When the race for life and death commenced between the emigrants and the
Apaches, it seemed as if the former would certainly be able to go two miles before
the latter could cover six.

But the mules were weak, and the soil of the plain was a thin loam into
which the wheels sank easily, so that the heavy wagons could not be hurried beyond
a trot, and before long were reduced to a walk. Thus, while the caravan
was still half a mile from its city of refuge, the foremost hornets of Delgadito's
swarm were already circling around it.

The chief could not charge at once, however, for the warriors whom he had
in hand numbered barely a score, and their horses, blown with a run of over five
miles, were unfit for sharp fighting work. For a few minutes nothing happened,
except that the caravan continued its silent, sullen retreat, while the pursuers
cantered yelling around it at a safe distance. Not a shot was fired by the emigrants;
not a brave dashed up to let fly his arrows. At last there were fifty
Apaches; then there was a hurried council; then a furious rush. Evidently the
savages were ashamed to let their enemies escape for lack of one audacious assault.

This charge was led by a child. A boy not more than fourteen years of age,
screaming like a little demon and discharging his arrows at full speed with
wicked dexterity, rode at the head of this savage hourra of the Cossacks of the
American desert. As the fierce child came on, Coronado saw him and recognized
him with a mixture of wonder, dread, and hate. Here was the son of the
false-hearted savage who had accepted his money, agreed to do his work, and
then turned against him. Should he kill him? It would open an account of
blood between himself and the father. Never mind; vengeance is sweet; moreover,
the youngster was dangerous.

Coronado raised his revolver, steadied it across his left arm, took a calm aim,
and fired. The handsome, headlong, terrible boy swayed forward, rolled slowly
over the pommel of his saddle, and fell to the ground motionless. In the next
moment there was a general rattle of firearms from the train, and the mass of
the charging column broke up into squads which went off in aimless caracolings.
Barring a short struggle by half a dozen braves to recover the young chief's
body, the contest was over; and in two minutes more the Apaches were half a
mile distant, looking on in sulky silence while the train crawled toward the protecting
bluff.

“Hurrah!” shouted Thurstane. “That was quick work. Delgadito doesn't
take his punishment well.”

“Reckon they see we had friends,” observed Captain Glover. “Jest look at
them critters pile down the mounting. Darned if they don't skip like nannygoats.”

Down the huge steep slope, springing along rocky, sinuous paths, or over the
walls of the terraces, came a hundred or a hundred and fifty men, running with
a speed which, considering the nature of the footing, was marvellous. Before
many in the train were aware of their approach, they were already among the
wagons, rushing up to the travellers with outstretched hands, the most cordial,

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

cheerful, kindly-eyed people that Thurstane had seen in New Mexico. Good
features, too; that is, they were handsomer than the usual Indian type; some
even had physiognomies which reminded one of Italians. Their hair was fine
and glossy for men of their race; and, stranger still, it bore an appearance of
careful combing. Nearly all wore loose cotton trousers or drawers reaching to
the knee, with a kind of blouse of woollen or cotton, and over the shoulders a
gay woollen blanket tied around the waist. In view of their tidy raiment and
their general air of cleanliness, it seemed a mistake to class them as Indians.
These were the Moquis, a remnant of one of the semi-civilizations of America,
perhaps a colony left behind by the Aztecs in their migrations, or possibly by
the temple-builders of Yucatan.

Impossible to converse with them. Not a person in the caravan spoke the
Moqui tongue, and not a Moqui spoke or understood a word of Spanish or English.
But it was evident from their faces and gestures that they were enthusiastically
friendly, and that they had rushed down from their fastness to aid the emigrants
against the Apaches. There was even a little sally into the plain, the
Moquis running a quarter of a mile with amazing agility, spreading out into a
loose skirmishing line of battle, brandishing their bows and defying the enemy to
battle. But this ended in nothing; the Apaches sullenly cantered away; the
others soon checked their pursuit.

Now came the question of encampment. To get the wagons up the bluff,
eight hundred feet or so in height, along a path which had been cut in the rock
or built up with stone, was obviously impossible. Would there be safety where
they were, just at the base of the noble slope? The Moquis assured them by
signs that the plundering horse-Indians never came so near the pueblos. Camp
then; the wagons were parked as usual in a hollow square; the half-starved animals
were unharnessed and allowed to fly at the abundant grass; the cramped
and wearied travellers threw themselves on the ground with delight.

“What a charming people these Monkeys are!” said Aunt Maria, surveying
the neat and smiling villagers with approval.

“Moquis,” Coronado corrected her, with a bow.

“Oh, Mo-kies,” repeated Aunt Maria, this time catching the sound exactly.
“Well, I propose to see as much of them as possible. Why shouldn't the
women and the wounded sleep in the city?”

