“Why, John, you surprise me. How many shirts has she got—twenty?” Juan looked astounded and abashed at this extravagant guessing. He scratched his head, looked at me, then at the fire, and seemed to have some notion of not telling me the exact “quantity” of shirt in which his wife rejoiced. At length he slowly said: “Well, she got two shirt—two shirt, but all fix up nice—plenty braid, _mucho_ ribbon, O, very nice! Twenty shirt no good. What you talk?—me never see one woman got twenty shirt.” Juan one evening told me the story of a wonderful cave in a region far to the northward, where his tribe lived in the days of his fathers—long and long before they came south, and long before the first white men crossed the Plains. This cave was in the side of a great mountain, and when the Evil One tried his hand at creation and began to make scorpions, tarantulas, snakes, horned toads, cactus, deserts and pools of alkali water, the Good Spirit (Pahah) caught him and put him into the cave, closing the entrance with a great mountain. There, far down in the ground, for many hundred of winters the Evil One used to roar and bellow. At times the hills trembled with terror; great rocks were shaken from their beds on the mountains and rolled down into the valleys, and fire came up out of the ground. Some of the mountains burst open, and one—a great one—sank down out of sight and left in its place a broad lake. The hill rolled off the mouth of the cave at this time and the devil came out and flew away toward sunrise. So large was he that, though he flew more swiftly than a hawk, his wings had not passed over when three sleeps were done. They shut out the light of the sun. There was no moon or stars. The medicine men said there would be no more day till the Evil One was again shut up, for he was very mad and had swallowed the sun, moon, and stars. The medicine men, however, held a council and by burning a great deal of buffalo hair made such a smoke as to make the devil very sick, when he vomited up the sun, moon and a great many stars, and it has been light ever since; but now there are not so many stars as in former times. Since the flight of the Evil One there has been no more groaning in the mountains, and the hills have ceased to tremble. [Illustration: THE STORY OF THE CAVE.]