“Yes:––it is so,” said Tahn-té the Ruler as he met the eyes of his friend. “All may know that I go to the fast, and the dance, and that I dance for them. It will be told from the house tops to-night, but when it is told I will have reached the hills.”
“I may not dance, but I also will fast, and I will work with you,” said Po-tzah. “Others will work with you when they know. Speak for our children to the god!”
Then he breathed on the hand of Tahn-té who was to do high work and high penance for the tribe, and Tahn-té felt glad music in his heart because of the words of his friend, and when he laid aside his white robe and left his house, he spoke to no other man, but went silent to the shrine on the mesa where the Arrow-Stone clan build the signal fire to the mountain god in the night time. There he said the prayers which were long prayers, and the people who had noted him as he passed (nude but for the girdle and the downy breath feathers of the eagle) halted at their work among the corn and the melon vines and watched him at the shrine. From the terraced roofs also the women turned from their weaving, or the shaping of pottery, and looked after the tall bronze figure girded, 123 and white plumed. They could see his wide-stretched hands scatter the sacred meal of prayer, and then they saw only a brown runner on the mesa outlined against the western sky. He had entered the ceremonial run in which there is no moment of rest from the mesa of the river to the mountains of the pine.
CHAPTER XI
THE MAID OF DREAMS
Indian prayer is not the placid acceptance of thoughts comforting. The complete man is both mind and body––and all of him must work when the gods are called upon for work, and by fasting and exhaustion must the spirit path be made clear for dreams.
The first day Tahn-té had sat in meditation before the sacred wall of the stone face, chanting the songs to the clouds and the yellow birds of the sun color, watching the pictured rock until the lines moved when his body swayed to the chant, and a living thing seemed before him––the accumulated faiths of all the devotees in that place since the god was born!
As the sun went behind the mountain he knew the village herald was telling the people, and the leaders of Povi-whah would fast that night and send their thoughts to him. Po-tzah would fast although Po-tzah was not called upon by his position to do so.