“It is an excellent idea,” assented Coronado, although he thought with distaste
that this would bring Clara and Thurstane together, while he would be at
a distance.

“I suppose we shall get an idea from it of the ancient city of Mexico, as described
by Prescott,” continued the enthusiastic lady.

“You will discover a few deviations in the ground plan,” returned Coronado,
for once ironical.

Aunt Maria's suggestion with regard to the women and the wounded was
adopted. The Moquis seemed to urge it; so at least they were understood.
Within a couple of hours after the halt a procession of the feebler folk commenced
climbing the bluff, accompanied by a crowd of the hospitable Indians.
The winding and difficult path swarmed for a quarter of a mile with people in
the gayest of blankets, some ascending with the strangers and some coming
down to greet them.

“I should think we were going up to the Temple of the Sun to be sacrified,”
said Clara, who had also read Prescott.

“To be worshipped,” ventured Thurstane, giving her a look which made her
blush, the boldest look that he had yet ventured.

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

The terraces, as we have stated, were faced with partially dressed stone.
They were in many places quite broad, and were cultivated everywhere with admirable
care, presenting long green lines of corn fields or of peach orchards.
Half-way up the ascent was a platform of more than ordinary spaciousness which
contained a large reservoir, built of chipped stone strongly cemented, and brimming
with limpid water. From this cistern large earthen pipes led off in various
directions to irrigate the terraces below.

“It seems to me that we are discovering America,” exclaimed Aunt Maria,
her face scarlet with exercise and enthusiasm.

Presently she asked, in full faith that she was approaching a metropolis,
“What is the name of the city?”

“This must be Tegua,” replied Thurstane. “Tegua is the most eastern of
the Moqui pueblos. There are three on this bluff. Mooshaneh and two others
are on a butte to the west. Oraybe is further north.”

“What a powerful confederacy!” said Aunt Maria. “The United States of
the Moquis!”

After a breathless ascent of at least eight hundred feet, they reached the undulated,
barren, rocky surface of a plateau. Here the whole population of Tegua
had collected; and for the first time the visitors saw Moqui women and children.
Aunt Maria was particularly pleased with the specimens of her own sex;
she went into ecstasies over their gentle physiognomies and their well-combed,
carefully braided, glossy hair; she admired their long gowns of black woollen,
each with a yellow stripe around the waist and a border of the same at the bottom.

“Such a sensible costume!” she said. “So much more rational and convenient
than our fashionable fripperies!”

Another fact of great interest was that the Moquis were lighter complexioned
than Indians in general. And when she discovered a woman with fair skin,
blue eyes, and yellow hair—one of those albinos who are found among the inhabitants
of the pueblos—she went into an excitement which was nothing less
than ethnological.

“These are white people,” she cried, losing sight of all the brown faces.
“They are some European race which colonized America long before that modern
upstart, Columbus. They are undoubtedly the descendants of the Northmen
who built the old mill at Newport and sculptured the Dighton Rock.”

“There is a belief,” said Thurstane, “that some of these pueblo people, particularly
those of Zuni, are Welsh. A Welsh prince named Madoc, flying before
the Saxons, is said to have reached America. There are persons who hold
that the descendants of his followers built the mounds in the Mississippi Valley,
and that some of them became the white Mandans of the upper Missouri, and
that others founded this old Mexican civilization. Of course it is all guess-work.
There's nothing about it in the Regulations.”

“I consider it highly probable,” asserted Aunt Maria, forgetting her Scandinavian
hypothesis. “I don't see how you can doubt that that flaxen-haired girl
is a descendant of Medoc, Prince of Wales.”

“Madoc,” corrected Thurstane.

“Well, Madoc then,” replied Aunt Maria rather pettishly, for she was dreadfully
tired, and moreover she didn't like Thurstane.

A few minutes' walk brought them to the rampart which surrounded the pueblo.
Its foundation was a solid blind wall, fifteen feet or so in height, and built
of hewn stone laid in clay cement. Above was a second wall, rising from the

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

first as one terrace rises from another, and surmounted by a third, which was
also in terrace fashion. The ground tier of this stair-like structure contained
the storerooms of the Moquis, while the upper tiers were composed of their twostory
houses, the entire mass of masonry being upward of thirty feet high, and
forming a continuous line of fortification. This rampart of dwellings was in the
shape of a rectangle, and enclosed a large square or plaza containing a noble
reservoir. Compact and populous, at once a castle and a city, the place could
defy all the horse Indians of North America.

“Bless me! this is sublime but dreadful,” said Aunt Maria when she
learned that she must ascend to the landing of the lower wall by a ladder. “No
gate? Isn't there a window somewhere that I could crawl through? Well,
well! Dear me! But it's delightful to see how safe these excellent people have
made themselves.”

So with many tremblings, and with the aid of a lariat fastened around her
waist and vigorously pulled from above by two Moquis, Aunt Maria clutched
and scraped her way to the top of the foundation terrace.

