The One Town of Wálpi Page 1
He called to some men who were going home from rabbit hunting in the dusk, and they came and looked at the girl and at each other, and drew away.
“We have our own women who may die soon,” they said: “Why take in a stranger? Whence comes she?”
No one had seen her come, but her trail was from the south. She wore the dress of a pueblo girl, but she was not of their people. Her hair was not cut, yet on her forehead she carried the mark of a soon-to-be maternity––the sacred sign of the piñon gum seen by Ho-tiwa when he went as a boy for the seed corn to the distant Te-hua people by the river of the east.
“I come here with prayer thoughts to the water,” said the old man noting their reluctance,––“and I find a work put by my feet. The reader of the skies tells that a change is to come with the moon. It is as the moon comes that I find her. The gods may not be glad with us if our hearts are not good at this time.”
“But the corn––”
“The corn I would eat can go to this girl for four days. I am old, but for so long I will fast,––and maybe then the gods will send the change.”