They climbed a swaying ladder to reach one of the dwellings. This had been restored by archaeologists and looked as though its Indian inhabitants had departed the night before, instead of a long 400 years ago. There was the loom on which they had woven their cloth. Graceful pottery with decorations in glaze was stacked in a corner. A bedboard rested on two timbers cemented into the rear wall.
“These were de luxe apartments, probably occupied by the chief,” Ralph explained. “They have one big drawback—no hallways. You have to go through the living quarters to get to the other rooms. Come back here and I’ll show you one of their kivas, or ceremonial rooms.”
He led the way into a much larger cave that had a balcony overlooking a round hole some twenty feet across by six feet deep. Light filtered into the gloomy place through one small window in the cliff face.
The driller turned a flashlight beam into the hole. Sandy saw that its bottom could be reached by steep stone stairways. A wide bench ran around the sides of this strange pit. In its center stood several stone tanks about the size of bathtubs.
“When the cliff dwellers wanted to talk to their gods,” said Ralph, “they climbed down into a kiva hole like this and stayed for days without eating, drinking or sleeping. They practiced a kind of self-hypnotism, I guess.”
“Maybe,” Sandy guessed, “they just went down there to take their Saturday-night baths. I don’t see any gods—idols, I mean.”
“These people didn’t have idols—just those tub things,” Ralph answered. For a long time he stood staring down into the kiva, as though he were trying to picture his dead-and-forgotten ancestors there, conducting their silent worship. “We’d better be getting back to the ranch,” he said at last, shaking his handsome head as though to clear it of dreams.
“That was a pretty grim thing Carson did to the Indians,” Sandy said as they drove back to Thunderbird.
“It was better than a massacre. Only twenty or so Navajos were actually killed by his troops, remember. And you should not forget, either, that Kit was acting under orders from Washington.”
“Those Nazi officers who killed innocent people in German concentration camps said they were acting under orders too,” Sandy pointed out grimly.