"I wonder if this zig-zag pattern means anything?" asked Tubby, pointing a chubby finger at a large rug that lay on the floor.
"I've heard that that stands for lightning," Rob answered. "You know all savage people have a great respect for the mysteries of nature."
"What do I hear?" exclaimed Andy, halting suddenly.
"It is a baby whimpering!" cried Tubby. "Of all things! There must be a papoose somewhere around!"
"Over here, boys," called Merritt, motioning toward the farther corner of the room. The boys hastened to follow him and found a little alcove, shut off by draped blankets and enclosed by a slender wooden gateway. Through the wide slats of this, they discovered an Indian woman kneeling on a fur rug and busily weaving a brilliant blanket on an upright loom. Just beyond the mother, a little dark-skinned girl was peeping shyly at them, one finger lost between her lips. And in the background, propped against a roll of blankets, was the wailing papoose, securely wrapped and bound upon a board-cradle in typical and traditional Indian fashion.
As the boys looked in at this picturesque exhibition of family life, a tall, lank Indian man sauntered up and muttered a few authoritative words to the woman at the loom. She stopped her work and went over to the child, trying to hush its cries by shaking a string of bright beads before it.
"Huh!" grunted Tubby, looking after the departing man. "He only wanted us to see that he was 'big chief' here! Huh!"
When the east-bound train stopped at Albuquerque an hour later, each one of the boys had purchased a few small souvenirs. Rob had the tiny square rug of Navajo weaving that had caught his eye, a round, almost flat workbasket, and a little pair of bead-embroidered moccasins.
Merritt and Andy had selected a few inexpensive, gaudily decorated gourds and strings of beads for their boy friends. At the last moment, Tubby decided to burden himself with what he considered an artistic bit of pottery. Rob warned him that vases and jugs and urns were breakable, but Tubby persisted in bargaining for the piece that he had chosen.
"Two dolla'," the woman who held it said as he hesitated beside her.