“I shall never go down in the world,” she remarked with a shuddering glance
backward. “I shall pass the rest of my days here.”

From the first platform the travellers were led to the second and third by
stone stairways. They were now upon the inside of the rectangle, and could see
two stories of doors facing the plaza and the reservoir in its centre, the whole
scene cheerful with the gay garments and smiling faces of the Moquis.

“Beautiful!” said Aunt Maria. “That court is absolutely swept and
dusted. One might give a ball there. I should like to hear Lucretia Mott speak
in it.”

Her reflections were interrupted by the courteous gestures of a middle-aged,
dignified Moqui, who was apparently inviting the party to enter one of the
dwellings.

Pepita and the other two Indian women, with the wounded muleteers, were
taken to another house. Aunt Maria, Clara, Thurstane, and Phineas Glover
entered the residence of the chief, and found themselves in a room six or seven
feet high, fifteen feet in length and ten in breadth. The floor was solid, polished
clay; the walls were built of the large, sunbaked bricks called adobes; the ceilings
were of beams, covered by short sticks, with adobes over all. Skins, bows
and arrows, quivers, antlers, blankets, articles of clothing, and various simple ornaments
hung on pegs driven into the walls or lay packed upon shelves.

“They are a musical race, I see,” observed Aunt Maria, pointing to a pair of
painted drumsticks tipped with gay feathers, and a reed wind-instrument with a
bell-shaped mouth like a clarionet. “Of course they are. The Welsh were always
famous for their bards and their harpers. Does anybody in our party
speak Welsh? What a pity we are such ignoramuses! We might have an interesting
conversation with these people. I should so like to hear their traditions
about the voyage across the Atlantic and the old mill at Newport.”

Her remarks were interrupted by a short speech from the chief, whom she at
first understood as relating the adventures of his ancestors, but who finally made
it clear that he was asking them to take seats. After they were arranged on a
row of skins spread along the wall, a shy, meek, and pretty Moqui woman
passed around a vase of water for drinking and a tray which contained something
not unlike a bundle of blue wrapping paper.

“Is this to wipe our hands on?” inquired Aunt Maria, bringing her spectatles
to bear on the contents of the tray.

“It smells like corn bread,” said Clara.

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

So it was. The corn of the Moquis is blue, and grinding does not destroy
the color. The meal is stirred into a thin gruel and cooked by pouring over
smooth, flat, heated stones, the light shining tissues being rapidly taken off and
folded, and subsequently made up in bundles.

The party made a fair meal off the blue wrapping paper. Then the meek-eyed
woman reappeared, removed the dishes, returned once more, and looked
fixedly at Thurstane's bloody sleeve.

“Certainly!” said Aunt Maria. “Let her dress your arm. I have no doubt
that unpretending woman knows more about surgery than all the men doctors in
New York city. Let her dress it.”

Thurstane partially threw off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeve. Clara
gave one glance at the huge white arm with the small crimson hole in it, and
turned away with a thrill which was new to her. The Moqui woman washed the
wound, applied a dressing which looked like chewed leaves, and put on a light
bandage.

“Does it feel any better?” asked Aunt Maria eagerly.

“It feels cooler,” said Thurstane.

Aunt Maria looked as if she thought him very ungrateful for not saying that
he was entirely well.

“An' my nose,” suggested Glover, turning up his lacerated proboscis.

“Yes, certainly; your poor nose,” assented Aunt Maria. “Let the lady cure
it.”

The female surgeon fastened a poultice upon the tattered cartilage by passing
a bandage around the skipper's sandy and bristly head.

“Works like a charm 'n' smells like peach leaves,” snuffled the patient.
“It's where it's handy to sniff at—that's a comfort.”

After much dumb show, arrangements were made for the night. One of the
inner rooms was assigned to Mrs. Stanley and Clara, and another to Thurstane
and Glover. Bedding, provisions, and some small articles as presents for the
Moquis were sent up from the train by Coronado.

But would the wagons, the animals, and the human members of the party below
be safe during the night? Young as he was, and wounded as he was, Thurstane
was so badgered by his army habit of incessant responsibility that he could
not lie down to rest until he had visited the camp and examined personally into
probabilities of attack and means of defence. As he descended the stony path
which scored the side of the butte, his anxiety was greatly increased by the appearance
of a party of armed Moquis rushing like deer down the steep slope, as
if to repel an attack.

CHAPTER XIV.

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

Thurstane found the caravan in excellent condition, the mules being tethered
at the reservoir half-way up the acclivity, and the wagons parked and guarded
as usual, with Weber for officer of the night.

