Three centuries of the religion of the white strangers have not made dim the signal fires to those born of the sky!
The walls of Povi-whah have melted again into Mother Earth. Silent are the groves where the Ancient Others carved their homes from the rock walls of the heights. Wings of vivid blue flit in the sunlight from the portal of the star to bough of the piñon tree––and a brooding silence rests over those high levels;––only the wind whispers in the pines, and the old Indians point to the bird of azure and tell of a Demon-maid who came once from the land of the Navahu, and wore such wings, and sang a song of the blue bird, and enchanted a god-born one with her promise to build a nest and wait for him––at the trail’s end!
An ancient teller of Te-hua legends will add that the trail of Tahn-té was covered by the sands of the Four Ways and no living people ever again looked on his face,––and that the Te-hua priests say the strong god of the men of iron swept him into the Nothing because he alone stood against the new faith in that time of trial.
Only a Trail Across the Desert Sands Page 332
The teller of tales does not know if this be true or not––all gods can be made strong by people, and it is not good to battle against the god of a strong people:––they can send strange sorceries and wild temptings, and the Navahu maid had such charm she was never forgotten by men who looked upon her face. It is also well known that the bluebird is a sacred bird for medicine, and does call at every dawn on those heights, and the wings worn in the banda of Tahn-té might, through strong love, have become a true charm;––and might have led him at last to the nest of the witch maid in some wilderness of the Far Away;––who can tell?
But all men know that the prophecies of Tahn-té are true to-day in the valley of the Rio Grande––and that his vision was the vision of that which was to be.
Aliksai!