CHAPTER V.
The people of the Water clan dwelt at the western end of the cliffs which border the Tyuonyi on the north. They occupied some twenty caves scooped out along the base of the rock, and an upper tier of a dozen more, separated from the lower by a thickness of rock averaging not over three feet. This group of cave-dwellings—and vestiges thereof are still visible at this day—lay in a re-entering angle formed by the cliffs, which overhang in such a manner as to form a sheltered nook open to the south. Ascent to their base is quite steep, and great heaps of débris cover the slope. The gorge is narrow, a dense thicket interspersed with pine-trees lines the course of the brook, and the declivity forming the southern border of the Rito approaches the bottom in rocky steps, traversed laterally by ledges overgrown with scrubby vegetation.
Vestiges of former occupancy are still scattered about the caves. Some of these furnish a clew to the manner in which the dwellings were formed by scraping and burrowing. Splinters of obsidian and of basalt—sharp fragments, resembling clumsy chisels or knives—served to dig an oblong hole in the soft pumice or tufa of the cliff. After this narrow cavity had penetrated a depth of one or two feet, the artisan began to enlarge it inside, until a room was formed for which the tunnelled entrance served as a doorway. The room, or cell, was gradually finished in a quadrangular or polygonal shape, with a ceiling high enough to permit a person of average size to stand erect. Not unfrequently side rooms were excavated connecting with the first by low apertures, to pass through which it was necessary to stoop, or even to creep on all fours. These passages were too low for doorways, too short to deserve the name of tunnels. Into the front apartment light and air were admitted through the entrance, and sometimes through small window-like apertures. The side cells were utterly dark except where excavated parallel to the face of the rock, when sometimes another entrance was opened to the front, sometimes an air-hole only admitted light and air.
If on the afternoon of the day when Shyuote had his perilous adventure with the young people of the Corn clan, we had been able to peep into the third one of the ground-floor caves, counting from the west end of the group inhabited by the Water people, we should have found the apartment empty; that is, as far as human occupancy was concerned. But not deserted; for while its owner was not there, ample signs of his presence only a short time before could be detected everywhere. In the fireplace wood was smouldering, and a faint smoke rising from this found egress through a crude chimney. This was built over the hearth, with two vertical side slabs of pumice supporting a perforated square flag, over which a primitive flue, made of rubble cemented by mud, led to a circular opening in the front wall of the cave. In a corner stood the frame for the grinding-slabs, or metates, and in it the three plates of lava on which the Indian crushes and pulverizes his maize were placed in the convenient slanting position. Not only the prismatic crushing-pins, but freshly ground meal also, lay in the stone casings of the primitive mill, and on these the plates themselves. Deerskins and cotton wraps were rolled in a bundle in another corner. Others hung on a line made of rawhide and stretched across one end of the room, fastened to wooden pins driven into the soft rock. On the floor—to which a thick coating of mud, washed with blood and smoothed, gave a black, glossy appearance—there were beside, here a few stone axes with handles, there some black sooty pots, painted bowls, and finally the inevitable water-urn with wide body and narrow top, decorated in the usual style with geometrical and symbolical figures painted in red and black on whitish ground. The walls of the cave were burnished with burnt gypsum; the ceiling was covered by a thick coat of soot; and a band of yellow ochre, like wainscoting, ran along the base of the sides.
The owner of this troglodytic home, however, is not to be seen; but in a side chamber, which communicates with this apartment through one of the dark and low passages just described, a rustling sound is heard, as of some one rummaging about in darkness. After a while a woman's head peeps through the passage into the outer room, and little by little the whole body emerges, forcing itself through the narrow opening. She rises and stands erect in front of the hearth, and the sunbeam which still enters the apartment by the round hole above the fireplace strikes her features full and enables us to scan them. The woman into whose dwelling we have pryed, and who stands now in the dim chamber as sole occupant and owner, is Shotaye, Tyope's former wife, and the friend who has given Say Koitza such ill advice.
If Shotaye be a witch, she certainly is far from displaying the hag-like appearance often attributed to the female sorcerer. There is even something decidedly fascinating about her. Shotaye, although near the forties, is for an Indian woman undoubtedly good-looking. No wonder some other women of the tribe are afraid of her. She is tall and well rounded, and her chest is of that fulnesss that develops at an early age in the women of the Pueblos. Her face is even pretty,—her lips are pouting and sensual, the nose small and shaped like a short, pointed beak, the cheek-bones high, while the chin indicates remarkable determination. Magnificent black hair streams down her back. It is as full as a wave, as lustrous as polished obsidian.
Her dress consists of a buckskin wrap without girdle, embroidered at the lower end with multi-coloured porcupine-quills. Bracelets of white shells, a necklace of feldspar crystals and turquoises, and strings of yellow cotton threads around her ankles complete the costume. Such is the woman who has played and still plays an ominous part in the history of Okoya's mother, and in the history of the people at the Rito de los Frijoles. Now that we have seen her home and her person, let us proceed with the tale of her doings on the afternoon to which the close of the preceding chapter has been devoted.
Shotaye had been rummaging about in the inner cell of her rocky house in search of some medicinal plant, for that cell was her storeroom, laboratory, and workshop. But as the room was without light at all, she had entered it with a lighted stick in her hand; and just as she had begun her search the flame had died out. So after a vain attempt by groping in darkness, she crawled back to the exterior apartment and knelt down in front of the hearth to fan the coals with her breath and thus obtain another torch for her explorations. At that moment the deerskin robe closing the entrance to her grotto was timidly lifted, and a feeble voice called the usual greeting. "Opona," replied Shotaye, turning toward the doorway. A lithe figure crept into the cave. When near the fireplace it stood still, enabling the mistress of the dwelling to recognize the features of Say, her friend and now fully recovered patient.
But how different was Say's appearance from what it was when Shotaye a few days ago saw her last? How changed,—how thin and wan her cheeks, how sunken her eyes, how sallow and sickly her complexion! Her face seemed to bear the seal of approaching death, for the eyes stared expressionless, the mouth twitched without speaking. But one thought seized Shotaye, that her friend must be ill, very, very ill,—that the old disease had returned in full force and had clutched her anew with perhaps irresistible power. Anxiously she rose to her feet, and scanned the face of the invalid.
"What ails you, my sister," she inquired tenderly. "Has disease come on you again? Speak, sa uishe, speak to me that I may know."