“We are in no tanger, Leftenant,” said the sergeant. “A large barty of these
bueplo beeble has shust gone to the vront. They haf daken atfandage of our
bresence to regover a bortion of the blain. I haf sent Kelly along to look after
them a leetle und make them keep a goot watch. We are shust as safe as bossible.
Und to-morrow we will basture the animals. It is a goot blace for a
gamp, Leftenant, und we shall pe all right in a tay or two.”

“Does Shubert's leg need attention?”

“No. It is shust nothing. Shupert is for tuty.”

“And you feel perfectly able to take care of yourselves here?”

“Berfectly, Leftenant.”

“Forty rounds apiece!”

“They are issued, Leftenant.”

“If you are attacked, fire heavily; and if the attack is sharp, retreat to the
bluff. Never mind the wagons; they can be recovered.”

“I will opey your instructions, Leftenant.”

Thurstane was feverish and exhausted; he knew that Weber was as good a
soldier as himself; and still he went back to the village with an anxious heart;
such is the tenderness of the military conscience as to duty.

By the time he reached the upper landing of the wall of the pueblo it was
sunset, and he paused to gaze at a magnificent landscape, the replica of the one
which he had seen at sunrise. There were buttes, valleys, and cañons, the vast
and lofty plateaus of the north, the ranges of the Navajo country, the Sierra del
Carrizo, and the ice peaks of Monte San Francisco. It was sublime, savage,
beautiful, horrible. It seemed a revelation from some other world. It was a
nightmare of nature.

Clara met him on the landing with the smile which she now often gave him.
“I was anxious about you,” she said. “You were too weak to go down there.
You look very tired. Do come and eat, and then rest. You will make yourself
sick. I was quite anxious about you.”

It was a delightful repetition. How his heart and his eyes thanked her for
being troubled for his sake! He was so cheered that in a moment he did not
seem to be tired at all. He could have watched all that night, if it had been necessary
for her safety, or even for her comfort. The soul certainly has a great
deal to do with the body.

While our travellers sleep, let us glance at the singular people among whom
they have found refuge.

It is said hesitatingly, by scholars who have not yet made comparative studies
of languages, that the Moquis are not red men, like the Algonquins, the
Iroquois, the Lenni Lenape, the Sioux, and in general those whom we know as
Indians. It is said, moreover, that they are of the same generic stock with the
Aztecs of Mexico, the ancient Peruvians, and all the other city-building peoples
of both North and South America.

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

It was an evil day for the brown race of New Mexico when horses strayed
from the Spanish settlements into the desert, and the savage red tribes became
cavalry. This feeble civilization then received a more cruel shock than that
which had been dealt it by the storming columns of the conquistadors. The
horse transformed the Utes, Apaches, Comanches, and Navajos from snappingturtles
into condors. Thenceforward, instead of crawling in slow and feeble
bands to tease the dense populations of the pueblos, they could come like a tornado,
and come in a swarm. At no time were the Moquis and their fellow agriculturists
and herdsmen safe from robbery and slaughter. Such villages as
did not stand upon buttes inaccessible to horsemen, and such as did not possess
fertile lands immediately under the shelter of their walls, were either abandoned
or depopulated by slow starvation.

It is thus that we may account for many of the desolate cities which are now
found in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Not of course for all; some, we
know, were destroyed by the early Spaniards; others may have been forsaken
because their tillable lands became exhausted; others doubtless fell during wars
between different tribes of the brown race. But the cavalry of the desert must
necessarily have been a potent instrument of destruction.

It is a pathetic spectacle, this civilization which has perished, or is perishing,
without the poor consolation of a history to record its sufferings. It comes near
to being a repetition of the silent death of the flint and bronze races, the moundraisers,
and cave-diggers, and cromlech-builders of Europe.

Captain Phineas Glover, rising at an early hour in the morning, and having
had his nosebag of medicament refilled and refitted, set off on an appetizer
around the ramparts of the pueblo, and came back marvelling.

“Been out to shake hands with these clever critters,” he said. “Best behavin''
n' meekest lookin' Injuns I ever see. Put me in mind o' cows 'n' lambs.
An' neat! 'Most equal to Amsterdam Dutch. Seen a woman sweepin' up her
husband's tobacco ashes 'n' carryin' 'em out to throw over the wall. Jest what
they do in Broek. Ever been in Broek? Tell ye 'bout it some time. But how
d'ye s'pose this town was built? I didn't see no stun up here that was fit for
quarryin'. So I put it to a lot of fellers where they got their buildin' m'ter'ls.
Wal, after figurin' round a spell, 'n' makin' signs by the schuner load, found out
the hull thing. Every stun in this place was whittled out 'f the ruff-scuff at the
bottom of the mounting, 'n' fetched up here in blankets on men's shoulders. All
the mud, too, to make their bricks, was backed up in the same way. Feller off
with his blanket 'n' showed me how they did it. Beats all. Wust of it was,
couldn't find out how long it took 'em, nor how the job was lotted out to each
one.”

