From this ledge Wongo looked down over the plains below
From this ledge he had often looked down over the sage-covered plains far below, and one spot in particular had always attracted his attention and aroused his ever-present curiosity. It was a tiny place, or so it seemed from the mountain, a place where Navaho Indians lived, and Kaw had told him that it was made of mud-covered trees that were stood up together to make a kind of cave, but, of course, it could not be a real cave, for real caves must be made in rocks or dug into the earth. Often, as he looked down at this strange little house, a thin, bluish cloud arose from the center of it, and when the wind was in the right direction it brought to his nostrils odors of strange things—things good to eat.
The Indian man-house always filled Wongo with wonder, and he desired more than anything else to go up to it and see just what it looked like close at hand. Once, when he had looked down upon it just at nightfall, he had seen something that shone red like a bit of the sun when it sinks in a summer haze. That shining red light was another very curious thing that he must know about, and he must see it up close. He would ask Kaw about that bit of the sun that he had seen shining from the Indian man-house.
Now that his stomach was filled, Wongo seemed to be filled with confidence also. The warm sun shone hot from the desert, its welcome rays adding to his feeling of comfort and self-assurance. Why should he have fear of the little place where lived the Navahos? Why fear anything? To-night he would go down the mountain and visit the Indian man-house and see for himself just what it looked like. Nothing, aside from the dogs that he could outwit or run away from, could harm him.
He knew that the Navahos would not so much as touch him. Had not his mother told him that they believed there was a witch—whatever that was—in every bear, and that if they harmed the bear the witch thing would make great trouble come upon them? Neither his mother nor Kaw, the crow, seemed to know what a witch was, but that didn’t matter so long as it caused the Indians to have fear, and thus kept them from shooting their arrows into bears, as he had seen them shoot into deer and rabbits. Wongo had observed that when Indian arrows stuck into animals they nearly always killed them.
Turning away from the ledge, he started slowly down the mountain, deciding that he would, that very night, satisfy his curiosity about the man-house. In the meantime he would go down into the canyon and get a cool drink, after which he would visit some berry patches just over the ridge, and explore among the foothills a bit before his nap-time, which always came just after the sun had walked past the middle of the sky. At that period of the day the sun’s warm rays seemed to cast a sleepy spell over the silent mountain side, so all of the animals, with one accord, had decided it should be the hour for their mid-day sleep.
So Wongo ambled down the mountain and feasted on the berries in the patch over the ridge, after a cooling drink at the canyon spring. Then the little bear went happily to his cave for his nap.