THE BASKET MAKER 



In the interim, while the tribes swallowed 

 their defeat, and before the rumor of war 

 died out, they must have come very near 

 to the bare core of things. That was the 

 time Seyavi learned the sufficiency of 

 mother wit, and how much more easily one 

 can do without a man than might at first 

 be supposed. 



To understand the fashion of any life, 

 one must know the land it is lived in and 

 the procession of the year. This valley is 

 a narrow one, a mere trough between hills, 

 a draught for storms, hardly a crow's flight 

 from the sharp Sierras of the Snows to the 

 curled, red and ochre, uncomforted, bare 

 ribs of Waban. Midway of the groove runs 

 a burrowing, dull river, nearly a hundred 

 miles from where it cuts the lava flats of 

 the north to its widening in a thick, tide- 

 less pool of a lake. Hereabouts the ranges 

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