And quick as a flash she snatched a turkey-bone whistle from the breast of her robe and blew a keen treble note, that seemed to slip like a knife-blade through that clear, dry air. She half-turned as she did so, and I seized the opportunity to examine the valley behind her. 'Twas a bowl in the riven plateau-country, perhaps a league wide and twice as long. Through it flowed a respectable stream that issued from a ravine to the right of where we stood, and its floor was carpeted with green fields, interspersed with the stunted trees that were all this desert land afforded.
The whistle-blast called up dozens of men from the nearer bank of the river, and looking closer, I saw that they had been working in cultivated fields. Indeed, the whole surface of the valley appeared to be given over to cultivation. Beyond the river, against the right-hand wall of the valley, loomed a rounded protuberance of rock that hung from the towering cliffs like a woman's breast. Its top was surmounted by a mass of walls and towers, and as the shrilling whistles carried back the warning of the turkey shepherdess a host of tiny figures popped out upon the roofs and battlements.
"What place is that?" I asked curiously.
The turkey-girl replied mechanically—
"Homolobi."
It meant nothing to me at the time, but afterwards I was struck by its aptness—The Place of The Breast.*
* This word, as well as most of the other bits of phraseology which Ormerod mentions, indicates a relation between this cliff-dwelling tribe and the present Hopi. There is similar evidence in the religious customs cited.—A.D.H.S.
I started to walk forward for a better view, and the turkey-girl promptly renotched her arrow.
"You must wait for Wiki," she announced.
"But we are friends," I declared. "If we stay here——"