As he kneels and gazes, another Indian rises from amidst the shaggy blocks of lava a short distance off, stands up, and then sits down upon a rock. He turns his head to the east. He too is gaunt and thin, his features are pale, and his eyes lie deep in their sockets. On his back hangs a shield; but it is soiled, beaten, and perforated. To his arm is fastened a war-club, and the quiver on his back is half-filled with newly made arrows. As this Indian turns his face to the north we recognize him also. It is Hayoue, Hayoue as emaciated and careworn as his brother Zashue. They are alone. Neither has found anything yet.
Zashue rises to go where his brother is sitting. As the latter perceives him he points with his arm to the east. There at the farthest end of the plain, at the foot of the high cloud-veiled mountains, a long row of foot-hills recedes in an angle. To this angle Hayoue is pointing. An untrained eye would have seen nothing but cedar-clad hills and the lower end of slopes dark and frowning, above which seething clouds occasionally disclose higher folds of mountains whose tops are shrouded in mist. But Zashue has no untrained eye; he gazes and gazes; at last he turns around to his brother with an approving nod and says,—
"Fire."
"Puyatye Zaashtesh," Hayoue replies; and each looks at the other inquiringly.
Where we might have seen but the usual dim haze veiling distant objects, they have discovered a bluish tint capping the hills like a pale streak. It denotes the presence of smoke, therefore fire. Not a burning forest, for there is no high timber on that range of foot-hills, but smoke arising from a place where people are dwelling. The roaming mountain Indians, the Apaches or Navajos, settle nowhere permanently. The smoke has not been produced by their straggling camp-fires; it indicates the location of a permanent village. Those village Indians that dwell east of the Rio Grande are Tanos, and the Queres call them Puyatye. There must be a Tano village in that corner far away where the bluish film hovers. Hayoue is right, a Puyatye Zaashtesh stands where to-day lies the capital of New Mexico,—the old Spanish settlement of Santa Fé.
The brothers cast their eyes to the ground; both seem to be in doubt, Zashue is the first to speak.
"Do you suppose that our people might be at that Zaashtesh?"
Hayoue shrugged his shoulders.
"It may be, I don't know."
"Will it be safe for us to go to the Puyatye?" the other inquired doubtfully.