When all else was prepared, they made a shrine around their _múetone_ (or medicine seed of hail and soil) their _k‘yáetone_ (or medicine seed of the water and rain) and their _chúetone_ (or medicine seed of grains). And around these, and reaching out toward the Sun before them, they set their plumed wands of message. For the plain was dry and barren, and they wanted fresh soil by the hail torrents, moisture by the rain, and growth of seed-substance, that they might the better exhibit their powers to these strangers; if perchance, in response to their labors and beseechings, these things would be vouchsafed them. Therefore, that the meaning of their beseechings might be the more plain and sure of favor, certain ones of the sage priests, sought out and placed the largest and most beautifully colored grass seeds they could find among the stores of their way-farings, in the gourd with the _chúetone_, and then cut from branches of the easy growing cottonwood and willow, gleaned from the ways of water, goodly wands which they plumed and painted, like in color to each kind of seed they had selected; yellow, green, red, white, black, speckled, and mottled; one for each side of the sacred gourd, one to be laid upon it, one to be laid under it, and one to be placed within it; and as soon as finished, thus they disposed the wands. Now when night came, these master-priests took the _chúetone_--all secretly, whilst the others were drowsy--and carried it, with the plumed wands they had made, out into the plain, in front of the bower. There they breathed into these things the prayers and over them softly intoned the incantations which had been taught them in the new time of the world. Then they placed the _chúetone_ on the ground of the plain and on each side of it, by the light of the seven great stars which were at that time rising bright above them, they planted one of the plumed wands with the seeds of its color; first, the brightest, yellow with the yellow grass seeds, on the north; then the blue with the green grass seeds, on the west; then the red with the red seeds, to the south, and the white with the white seeds to the east; but the other three plumed wands they could not plant, one above, the other below, and the last within the gourd; so looking at the stars they saw how that they were set, four of them as though around a gourd like their own, and three others as though along its handle! "_Há! Chukwé!_" said they. "'Tis a sign, mayhap, of the Sky-father!" whereupon they set each of the others in a line, the black one with its seeds of black, nearest to the sacred gourd below the handle; the speckled one with its spotted seeds next, on the other side of the handle, and the mottled one with its dappled seeds far out at the end of the handle, that it might (being of the colors of all the others) point out each of them, as it were, and lead them all!