how
and to what ultimate end the machinations were intended escaped their
penetration. For the same reason they could not come actively to the
relief of the situation, as no overt action had as yet been committed
which would justify an official movement against the conspirators.

Topanashka had for several days been keeping the informal fast upon
which he had determined for the benefit of his grandson's wooing. It was
a warm, pleasant afternoon. Since the rain which followed upon the ayash
tyucotz the sky had been blue again as before; the season for daily
showers had not yet commenced, and the people were in the corn-patches
as busy as possible, improving the bright days in weeding and putting
the ground in order. The bottom of the gorge therefore presented an
active appearance. Men and women moved about the houses, in and out of
the cave-dwellings, and in the fields. From the tasselled corn that grew
in these plots a tall figure emerged; it was Topanashka himself, and he
directed his steps toward the cliffs at the lower end, where the
Turquoise people dwelt. The old man moved as usual with a silent,
measured step which would have appeared stately had not his head leaned
forward. He was clad in a wrap of unbleached cotton, and a leather belt
girded his loins. Around his neck a string of crystals of feldspar was
negligently thrown; and a fetich of white alabaster, representing rudely
the form of a panther, depended from the necklace hanging upon his
breast.

The people of the Turquoise or Shyuamo resided on the lower range of
cliffs, and formed the most easterly group of cave-dwellings on the
Rito. Here the rocks are no longer absolutely perpendicular; they form
steps; and the slope leading to them is overgrown with shrubbery,
except where erosive action of wind, as well as of water or frost, has
scooped out strange formations in advance of the main wall. These
erosions are mostly regular cones, tent-shaped, between and behind which
open chasms and deep rents like the one above which, as we recollect,
lies the estufa of the Koshare. Topanashka walked toward the upper part
of the cluster of dwellings of Shyuamo, where the ascending slope was
sparsely covered with brush. In front of one of the caves sat a woman.
She was unusually tall for an Indian, and neither young nor old. She
appeared to be busy extracting the filaments from shrivelled leaves of
the yucca, which had been dried by roasting, and afterward had been
bu