He was older when he shot his first bow; when at dusk he caught a woodpecker in its hole and would not let go though it hacked desperately at his clasped hands, until a half-grown cousin took it from him to imprison under a turned jar for the night. His father wove a cage the next day, and the captive was installed, but remained wild, and one morning was dead. And then came the time when the boys of Mesquite-water challenged those of his settlement on a hot, summer day after the inundation had half dried, and they slung lumps of mud at each other from the ends of long willow poles.