She had seen Bettina and Tewa strolling slowly away from the neighborhood of Cottonwood Creek toward their mesa. Bettina was nearly as tall as the Indian and in her picturesque camp fire costume, did not look out of place beside her companion.
CHAPTER XIV
Antagonisms
Dinner was finished and yet it was early evening.
Over in the west the sunset was flaming the sky with the brilliant colors of this land of clear atmospheres.
Seated in a group about a smouldering outdoor fire were eight girls—seven of them in ceremonial camp fire costumes and one of them dressed as an Indian. Curious that the Indian girl should be the fairest of them all!
Her pale yellow hair was fixed in the elaborate fashion of the Hopi maidens, with great loops over each ear, her dress of white. About her throat were several strings of uncut turquoise. The dress itself was made of a single piece of woolen cloth—really a white blanket—with a deep border of bright blue and red at the bottom and at the top. Around her waist was a white belt and on her feet soft white moccasins, with strings of white leather wound about her legs almost to the knees until she looked as if she were wearing white top boots.
Dawapa was also in her ceremonial costume, as she was the guest of the Camp Fire girls. At the moment she was deftly fashioning a baho, or feather prayer plume. The other girls were watching her with interest.
They were at some distance back from the fire with the evening wind blowing the smoke away to the northwest among the blue peaks of the San Francisco hills and the gorges of the Grand Canyon.
Gerry Williams was sitting next to Dawapa, with Sally Ashton on her other side, Sally’s brown head resting against Gerry’s shoulder and her lids closing now and then over her big brown eyes. She looked like a sleepy, sweet-tempered doll.
Opposite were Vera and Bettina, and in front Alice, Peggy and Ellen. They had broken their usual Camp Fire circle formation in order the better to observe their guest.