"The more I think about it," I wrote to her, "the more I want you to share my knowledge of 'the High Country.' Why not put our wedding a week earlier and let me take you into the mountains? If you will advance the date to the eighteenth of November, we can have an eight-day trip in Colorado and still reach mother and the Homestead in time for Thanksgiving. I want to show you my best beloved valleys and peaks."
Though addressing the letter to her Chicago home, I knew that she was about to leave for Kansas; therefore I added a postscript: "I am planning to meet you in your father's house about the eighteenth of the month, and I hope you will approve my scheme."
In the glow of my plan for a splendid Colorado wedding journey, I lost interest in Ganado and its Indians. Making arrangements for the shipment of my treasures, I saddled my horse one morning, waved Hubbell a joyous farewell, and started back toward the Agency in the hope of finding there a letter from my girl.
In this I was not disappointed. She wrote: "I shall leave for Kansas on the Burlington, Sunday night. You can write me at Hanover." It was plain she had not received my latest word.
I began to figure. "If I leave here to-morrow forenoon, and catch the express at Gallup to-morrow night, I can make the close connection at Topeka, and arrive in St. Joseph just half an hour before Zulime's train comes in on Monday morning. I shall surprise her—and delight myself—by having breakfast with her!"
However, I could not get away till morning, and with an evening to wear away I accepted the Agent's invitation to witness a native dance which had been announced to him by one of the young Navajo policemen. I had never seen a Navajo dance, and gladly accepted the opportunity to do so.
It was a clear, crisp November evening as we started out, the clerk, his sister, one of the teachers and myself riding in a two-seated open wagon, drawn by a pair of spirited horses. The native village was some ten miles to the north, and all the way up hill, so that before we came in sight of it darkness had fallen, and in the light of a bonfire the dancers were assembling.
Of the village, if there was a village, I could see little, but a tall old man (the town crier) was chanting an invitation or command of some sort, and dark forms were moving to and fro among the shadows of the piñon trees. How remote it all was from the white man's world, how self-sufficing and peaceful—how idyllic!
The master of ceremonies met us and gave us seats, and for three hours we sat in the glow of the fire, watching the youthful, tireless dancers circle and leap in monotonous yet graceful evolutions. Here was love and courtship, and jealousy and faithful friendship, just as among the white dancers of Neshonoc. Roguish black eyes gleamed in the light of the fire, small feet beat the earth in joyous rhythm, and the calm faces of the old men lent dignity and a kind of religious significance to the scene. They were dreaming of the past, when no white man had entered their world.
The young people were almost equally indifferent to us, and as the night deepened we who were white merged more and more indistinguishably with the crowd of dusky onlookers. It was easy to imagine ourselves back in the sixteenth century, looking upon this scene from the wondering viewpoint of the Spanish explorers. Whence came these people, these dances, these ceremonials?