"So came the last day of the feast when the sacred seed would be sealed up in the god-house. 'Have no fear,' said Waits-by-the-Fire, 'for my dream has been good. Make yourselves ready for the trail. Take food in your food bags and your carriers empty on your backs.' She put on her Shaman's dress and about the middle of the day the Cacique of the Sun sent for them. He was on the platform in front of the god-house where the steps go up to the Hill of the Sun, and the elders of the town were behind him. Priests of the Sun stood on the steps and the Corn Women came out from the temple of the Corn. As Waits-by-the-Fire went up with the Seven, the people closed in solidly behind them. The Cacique looked at the carriers on their backs and frowned. "'Why do you come to the god-house with baskets, like laborers of the fields?' he demanded. "'For the price of our labor, O Cacique,' said the Shaman. 'The gods are not so poor that they accept labor for nothing.' "'Now, it is come into my heart,' said the Cacique sourly, 'that the gods are not always pleased to be served by strangers. There are signs that this is so.' "'It may be,' said Waits-by-the-Fire, 'that the gods are not pleased. They have long memories.' She looked at him very straight and somebody in the crowd snickered." "But wasn't it awfully risky to keep making him mad like that?" asked Dorcas. "They could have just done anything to her!" "She was a wise woman; she knew what she had to do. The Cacique _was_ angry. He began making a long speech at her, about how the smut had come in the corn and the bean crop was a failure,--but that was because there had not been water enough,--and how there had been sickness. And when Waits-by-the-Fire asked him if it were only in that year they had misfortune, the people thought she was trying to prove that she hadn't had anything to do with it. She kept reminding them of things that had happened the year before, and the year before. The Cacique kept growing more and more angry, admitting everything she said, until it showed plainly that the town had had about forty years of bad luck, which the Cacique tried to prove was all because the gods had known in advance that they were going to be foolish and let strangers in to serve the Corn. At first the people grew excited and came crowding against the edge of the platform, shouting, 'Kill her! Kill the witch!' as one and then another of their past misfortunes were recalled to them.