So the girl was carried to his house, and the women shrank away, and were afraid––for the clouds followed the wind swiftly from the south, and the face of the moon was covered, and at the turn of the night was heard the voice of a man child––new born of the strange girl found by the well in the moonlight. Ho-tiwa in the outer room of the dwelling heard the 5 voice––and more than the child voice, for on the breath of the wind across the desert the good rain came walking in beauty to the fields, and the glad laughter of the people went up from the mesa, and there was much patter of bare feet on the wet stone floor of the heights––and glad calls of joy that the desert was to live again!
And within the room of the new birth the women stared in affright at the child and at each other, for it was most wonderfully fair––not like any child ever seen. This child had hair like the night, eyes like the blue of the sky, and face like the dawn.
One man among them was very old, and in his youth had known the Te-hua words. When the girl spoke he listened, and told the thing she said, and the women shrank from her when it was told.
“She must be a medicine-woman, for she knows these things,” she said, “and these things are sacred to her people. She says that the blade of a sacrifice must mark her child, for the boy will not be a child as other children.” And at the mention of the knife the people stared at each other.
“There is such a knife,” said Ho-tiwa. “It belongs to the Ancient Days, and only the gods, and two men know it. It shall be as she says. The god of the sky has brought the woman and has brought the child, and on the face of the child is set the light of the moon that the Hopi people will never again doubt that the gods can do these things.”
And there was a council at which all the old men talked through the night and the day. And while they talked, the rain poured in a flood from the gray sky, until men said this might be magic, for the woman might have brought witchcraft.
But the old chief said no evil craft could have brought the good rain:––The wind and the rain had come from the south as the girl had come from the south, and the light on the face of the child was a symbol that it was sacred.
Then one man, who had been an Apache prisoner, and found his way back, told of a strange thing;––that forty days to the south where the birds of the green feathers were, a new people had come out of the Eastern sea, and were white. The great kings made sacrifices for them, and planted prayer plumes before them––for they were called the new gods of the water and the sunrise.
And the girl had come from the south!