“I suppose they made their women do it,” said Aunt Maria grimly. “Men
usually put all the hard work on women.”

“Wal, women folks do a heap,” admitted Glover, who never contradicted
anybody. “But there's reason to entertain a hope that they didn't take the
brunt of it here. I looked over into the gardens down b'low the town, 'n' see
men plantin' corn, 'n' tendin' peach trees, but didn't see no women at it. The
women was all in the houses, spinnin', weavin', sewin', 'n' fixin' up ginerally.”

“Remarkable people!” exclaimed Aunt Maria. “They are at least as civilized
as we. Very probably more so. Of course they are. I must learn whether
the women vote, or in any way take part in the government. If so, these Indians
are vastly our superiors, and we must sit humbly at their feet.”

During this talk the worn and wounded Thurstane had been lying asleep.

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

He now appeared from his dormitory, nodded a hasty good-morning, and pushed
for the door.

“Train's all right,” said Glover. “Jest took a squint at it. Peaceful 's a
ship becalmed. Not a darned Apache in sight.”

“You are sure?” demanded the young officer.

“Better get some more peach-leaf pain-killer on your arm 'n' set straight
down to breakfast.”

“If the Apaches have vamosed, Coronado might join us,” suggested Thurstane.

“Never!” answered Mrs. Stanley with solemnity. “His ancestor stormed
Cibola and ravaged this whole country. If these people should hear his name
pronounced, and suspect his relationship to their oppressor, they might massacre
him.”

“That was three hundred years ago,” smiled the wretch of a lieutenant.

“It doesn't matter,” decided Mrs. Stanley.

And so Coronado, thanks to one of his splendid inventions, was not invited
up to the pueblo.

The travellers spent the day in resting, in receiving a succession of pleasant,
tidy visitors, and in watching the ways of the little community. The weather was
perfect, for while the season was the middle of May, and the latitude that of Algeria
and Tunis, they were nearly six thousand feet above the level of the sea, and the
isolated butte was wreathed with breezes. It was delightful, to sit or stroll on
the landings of the ramparts, and overlook the flourishing landscape near at
hand, and the peaceful industry which caused it to bloom.

Along the hillside, amid the terraced gardens of corn, pumpkins, guavas, and
peaches, many men and children were at work, with here and there a woman.

The scene had not only its charms, but its marvels. Besides the grand environment
of plateaus and mountains in the distance, there were near at hand
freaks of nature such as one might look for in the moon. Nowhere perhaps has
the great water erosion of bygone æons wrought more grotesquely and fantastically
than in the Moqui basin. To the west rose a series of detached buttes,
presenting forms of castles, towers, and minarets, which looked more like the
handiwork of man than the pueblo itself. There were piles of variegated sandstone,
some of them four hundred feet in height, crowned by a hundred feet of
sombre trap. Internal fire had found vent here; its outflowings had crystallized
into columnar trap; the trap had protected the underlying sandstone from cycles
of water-flow; thus had been fashioned these sublime donjons and pinnacles.

They were not only sublime but beautiful. The sandstone, reduced by ages
to a crumbling marl, was of all colors. There were layers of green, reddishbrown,
drab, purple, red, yellow, pinkish, slate, light-brown, orange, white, and
banded. Nature, not contented with building enchanted palaces, had frescoed
them. At this distance, indeed, the separate tints of the strata could not be discerned,
but their general effect of variegation was distinctly visible, and the result
was a landscape of the Thousand and One Nights.

To the south were groups of crested mounds, some of them resembling the
spreading stumps of trees, and others broad-mouthed bells, all of vast magnitude.
These were of sandstone marl, the caps consisting of hard red and green shales,
while the swelling boles, colored by gypsum, were as white as loaf-sugar. It was
another specimen of the handiwork of deluges which no man can number.

Far away to the southwest, and yet faintly seen through the crystalline atmosphere,
were the many-colored knolls and rolls and cliffs of the Painted Desert.

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

Marls, shales, and sandstones, of all tints, were strewn and piled into a variegated
vista of sterile splendor. Here surely enchantment and glamour had made
undisputed abode.

All day the wounded and the women reposed, gazing a good deal, but sleeping
more. During the afternoon, however, our wonder-loving Mrs. Stanley
roused herself from her lethargy and rushed into an adventure such as only she
knew how to find. In the morning she had noticed, at the other end of the pueblo
from her quarters, a large room which was frequented by men alone. It might
be a temple; it might be a hall for the transaction of public business; such
were the diverse guesses of the travellers. Into the mysteries of this apartment
Aunt Maria resolved to poke.

