They found him sitting on an ant hill; nor would he have paused but for
their cries of peaceful import, for, said he, as they approached him,
"If ye have snare-strings I will be off like the flight of an arrow
well plumed of our feathers!"
"Nay, now!" said the twain. "Thy elder brother hath bidden us seek
thee." Thereupon they told him what had passed, and how that the Eagle
had failed to find their maidens so white and beautiful.
"Failed, say ye? Of course he failed! For he clambers aloft to the
clouds and thinks, forsooth, that he can see under every bush and into
every shadow, as sees the Sun-father who sees not with eyes! Go ye
before," said the Falcon; and ere they had turned toward the town, he
had spread his sharp wings and was skimming off over the tops of the
trees and bushes as though verily seeking for field mice or birds'
nests. And the warriors returned to tell the fathers and await his
coming; but after he had sought far over the world to the north and the
west, the east and the south, he too returned and was received as had
been the Eagle; but when he had settled on the edge of a tray, before
the altar, as on the ant hills he settles today, and had smoked and
been smoked as had been the Eagle, he told the sorrowing fathers and
mothers that he had looked behind every copse and cliff-shadow, but
of the maidens had found no trace. "They are hidden more closely than
ever sparrow hid," said he, gripping the cover of the tray on which he
perched as though it were real feathers and blood, and ruffling his
crest. Then he, too, flew away to his hills in the west.
"Alas! alas! our beautiful maiden mothers!" cried the matrons.
"Lost, lost as the dead are they!" "Yea," said others, "where, how
indeed, shall we seek them now? For the far-seeing Eagle and the
close-searching Falcon alike have failed to find them."