ah who
was the Feeder of the Wind that fanned the Wheat. He was the first boy
friend of Tahn-te in the valley and always their regard had been
kind.

"This is a time of much striving and I am glad to see you, and see
you here at my door," said Tahn-te the Ruler. "You come from the
ceremonial bath after a night of prayer. I go from the bath for the
making of many days and many nights of prayer. If my mother should
return before I come down from the mountains--"

"She will be in the house of my wife, and she will be as our mother,"
said Po-tzah his friend and clansman.

"Thanks that it is so in your heart," and Tahn-te took the hand of his
friend and breathed upon it. "My mother must not hear much talk of any
trouble to come. If she thought there was danger she would not go from
me, and in council it is decided that when the men of iron come into
the valley, the young wives and the little maids must live for a
season in the ruins of the wide fields of old, and my mother--the
'Woman of the Twilight' is to be the keeper of them there, and they
must not be seen of the strangers."

"They take many wives--if they find them--and are strongest?" asked
Po-tzah thinking of his own wife of a year, and the little brown babe
in its cradle of willow wands swung from the ceiling of their home.
Tahn-te smiled mockingly.

"Their priest will tell you they take but one. But their book where
their god speaks, gives to all his favorites many wives, and helps his
favorites to get them with fighting and much cunning, and in the days
when I was with the christian men who said prayers to that god, I saw
them always live as the book said--and not as Padre Luis said. That
man was a good man--a better man than his book--He was good enough to
be Indian--for that is what the Castilians call us--and all our
brother tribes."

"They call us the same as the Apache or the Hopi people?" asked
Po-tzah in wonder. "Why do they that?"

"The Ancient Father in the Sky has not wished them to know who we are.
He has darkened their minds when they tried to see. They are very
proud--that people! All they saw that was good in the villages, they
argued long about. They are sure that some of their tribe in some
older day did find our fathers and teach our people,--in what other
way could we know to spin and weave, and live in good houses!"

The Priest of the prayers to the mighty Wind of the Four Ways laughed
at the very curious ideas of the white strangers.