The elder Priests of the Bow--three of whom were battle-scarred warriors of nearly a hundred winters at the time of my initiation into their order--told me that one of their gray-robed _tútatsikwe_ ("fathers of drink," so named because they used cup-like vessels of water in baptizing), whom their ancients had with them at Háwik’uh in the time of the great evil, was much loved by them; "for, like ourselves," they affirmed, "he had a Zuñi heart and cared for the sick and women and children, nor contended with the fathers of the people; therefore, in that time of evil they spared him on condition" --precisely the rather sweeping condition these same veterans had in 1880 imposed on me ere they would permit of my adoption into one of their clans--"that he eschew the vestment and usages of his people and kind, and in everything, costume and ways of life alike, become a Zuñi; for as such only could they spare him and nurture him." Not so much, I imagine, from fear of death--for the dauntless Franciscan friars of those days feared only God and the devil and met martyrdom as bridegrooms of the Virgin herself--as from love of the Zuñis, if one may judge by the regard they even still have for his memory, and a hope that, living, he might perchance restrain them, alike to the good of their people and his own people, the father gave way to their wishes; or he may have been forced to accede to them by one of those compulsory adoptions of the enemy not uncommonly practiced by the Indians in times of hostility. Be this as it may, the Zuñis abandoned all their towns in the valley, and taking the good priest with them, fled yet again to the top of their high Mountain of Thunder. Around an ample amphitheater near its southern rim, they rebuilt six or seven great clusters of stone houses and renewed in the miniature vales of the mesa summit the reservoirs for rain and snow, and on the crests above the trickling spring under their towns, and along the upper reaches of the giddy trail by which the heights were scaled they reared archers' booths and heaps of slingstones and munitions of heavy rocks. There, continually providing for the conflict which they knew would sooner or later reach even their remote fastnesses (as speedily it began to reach the Rio Grande country), they abode securely for more than ten years, living strictly according to the ways of their forefathers, worshiping only the beloved of war and the wind and rain, nor paying aught of attention to the jealous gods of the Spaniard.