She reached it; nobody was in it; suspicious circumstance! Aunt Maria
put an end to this state of questionable solitude by entering. A dark room; no
light except from a trap door; a very proper place for improper doings. At one
end rose a large, square block of red sandstone, on which was carved a round
face environed by rays, probably representing the sun. Aunt Maria remembered
the sacrificial altars of the Aztecs, and judged that the old sanguinary religion of
Tenochtitlan was not yet extinct. She became more convinced of this terrific
fact when she discovered that the red tint of the stone was deepened in various
places by stains which resembled blood.

Three or four horrible suggestions arose in succession to jerk at her heartstrings.
Were these Moquis still in the habit of offering human sacrifices?
Would a woman answer their purpose, and particularly a white woman? If they
should catch her there, in the presence of their deity, would they consider it a
leading of Providence? Aunt Maria, notwithstanding her curiosity and courage,
began to feel a desire to retreat.

Her reflections were interrupted and her emotions accelerated by darkness.
Evidently the door had been shut; then she heard a rustling of approaching feet
and an awful whispering; then projected hands impeded her gropings toward
safety. While she stood still, too completely blinded to fly and too frightened to
scream, a light gleamed from behind the altar and presently rose into a flame.
The sacred fire!—she knew it as soon as she saw it; she remembered Prescott,
and recognized it at a glance.

By its flickering rays she perceived that the apartment was full of men, all
robed in blankets of ebony blackness, and all gazing at her in solemn silence.
Two of them, venerable elders with long white hair, stood in front of the others,
making genuflexions and signs of adoration toward the carved face on the altar.
Presently they advanced to her, one of them suddenly seizing her by the shoulders
and pinioning her arms behind her, while the other drew from beneath his
robe a long sharp knife of the glassy flint known as obsidian.

At this point the horrified Aunt Maria found her voice, and uttered a piercing
scream.

At the close of her scream she by a supreme effort turned on her side, raised
her hands to her face, rubbed her eyes open, stared at Clara, who was lying near
her, and mumbled, “I've had an awful nightmare.”

That was it. There was no altar, nor holy fire, nor high priest, nor flint
lancet. She hadn't been anywhere, and she hadn't even screamed, except in
imagination. She was on her blanket, alongside of her niece, in the house of
the Moqui chief, and as safe as need be.

CHAPTER XV.

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But the visionary terror had scarcely gone when a real one came. Coronado
appeared—Coronado, the descendant of the great Vasquez—Coronado, whom the
Moquis would destroy if they heard his name—of whom they would not leave
two limbs or two fingers together. From her dormitory she saw him walk into
the main room of the house in his airiest and cheeriest manner, bowing and
smiling to right, bowing and smiling to left, winning Moqui hearts in a moment,
a charmer of a Coronado. He shook hands with the chief; he shook hands
with all the head men; next a hand to Thurstane and another to Glover. Mrs.
Stanley heard him addressed as Coronado; she looked to see him scattered in
rags on the floor; she tried to muster courage to rush to his rescue.

There was no outcry of rage at the sound of the fatal name, and she could
not perceive that a Moqui countenance smiled the less for it.

Coronado produced a pipe, filled it, lighted it, and handed it to the chief.
That dignitary took it, bowed gravely to each of the four points of the compass,
exhaled a few whiffs, and passed it to his next blanketed neighbor, who likewise
saluted the four cardinal points, smoked a little, and sent it on. Mrs. Stanley
drew a sigh of relief; the pipe of peace had been used, and there would be no
bloodshed; she saw the whole bearing of her favorite's audacious manœuvre at a
glance.

Coronado now glided into the obscure room where she and Clara were sitting
on their blankets and skins. He kissed his hand to the one and the other, and
rolled out some melodious congratulations.

“You reckless creature!” whispered Aunt Maria. “How dared you come
up here?”

“Why so?” asked the Mexican, for once puzzled.

“Your name! Your ancestor!”

“Ah!!” and Coronado smiled mysteriously. “There is no danger. We
are under the protection of the American eagle. Moreover, hospitalities have
been interchanged.”

Next the experiences of the last twenty-four hours, first Mrs. Stanley's version
and then Coronado's, were related. He had little to tell: there had been
a quiet night and much slumber; the Moquis had stood guard and been every
way friendly; the Apaches had left the valley and gone to parts unknown.

The truth is that he had slept more than half of the time. Journeying, fighting,
watching, and anxiety had exhausted him as well as every one else, and enabled
him to plunge into slumber with a delicious consciousness of it as a
restorative and a luxury.

Now that he was himself again, he wondered at what he had been. For two
days he had faced death, fighting like a legionary or a knight-errant, and in
short playing the hero. What was there in his nature, or what had there been
in his selfish and lazy life, that was akin to such fine frenzies? As he remembered
it all, he hardly knew himself for the same old Coronado.

