of the cloud
symbols that the rain might come;--weird notes of the flute as the
chanters knelt facing the medicine bowl and the sacred corn; then the
coming of the racers from the far fields with the great green stalks
of corn on their shoulders, and the gold of the sunflowers in the
twist of reeds circling their brows. He did not know what the new land
of his mother's tribe would bring him, but he thought not any prayer
could be more beautiful than this glad prayer to the gods. Of that
prayer he talked to Mo-wa-the.

Then eight suns from that day, he went from his mother's home to the
kiva of the Snake Priests, and he heard other prayers, and different
prayers, and when the sun was at the right height, for four days they
left the kiva in silence, and went to the desert for the creeping
brothers of the sands. To the four ways they went, with prayers, and
with digging-sticks. He had wondered in the other days why the men
never spoke as they left the kiva, and as they came back with their
serpent messengers for the gods. After the first snake was caught, and
held aloft for the blessing of the sun, he did not wonder.

He had shrunk, and thought it great magic when the brief public
ceremony of the Snake Order was given before the awe-struck
people:--It had been a matter of amaze when he saw the men he knew as
gentle, kind men, holding the coiling snake of the rattles to their
hearts and dance with the flat heads pressed against their painted
cheeks.

But the eight days and nights in the kiva with these nude, fasting,
praying men, had taught him much, and he learned that the most
wonderful thing in the taming of the serpents was not the thing to
which the people of the dance circle in the open were witness. He was
only a boy, yet he comprehended enough to be awed by the strong magic
of it.

And of that prayer of the serpents he talked not at all to Mo-wa-the.

And the Ancient knew it, and said. "It is well! May he be a great
man--and strong!"

From a sheath of painted serpent skin the Ruler drew a flute brown and
smooth with age.

"Le-lang-uh, the God of the Flute sent me the vision of this when I
was a youth in prayer," he said gently. "I found it as you see it long
after I had become a man. On an ancient shrine uncovered by the Four
Winds in a wilderness I found it. I have no son and I am old. I give
it to you. Strange white gods are coming to the earth in these days,
and in the south they have grown strong to m