THE PLUME PIRATES 331 



the eaglets to each of his wrists and jumped off the 

 edge of the cliff. The eaglets were too young to 

 fly well, but they fluttered enough to break Tlecsa's 

 fall and he came back to his own village, with the 

 tail-feathers of Great Eagle stuck in his hair. 

 Then Tlecsa pulled the large feathers of the wings 

 of the eaglets and out of their tails and gave them 

 to his brothers, and said to the eaglets, 



" 'You shall never grow up to be like Great 

 Eagle. You shall only be ordinary Eagles. You 

 shall have no power to kill people as long as there 

 is an Indian who wears an Eagle's feather in his 

 hair. And it was so, and it still is so. ' Thus you 

 see, Shan," the Feather Man concluded, ''that it 

 was only because of brave deeds that Eagle 

 feathers might be worn." 



"Was it only the Indians who forbade feather- 

 wearing by anybody who wished?" asked the boy. 



**No," the Feather Man replied; "among the 

 Aztecs, as you know, the Quetzal — a bird belong- 

 ing to the Trogon family — was sacred to the em- 

 peror. But, even so, only a warrior who had dis- 

 tinguished himself in battle was allowed to shoot a 

 Quetzal bird in order to bring the feathers to the 

 emperor. 



"Even in comparatively modern times, the sport 