Well, being safe again, he was a devoted lover again, and he must get on
with his courtship. Considering that Clara and Thurstane, if left much together
here in the pueblo, might lead each other into the temptation of a betrothal, he
decided that he must be at hand to prevent such a catastrophe, and so here he
was. Presently he began to talk to the girl in Spanish; then he begged the
aunt's pardon for speaking what was to her an unknown tongue; but he had, he

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said, some family matters for his cousin's ear; would Mrs. Stanley be so good
as to excuse him?

“Certainly,” returned that far-sighted woman, guessing what the family matters
might be, and approving them. “By the way, I have something to do,”
she added. “I must attend to it immediately.”

By this time she remembered all about her nightmare, and she was in a state
of inflammation as to the Moqui religion. If the dream were true, if the Moquis
were in the habit of sacrificing strong-minded women or any kind of women,
she must know it and put a stop to it. Stepping into the central room, where
Thurstane and Glover were smoking with a number of Indians, she said in her
prompt, positive way, “I must look into these people's religion. Does anybody
know whether they have any?”

The Lieutenant had a spark or two of information on the subject. Through
the medium of a Navajo who had strolled into the pueblo, and who spoke a little
Spanish and a good deal of Moqui, he had been catechising the chief as to
manners, customs, etc.

“I understand,” he said, “that they have a sacred fire which they never suffer
to go out. They are believed to worship the sun, like the ancient Aztecs.
The sacred fire seems to confirm the suspicion.”

“Sacred fire! vestal virgins, too, I suppose! can they be Romans?” reasoned
Aunt Maria, beginning to doubt Prince Madoc.

“The vestal virgins here are old men,” replied Ralph, wickedly pleased to
get a joke on the lady.

“Oh! The Moquis are not Romans,” decided Mrs Stanley. “Well, what
do these old men do?”

“Keep the fire burning.”

“What if it should go out? What would happen?”

“I don't know,” responded the sub-acid Thurstane.

“I didn't suppose you did,” said Aunt Maria pettishly. “Captain Glover, I
want you to come with me.”

Followed by the subservient skipper, she marched to the other end of the
pueblo. There was the mysterious apartment; it was not really a temple, but
a sort of public hall and general lounging place; such rooms exist in the Spanish-speaking
pueblos of Zuni and Laguna, and are there called estufas. The explorers
soon discovered that the only entrance into the estufa was by a trap-door
and a ladder. Now Aunt Maria hated ladders: they were awkward for
skirts, and moreover they made her giddy; so she simply got on her knees and
peeped through the trap-door. But there was a fire directly below, and there
was also a pretty strong smell of pipes of tobacco, so that she saw nothing and
was stifled and disgusted. She sent Glover down, as people lower a dog into a
mine where gases are suspected. After a brief absence the skipper returned and
reported.

“Pooty sizable room. Dark 's a pocket 'n' hot 's a footstove. Three or
four Injuns talkin' 'n' smokin'. Scrap 'f a fire smoulderin' in a kind 'f standee
fireplace without any top.”

“That's the sacred fire,” said Aunt Maria. “How many old men were
watching it?”

“Didn't see any.”

“They must have been there. Did you put the fire out?”

“No water handy,” explained the prudent Glover.

“You might have—expectorated on it.”

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“Reckon I didn't miss it,” said the skipper, who was a chewer of tobacco
and a dead shot with his juice.

“Of course nothing happened.”

“Nary.”

“I knew there wouldn't,” declared the lady triumphantly. “Well, now let
us go back. We know something about the religion of these people. It is certainly
a very interesting study.”

“Didn't appear to me much l'k a temple,” ventured Glover. “Sh'd say t'was
a kind 'f gineral smokin' room 'n' jawin' place. Git together there 'n' talk crops'
n' 'lections 'n' the like.”

“You must be mistaken,” decided Aunt Maria. “There was the sacred
fire.”

She now led the willing captain (for he was as inquisitive as a monkey) on a
round of visits to the houses of the Moquis. She poked smiling through their
kitchens and bedrooms, and gained more information than might have been expected
concerning their spinning and weaving, cheerfully spending ten minutes
in signs to obtain a single idea.

“Never shear their sheep till they are dead!” she exclaimed when that fact
had been gestured into her understanding. “Absurd! There's another specimen
of masculine stupidity. I'll warrant you, if the women had the management
of things, the good-for-nothing brutes would be sheared every day.”

“Jest as they be to hum,” slily suggested Glover, who knew better.

“Certainly,” said Aunt Maria, aware that cows were milked daily.

The Moquis were very hospitable; they absolutely petted the strangers. At
nearly every house presents were offered, such as gourds full of corn, strings of
dried peaches, guavas as big as pomegranates, or bundles of the edible wrapping
paper, all of which Aunt Maria declined with magnanimous waves of the
hand and copious smiles. Curious and amiable faces peeped at the visitors
from the landings and doorways.

