The new moon seemed to rest on the very edge of the mesa above him:––the uplifted horn looked like a white flame rising from purple shadows.
A white flame!––a white flame!
To the Indian mind all signs are symbolic,––and the flame was exactly above the point where the light was set ceremonially and regularly to light the Indian god back to his own people!
A point of white flame above that shrine of centuries!
No eyes but his saw it at exactly that angle––of course it was not meant for other eyes. It was meant that it should be seen by him alone on his first night with the people he meant to work for! With the memory of the prophecies in his ears had he seen it. It could mean only that the god himself set it there as a proof that the devotion of Tahn-té was acceptable––and that he had been born of his mother that the 54 prophecies might be fulfilled at the right time––and that the light of the moon on his face had meant–––
His thought came so quickly that all the air of the night appeared alive with the unseen––and the unseen murmured in his ears, and his memories––and in his heart!
Suddenly he stretched his open hands high to the stars, and then ran across the level to the foot of the bluff. It was high and very steep, but wings seemed his––his heart was on the summit, and his body must follow––must get there before the white flame sank into the west––must send his greeting to answer the greeting of the god!
In the pouch at his girdle was the fire flint, and a wisp of the silky wild flax of tinder. Two sticks of dead scrub piñon was there; he broke them in equal lengths and laid them in the cross which is the symbol of the four ways, and of the four winds from which the sacred breath is drawn for all that lives––the symbol also of union by which all human life is perpetuated. All fires of sacrifices,––or of magic power, must commemorate these things which are sacred things, and Tahn-té placed them and breathed upon them, and touched them with the spark from the white flint, and then arose in joy and faced the moon yet visible, knowing that the god had seen his answering flame on the shrine––and that it meant a dedication to the Things of the Spirit.
And as he stood there on the mesa’s edge, exalted at the wonder of the night, he did not speak, yet he heard the echo of words in his own voice:––“No one but Tahn-té shall gather the woods for the fire to light Po-se-yemo back;––and when he sees the blaze, and comes back, you will tell him it was his son who kept the fire!”