Strange mystic rites belonged to that place where the Ancient Others had made high sacrifice. Great medicine was there for the healing of all the nations––and the secret of it was with the gods. He was glad as he looked at it that it was so close to his own people––if a day of need should come they would have the sacred place more close than any other people.
As he breathed a prayer and walked to his own door he met Po-tzah who was the Feeder of the Wind that fanned the Wheat. He was the first boy friend of Tahn-té in the valley and always their regard had been kind.
“This is a time of much striving and I am glad to 118 see you, and see you here at my door,” said Tahn-té the Ruler. “You come from the ceremonial bath after a night of prayer. I go from the bath for the making of many days and many nights of prayer. If my mother should return before I come down from the mountains––”
“She will be in the house of my wife, and she will be as our mother,” said Po-tzah his friend and clansman.
“Thanks that it is so in your heart,” and Tahn-té took the hand of his friend and breathed upon it. “My mother must not hear much talk of any trouble to come. If she thought there was danger she would not go from me, and in council it is decided that when the men of iron come into the valley, the young wives and the little maids must live for a season in the ruins of the wide fields of old, and my mother––the ‘Woman of the Twilight’ is to be the keeper of them there, and they must not be seen of the strangers.”
“They take many wives––if they find them––and are strongest?” asked Po-tzah thinking of his own wife of a year, and the little brown babe in its cradle of willow wands swung from the ceiling of their home. Tahn-té smiled mockingly.
“Their priest will tell you they take but one. But their book where their god speaks, gives to all his favorites many wives, and helps his favorites to get them with fighting and much cunning, and in the days when I was with the christian men who said prayers to that god, I saw them always live as the book said––and not as Padre Luis said. That man was a good man––a better man than his book––He was good enough to be Indian––for that is what the Castilians call us––and all our brother tribes.”
“They call us the same as the Apache or the Hopi people?” asked Po-tzah in wonder. “Why do they that?”
“The Ancient Father in the Sky has not wished them to know who we are. He has darkened their minds when they tried to see. They are very proud––that people! All they saw that was good in the villages, they argued long about. They are sure that some of their tribe in some older day did find our fathers and teach our people,––in what other way could we know to spin and weave, and live in good houses!”