the blue zig-zag of the sky lightening by which Those Above
send their decrees to earth children who know the signs, and at each
corner the symbols of the Spirit People were on guard.

[Illustration: THE PRAYER OF YAHN TSYN-DEH _Page 109_]

Saeh-pah had said once that they might be devil things, and not god
things, and Yahn had watched her chance, and emptied a jar of dirty
water on her head for that, and no more women said things of the walls
of Yahn Tsyn-deh's house. But whether she deemed them holy or not
holy, she hung the necklace of birds' claws under the symbol of the
Goddess Stenaht-lihan, and then prostrated herself and lay in
silence.

After a long time she spoke.

"All this that the Apache blood be not lost in the flood of a shame!
All this that no Te-hua woman ever again sees that my heart has been
sick--all this that a double curse of--"

But in the midst of her words of whispered prayer speech failed
her--and tears choked her until she sobbed for breath. With all her
will she wished to curse some one whom all her woman's heart forbade
her harm!

CHAPTER X

SHRINES OF THE SACRED PLACES

When new things cast shadows across the Indian mind, every cloud
touching the moon is watched at its birth and at its first hours of
the circle, also the stars. And for those other worlds,--the
planets--is it their brotherhood to the earth that is sealed by a
living sacrifice as they come and as they pass again from the visible
path in the sky?

The Reader of the Stars lives often above the mists of the earth dews.
The door of the high priest Po-Ahtun-ho faces the way of the South
that the shadows of the moon and the shadows also of the sun, make
reckonings for him of that which must be noted. So it has been since
ancient days.

But for the Reader of the Stars there is a door not like another door;
even to the stranger who runs as in a race, the house of the stars is
seen and noted, and known as the sacred place for high prayer, and the
record of the God things.

In Pu-ye the Ancient--and the deserted through centuries, the
dwellings of high priests are marked beyond shadow of doubt, and each
Te-hua man knows as well the dwelling of the Ruler of five centuries
ago in Pu-ye, as he knows the door of his own brother across the court
of the village. And the door of the stars is still beautiful there in
Pu-ye.

Day time or night time the lines of ancient dwellings look ghost-like
in their whiteness. Onl