Chief Quail, who was nearest to the Hopi, acted instinctively. He plunged into the frothing, rock-filled water and fought it with all the power of his massive shoulders. A moment later he was tumbling downstream with the old man held tightly in his arms.
While the others watched spellbound in the gathering darkness, the Navajo fought the cloudburst. Fifty yards downstream, he managed to hook a leg around a rock that still held firm. His face purple with effort, he finally succeeded in pulling his apparently lifeless burden to the top of a dry ledge.
Almost as quickly as it had come, the flood subsided. Dripping, cold and shaken, the little party headed back toward the pueblo ruins. Chief Quail walked ahead, carrying the Hopi in his arms.
An hour later Donovan rose from examining the Chief and looked across a campfire at the rest of them with a worried frown. The geologist had found Ponytooth’s only apparent injury—a broken leg—and had set it with expert fingers. But the old man failed to return to full consciousness thereafter. He threw his arms about and shouted wildly. His cheeks burned with sudden fever. When his little brown wife crept to his side, he ordered her away in a frenzy.
“I can’t understand it,” said Donovan. “So far as I can tell, he has no internal injuries. But the life is running out of him like water out of a sack. I’m afraid he may be dying.”
“He is dying,” Ralph spoke up softly. “I’ve been listening to his ravings. He thinks he has offended the water spirits by even talking to palefaces and a Navajo and a Ute about the tribe’s sacred boundary line. He thinks he must die to make his peace with the spirits. And so, he will die before the night is out.”
“Hosteen Quail,” said Hall, “Navajo chiefs are medicine men as well, aren’t they? Can’t you paint a sand picture or something, and cure Ponytooth of his delusion?”
“No,” the Chief answered sadly. “Navajo magic works only for Navajos.”
“Let me try,” Ralph said suddenly. He gripped the Hopi’s shoulder to get his dazed attention, and spoke to him for a long time in Shoshonean. The old man shook his head back and forth in disagreement, but he stopped picking at the moth-eaten buffalo robe which Donovan had thrown over him.
“I told him that the water spirits were not angry,” the Ute said at last. “He said I lied. I told him we are all his friends. He said to prove it. So I told him I would prove it by singing him well.” Ralph stood up slowly and paced around the fire three times in a counterclockwise direction. “My father was a medicine man,” he went on. “As a boy I watched him sing people well, but I never was allowed to try it, of course.... Well, here goes.... Wish me luck, Hosteen Quail.”