,
and no fear will come! But if the mountain strength waits not at your
door--what then happens?"

No one knew, and the women looked at each other in question. The peace
of the wise woman's words was killed by the bitter laugh of Apache
Yahn.

When the bitter mood touched the girl, the Te-hua people remembered
that her mother was of that wild Apache people--enemy to all. At times
she could be a maid like other maids--with charm and laughter--a very
bewitching Yahn who made herself a beauty barbaric with strings of gay
berries of the rose, or flat girdles of feathers dyed like the
rainbow. Her bare arms had bracelets of little shells. Into the
weaving of her garments she had put threads of crimson in strange
patterns--they were often the symbols of the Apache gods or spirit
people, and when she chose she made the other women feel fear with
them. Her own mother who told her of them, would not have worn them
thus--but Yahn was more Apache than her mother.

One woman shelling corn for the meal, suggested that if the Te-hua
people had not mountain strength it might mean war as the people to
the South had endured that other time--when the men at Tiguex were
burned to ashes by the strangers.

"Oh, wise Saeh-pah!" and Yahn laughed at the late thought,--"Has the
thing at last come to the mind of one of you?"

"I thought of it also," said one of the other women sulkily.

"Ai:--you all thought--but none of you dared say words while the new
Ruler and the wise governor kept silent to the people!" she taunted
them. "Of all the women I only can speak in the speech of the
strangers."

"Think you we will see them?" asked one girl doubtfully--"will we not
all be sent to the hills the days when they come?"

"In other villages they did so in that long ago day--some men never
let their women be seen of the white men who wore the iron."

"I will not be sent to the hills," decided Yahn. "From Ke-yemo and
from Tahn-te I know their words. I will talk for the strangers. I will
learn many things!"

"When was it you learn so much?" asked Saeh-pah jealously.

"A little--little at a time all these years!" declared Yahn in
triumph. "Tahn-te wanted not to forget it--so he said to me the
words--now they are mine."

The women regarded her with a wonder that was almost awe,--there might
be something infernal and unlucky in talking two ways.

"If it be war, think you Ka-yemo will be the war chief as he has been
made?" queried Saeh-pah. "