day came up in a blaze of light.

The war-men quitted the plain and threaded the hills, but they did not carry these women with them. The dead and the yet living, they left behind all of this group. It had been a small, small settlement, seekers of fortune newly arrived in the land. The valley men took with them their own flock and the few beasts that the cluster had owned, but then these could say naught, nor awaken the wrath of Mao-Tan....

They marched back to the valley over parched herbage. The tale that they told to the huts was of a band of robbers who had fought until one and all were slain.... As to their greeting from the women of the valley, it was cooler than once it had been. Maihoma was dead. Gilhumat ground corn in silence.

The weather was hot. Mao-Tan and In-Tan were perhaps somewhere in green meadows by waterfalls. But the Ji-Ji liked heat and dryness and a feeling in the air like a singing bow-string. The first day and night went by in a general taciturnity. The second day Saran and Marzumat encountered under a tree by the field of corn.

“Maihoma that is dead was a fair woman,” said Saran. He was pale and his nostrils opened and shut.

“So?” said Marzumat. “All of us die, and even fair women.”

The two stared each at the other. The sky like fire, and the Ji-Ji active, and man and woman at odds....

The next day held quiet. Most of the men went to the booth behind the grove. Endar, going, said to women in the bean-field that In-Tan’s image occupied them. He said that it was going to be a great In-Tan, twice as tall as a man. They meant to set it up in front of the men’s booth, and it would be a great help in keeping women from the place. Endar’s black beard moved, and his white teeth flashed, and his eyes crinkled up.

Women, truly, went not to the place, but two, passing at no great distance, heard first Endar and then Saran haranguing, and coming to the fields reported what they had heard. It had not been much, a few shouted-out words, chance-caught. “Lesson.... Teach a lesson!... Show power, and then have peace!” The women knew no more than that of the harangue. It was to be presumed that the men were talking of raid and foray against other-people.

That day passed. The next day all the war-men went early to the grove and the booth. A woman, weaving, spoke to a woman making baskets. “When I waked at first light, the men were taking spears and clubs to the great booth. I asked what they were doing and they said they were going to make a hunting-dance before the In-Tan they are cutting from a tree.”

The sun walked up the sky in a dazzling robe and throwing arrows of heat. Women were in the bean-field and the corn-field. They wove at rude looms. With bone needle and fibre thread they were sewing garments. They were making baskets; they were preparing to fire a rude kiln and bake therein vessels of clay. The meat had been killed for the next meal; they had brought it from the pens, they were quartering and dressing it. They were at work upon this and at work upon that, or they were resting from work. Some were crooning to babes. The bondwomen worked without being able to say, “Now I shall rest awhile!” The noise of all their industries blended into a steady, droning, humming, not unpleasing sound. Here and there a woman sang, and through the whole fluted the voices of children.

A woman at the loom shaded her eyes with her hands. “The men are under the trees, dressed up to dance.” Another looked. “They are coming from under the trees—that’s a new dance!” A third, carrying a large jar, stopped to look. “They have their spears and clubs. I see Saran. He has hawk wings bound upon his head.—Ha, you grinding women! They looked that way when they came down upon your huts!” As she strained to look, her grasp upon the jar loosened. It slipped from her hands and broke at her feet in twenty fragments. “Mao-Tan! choke that Ji-Ji!”

The women generally began to observe. Marzumat rose from a stone beside a hut door. The men left the grove. The sun dazzled against their array—she saw Saran with the hawk wings bound upon his head....

Saran and Endar and all the others came across the space between the grove and the huts. They came shouting and swiftly. The women saw their procedure as inconceivable; then, in a moment, the inconceivable became the actual.

While the men used their weapons, their spears and clubs for advantage, they were not used to the uttermost. But they made for advantage, as did muscular strength and training in battle, as did organization, as did prepared attack! Even so, there was for a long time breathless, swaying struggle. The women were not weak-thewed, and behind them stood ancient powers of combat. Furious anger sustained them against the valley men. Man and woman, old kindnesses, old unities, were forgotten. All grudges were remembered, all separatenesses. They wrestled, they fought, and around all their own noise rose the crying of children.

The war-men had strong advantage, and they had swelled their numbers by the herdsmen. A woman and man, wrestling together, reeled near to the eleven bondwomen where they were gathered by the grinding-stones.

The woman cried, panting. “Gilhumat, you and the others give help!”

Gilhumat’s laughter rose and whistled like a storm. “Give you help? No! We shall stand still and rest, O women who grind women like corn!”

Marzumat cried to no one. She lifted a great stone, struck Endar Blackbeard with it, and stretched him at her feet. Two war-men came against her, then herdsmen crept up behind and seized her arms. Saran appeared before her, shaking his spear. She foamed at him and his hawk wings.

At last there parted the struggling mass—the men flushed conquerors, the women flung to earth, bruised with clubs, panting, beaten.... The men produced a rite which, with some self-pluming, they had devised and rehearsed.

Bondmen drove toward the trodden space sheep from the fold. Saran, the war-head, Endar Blackbeard, and other chief men took bow and arrow, shot strongly, and brought this game to earth.... The men were here, the beaten women there, the slain beasts lying beyond the two groups.

Saran stood forth with Endar just behind him. “O valley women, war-men have been hunting, and are tired!—Go you and bring in our game!”