592. They put on him a robe of eagle plumage, such as they wore themselves, and led him to the sky-hole. They said to him: "When you came up from the lower world you were heavy and had to be carried by others. Henceforth you will be light and can move through the air with your own power." He spread his wings to show that he was ready; the Eagles blew a powerful breath behind him; he went down through the sky-hole, and was wafted down on his outstretched wings until he lit on the summit of Tsótsĭl.
593. He went back to his own relations among the Navahoes; but when he went back everything about their lodge smelt ill; its odors were intolerable to him, and he left it and sat outside.260 They built for him then a medicine-lodge where he might sit by himself. They bathed his younger brother, clothed him in new raiment, and sent him, too, into the lodge, to learn what his elder brother could tell him. The brothers spent twelve days in the lodge together, during which the elder brother told his story and instructed the younger in all the rites and songs learned among the Eagles.
594. After this he went to visit the pueblo of Kĭntyél, whose inmates had before contemplated such treachery to him; but they did not recognize him. He now looked sleek and well fed. He was beautifully dressed and comely in his person, for the Eagles had moulded, in beauty, his face and form. The pueblo people never thought that this was the poor beggar whom they had left to die in the eagles' nest. He noticed that there were many sore and lame in the pueblo. A new disease, they told him, had broken out among them. This was the disease which they had caught from the feathers of the eaglets when they were attacking the nest. "I have a brother," said the Navaho, "who is a potent shaman. He knows a rite that will cure this disease." The people of the pueblo consulted together and concluded to employ his brother to perform the ceremony over their suffering ones.
595. The Navaho said that he must be one of the atsá'lei,261 or first dancers, and that in order to perform the rite properly he must be dressed in a very particular way. He must, he said, have strings of fine beads—shell and turquoise—sufficient to cover his legs and forearms completely, enough to go around his neck, so that he could not bend his head back, and great strings to pass over the shoulder and under the arm on each side. He must have the largest shell basin to be found in either pueblo to hang on his back, and the one next in size to hang on his chest. He must have their longest and best strings of turquoise to hang to his ears. The Wind told him that the greatest shell basin they had was so large that if he tried to embrace it around the edge, his finger-tips would scarcely
