"I hear a sound of singing," said the boy.
"It is the women singing and grinding at the quern," she said, and her feet went faster.
"I hear laughter," he said again, "it mixes with the running of the water."
"It is the maidens washing their knee-long hair. They kneel by the water and stoop down, they dip in the running water and shake out bright drops in the sun."
"There is a pleasant smell," said Alan.
"It is pine nuts roasting in the cones," said the Basket Woman; "so it was of old time."
They came out of the cleft of the hills in a pleasant place by singing water. "There you will see the rows of wickiups," said the Basket Woman, "with the doors all opening eastward to the sun. Let us sit here and see what we shall see."
The women sat by the wickiups weaving baskets of willow and stems of fern. They made patterns of bright feathers and strung wampum about the rims. Some sewed with sinew and needles of cactus thorn on deerskin white and fine; others winnowed the corn. They stood up tossing it in baskets like grains of gold, and the wind carried away the chaff. All this time the young girls were laughing as they dried their hair in the sun. They bound it with flowers and gay strings of beads, and made their cheeks bright with red earth. The children romped and shouted about the camp, and ran bare-legged in the stream.
"Do they do nothing but play?" said Alan.