“How mild and good they all look!” said Aunt Maria. “They put me in
mind somehow of Shenstone's pastorals. How humanizing a pastoral life is, to
be sure! On the whole, I admire their way of not shearing their sheep alive.
It isn't stupidity, but goodness of heart. A most amiable people!”

“Jest so,” assented Glover. “How it must go ag'in the grain with 'em to
take a skelp when it comes in the way of dooty! A man oughter feel willin' to
be skelped by sech tender-hearted critters.”

“Pshaw!” said Aunt Maria. “I don't believe they ever scalp anybody—unless
it is in self-defence.”

“Dessay. Them fellers that went down to fight the Apaches was painted
up 's savage 's meat-axes. Probably though 'twas to use up some 'f their paint
that was a wastin'. Equinomical, I sh'd say.”

Mrs. Stanley did not see her way clear to comment either upon the fact or
the inference. There were times when she did not understand Glover, and this
was one of the times. He had queer twistical ways of reasoning which often
proved the contrary of what he seemed to want to prove; and she had concluded
that he was a dark-minded man who did not always know what he was
driving at; at all events, a man not invariably comprehensible by clear intellects.

Her attention was presently engaged by a stir in the pueblo. Great things
were evidently at hand; some spectacle was on the point of presentation; what
was it? Aunt Maria guessed marriage, and Captain Glover guessed a war-dance;
but they had no argument, for the skipper gave in. Meantime the Moquis, men,

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women, and children, all dressed in their gayest raiment, were gathering in groups
on the landings and in the square. Presently there was a crowd, a thousand or
fifteen hundred strong; at last appeared the victims, the performers, or whatever
they were.

“Dear me!” murmured Aunt Maria. “Twenty weddings at once! I hope
divorce is frequent.”

Twenty men and twenty women advanced to the centre of the plaza in double
file and faced each other.

The dance began; the performers furnished their own music; each rolled
out a deep aw aw aw under his visor.

“Sounds like a swarm of the biggest kind of blue-bottle flies inside 'f the
biggest kind 'f a sugar hogset,” was Glover's description.

The movement was as monotonous as the melody. The men and women
faced each other without changing positions; there was an alternate lifting of
the feet, in time with the aw aw and the rattling of the gourds; now and then
there was a simultaneous about face.

After a while, open ranks; then rugs and blankets were brought; the maidens
sat down and the men danced at them; trot trot, aw aw, and rattle rattle.

Every third girl now received a large empty gourd, a grooved board, and
the dry shoulder-bone of a sheep. Laying the board on the gourd, she drew the
bone sharply across the edges of the wood, thus producing a sound like a watchman's
rattle.

They danced once on each side of the square; then retired to a house and
rested fifteen minutes; then recommenced their trot. Meanwhile maidens with
large baskets ran about among the spectators, distributing meat, roasted ears of
corn, sheets of bread, and guavas.

So the gayety went on until the sun and the visitors alike withdrew.

“After all, I think it is more interesting than our marriages,” declared Aunt
Maria. “I wonder if we ought to make presents to the wedded couples. There
are a good many of them.”

She was quite amazed when she learned that this was not a wedding, but a
rain-dance, and that the maidens whom she had admired were boys dressed up
in female raiment, the customs of the Moquis not allowing women to take part
in public spectacles.

“What exquisite delicacy!” was her consolatory comment. “Well, well, this
is the golden age, truly.”

When further informed that in marriage among the Moquis it is woman who
takes the initiative, the girl pointing out the young man of her heart and the
girl's father making the offer, which is never refused, Mrs. Stanley almost shed
tears of gratification. Here was something like woman's rights; here was a flash
of the glorious dawn of equality between the sexes; for when she talked of equality
she meant female preëminence.

“And divorces?” she eagerly asked.

“They are at the pleasure of the parties,” explained Thurstane, who had
been catechising the chief at great length through his Navajo.

“And who, in case of a divorce, cares for the children?”

“The grandparents.”

Aunt Maria came near clapping her hands. This was better than Connecticut
or Indiana. A woman here might successively marry all the men whom she
might successively fancy, and thus enjoy a perpetual gush of the affections and
an unruffled current of happiness.

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To such extreme views had this excellent creature been led by brooding over
what she called the wrongs of her sex and the legal tyranny of the other.

But we must return to Coronado and Clara. The man had come up to the
pueblo on purpose to have a plain talk with the girl and learn exactly what she
meant to do with him. It was now more than a week since he had offered himself,
and in that time she had made no sign which indicated her purpose. He
had looked at her and sighed at her without getting a response of any sort.
This could not go on; he must know how she felt towards him; he must know
how much she cared for Thurstane. How else could he decide what to do with
her and with him?

Thus, while the other members of the party were watching the Moqui dances,
Coronado and Clara were talking matters of the heart, and were deciding, unawares
to her, questions of life and death.