"They must be very ignorant people," she declared. "Like the Awataba. Are you a priest?"
"I am a trader. I buy and sell."
Her contempt for me was even more pronounced than for Tawannears.
"And the fat one?"
"He is a warrior, too."
"I am sorry," she said royally. "I thought you might be great ones, priests of some far people come to sit at Wiki's feet and hear Kokyan cast spells for Yoki*—or perhaps to see me dance."
* The Rain.
"Are you a priestess?" I inquired respectfully.
"I am Kachina," she said, and her words were a rebuke.
I would have asked more, but an angry-eyed young man in a kilt of serpent's-skins thrust himself between us and addressed her volubly, with denunciatory gestures at us. She replied to him as coolly as she had to me, and finally turned away and beckoned to an older man who was leading back the men from the fields who had pursued the squat bowmen. The older man issued a brief order to his followers and walked over to our group. Like the voluble young man, he wore a kilt of serpent's-skins, and both of them had their lank black hair bound with fillets of the same material.