They knew he was watching the world overhead. With the Piñ-pe-yé, that mystic compass of the Milky Way, was he balancing the fate of things as written in the light of the Sky Mother whose starry skirt was a garment to which departed souls cling. So many are the souls of earth people that their trail makes luminous the white way of the sky, and all the world, and all the people, can of course be seen from that height of the sky, and when a dart of heat lightning sped earthward to the west, the sentinels cast prayer meals and knew that Those Above were sending messages to Tahn-té who prayed as no other prayed.
And on the heights were his prayers, for ever it was to the mesa and beyond that his trail led since the mighty wrath of the wind by which the corn was broken to earth. The darkness was often running 245 from the dawn ere he came downward from the hills into the valley.
A scout, speeding eastward from the mountains in the dawn saw him coming down from the ancient place of the Reader of the Stars in Pu-yé––the sacred place where no other reader of the Sky Things goes in the night. The Lost Others are known to abide there, and mourn the barren field of the older day.
At times strange magic circles the ancient dwellings of the cliff. Before a storm, light flickers like fiery butterflies above the fallen walls on the summit.
For this reason was it deemed holy, and for this reason were the women of Shufinne much afraid when the ghost of a woman was seen plainly there between the edge of the cliff, and the silver disk of the moon.
The scout carried this word, and Tahn-té who had been seen coming from prayers there, listened, but gave little heed;––the women had seen shadows, and the older men said they were only weary that the men were so far across the mesas. Fire out of the sky, or out of the earth, had often danced on those heights, but no woman had been there in a ghost form ever in the memory of men.
Much more were they intent to know of any trace of warriors on the hills, but only smoke had been seen far beyond the place of the boiling water of the hill springs, and the smoke could easily be of Ua-lano hunters. Other scouts were yet to come. They had made longer runs. This man had been told to return at dawn of the day.
One Girl Waited at the Portal Page 288