Through the prayer thoughts echoed the last thrilling notes of the grinding songs at the triumph of the sun over the clouds of the dusk and the night.
Mo-wa-thé smiled at the meaning of it. It was well that the prayer had the music of gladness.
“Yes, I come early,” she said. “I come to see you. The time is here.”
“The time?”
“The time when I go. Always we have known it would be some day. The day is near. I take my son and go to his people.”
“My daughter:––his people he does not know.”
“My father:––no one but the winds have told him––yet he knows much! He has said to me the things by which I feel that he knows unseen things. I told him long ago that the stars as they touch the far mesa in the night are like the fires our people build to light our god back from the south. Yesterday he tells me he wants to be the builder of that fire and serve that god. My father in this strange land:––my son belongs to the clan whose duty it is to guard that fire! I never told him. Those Above have told him. I have waited for a sign. The gods have sent it to me through my son––we are to go across the desert and find our people.”
“It is a thing for council,” decided her host. “The way is far to the big river,––it is not good that you go alone. Men of Ah-ko will come when they hear us stamp the foot for the time of the gathering of the snakes. When they come, we will make a talk. If it is good that you go, you will find brothers who will show the trail.”
“That is well;” and Mo-wa-thé arose, and stood before him. “You have been my brother, and you have been my father, and my son shall stay and see once more the rain ceremony of the Blue Flute people, and of the Snake people, and when he goes to his own land, he can tell them of the great rain magic of the Hopi Priests.”