There was a great stir in the court. On every terrace, too, were girls and women at work, tying the sharp new ironwood planting sticks into bundles and shelling the sacred colored corn which was to be planted in a specially prepared corner of the field. Great baskets and bags were filled with food: piki, and pounded acorns baked in sheets with meal, and strips of hard, dry meat. There were cakes of buffalo meat, too, pounded fine, and bags of dried peaches, and beans for eating as well as planting. For from now on until the crop was ready for harvest men must stay in the far-away fields to guard as well as work. For the first time Kwasa and Wiki were to go with the men. They strutted about the plaza importantly, one minute imitating the stately manners of Honau and the other men, the next strongly tempted to join in the games of leap-frog and hunt-the-deer that were being carried on in the crannies of the great building. Strong as the temptation was, however, they would not have yielded to it for the world, lest in the eyes of the other lads they should lose some of their newly acquired dignity. The great field lay far away to the south of the village, beyond where the canyon opened out into the wider valley. For many years the same ground had been cultivated by the Clan, and on every side were evidences of the painstaking and careful work that had made possible the abundance of grain the Cliff people had enjoyed from year to year. On a gentle slope beyond the field was a scattering orchard of peach trees, each carefully placed in some particularly fertile spot. From a great rock reservoir on the hill above, a ditch ran down to the fields, separating as it reached the edge into many small passways for water, which could thus be turned upon the growing crop should the gods, whose aid had been so earnestly invoked, neglect to send rain enough. Along the lower edge of the field ran a long, low clay wall or ledge, designed to keep the water thus led into the planted land from wasting by running too far down the slope. How good the brown earth smelled as the sharp planting sticks turned up the moist soil to make fine, soft beds for the precious seeds. Where the soil was heavy and came up in clods, old Honau, the master of the planting, showed Kwasa and Wiki how to follow behind the seed scatterers and smash the lumps with stone mauls tied to the ends of long sticks. They were instructed, too, how to clean the winter’s wash of mud out of the waterways, and how to repair the lower wall where it had washed away. [Illustration: Cliff men going down to work in the fields. The watch tower is seen in the background.]