"Sit down you," thundered Jim, "down, I tell you. No more of your cursed nonsense."
The old woman actually obeyed him and she sank back, her grey head shaking with palsy. I guess she thought that Jim was the Big Chief all right.
"Come on, boys," he said, "let's call on somebody else. The poor old lady is too eccentric and we don't want to excite her."
So we went out, but we found nothing more of especial interest, except that Jim unearthed a blanket that had evidently belonged to some Navajo. It was thick and warm, with white ground and grey design.
After finishing with the village we went out on the mesa to look around. We found that it was covered with quite a depth of soil and there were signs that it once had been well cultivated.
"I guess these people grew maize up here. You can see where the soil has been turned over," said Jim. "Look here, boys, I have found an old plow."
We looked at it with real curiosity. It was certainly a primitive article, made of grey weathered wood and the plowshare also of some hard wood, just enough to stir the ground.
"These people must have been independent here and happy too," said Tom. "It was a shame they had to be run out by those Apaches."
We had now advanced to the edge of the mesa and were looking off to the west. It was a marvelous view in the afternoon light that brought out the strange and symmetrical lines of the desert architecture with startling distinctness.
"There rolls the Colorado and hears no sound save its own rolling," said Jim, pointing in his most oratorical manner to the southwest.