_From Copyright Photograph 1906 by E.S. Curtis_
Bat came up, flying round and round the rock. On his back was a basket,
supported from his shoulders by two cords that looked like Spider's
thread.
"That will not hold me!" exclaimed Naye{~COMBINING BREVE~}nayezgani.
"But it will," answered Bat; "it will hold the biggest of mountain sheep!"
And to prove the truth of his assertion he filled the basket with stones
and jumped up and down, and the threads held. Then Naye{~COMBINING BREVE~}nayezgani was
satisfied and got in, and Bat began the descent. "Don't open your eyes!"
he commanded. After a long time, feeling that they must be near the
bottom, Naye{~COMBINING BREVE~}nayezgani opened his eyes, but the sight made him dizzy, and
he almost fell out of the basket. Bat became angry at this, for the lurch
almost threw him from the rock. At last, however, they reached the ground
in safety.
There they dragged the bodies of the two great Eagles together, plucked
them, and filled Bat's basket with the feathers, which Naye{~COMBINING BREVE~}nayezgani
wished to take home. "Don't go in the low places," he advised Bat, as the
latter started on ahead. But Bat forgot, and because the walking was
easier went across the low places, where the birds stole all the feathers
for their nests; so he had to return and fill the basket again. These he
carried safely to Yolkai Estsan, who gave many of them to the people of
the village.
From Chunnaai, Naye{~COMBINING BREVE~}nayezgani learned of one more monster on the earth, a
huge Rolling Stone, which lived in the south near the pueblo of Picuris;
so he and his mother went southward. They stopped in a canon through which
Rolling Stone often passed on its way to and from the village, and by and
by it came crashing along, destroying everything in its path. Just as it
passed, Naye{~COMBINING BREVE~}nayezgani shot with one of his great flint-pointed arrows and
shattered it, as he had shattered the tree when Chunnaai first gave him
his weapons; and the ground in that spot is still red from the blood that
flowed from Rolling Stone's heart.