Norte was
locked and barred against the seeker of gold or of souls--it was the
closed land of mystery:--the province of sorcerers, where Mother Earth
hid beneath her heart the symbol of the Sun Father.

But there are legends there in the valley of the Te-hua people to tell
of that time of trial three centuries ago. Also there are the records
written on mesa and mountain. In the time of that far away, the Spirit
People worked together on Na-im-be Mountain until of the evergreen
pine, a giant figure of a man grew there, and around him is growing
the white limbs and yellow leaves of the aspen groves. The hands of
that figure reach high overhead and are to the south, and they hold
the great Serpent whose body is as a strung bow in its arch, and whose
head is high on the hill where the enchanted lake, known by every one,
reflects the sky. Tahn-te, whose mother was the Woman of the Twilight,
said the God of Winter would send a sign that the people might know
the ancient worship of the creeping Brother was a true thing--and so
it was done--all men can see it when the Spirit People turn yellow the
leaves.

Other things spoken by him have come true until the Te-hua priests
know that one born of a god did once live among them as a boy and as a
man.

Like children bewildered did the clans of Povi-whah watch the silent
swift departure of their white brothers from whom they had hoped much.
They thought of many things and had trouble thoughts while they waited
until the mourning of Tahn-te in the hills would be over, and he would
come again to their councils. But when the waiting had been so long
that fear touched their hearts, then men of the highest medicine
sought for him in the hills, that his fasts be not too long, and he be
entreated to return:--that turned-away face of the God-Maid on the
mesa made their hearts weak, and they needed the strong prayers of
Tahn-te. His name meant the Sunlight, and their minds were in shadow
after his going away.

With prayer words and prayer music they sought for him, and sacred
pollen was wafted to the four ways, and all the ways of the Spirit,
that the help of the Lost Others might come also.

They told each other of the promise of Po-se-yemo and of Ki-pah, that
in each time of stress a leader who was god-sent would come to the
Te-hua people so long as they were faithful to the Things of the
Spirit.

This had truly been a season of stress, and an appeal of new, strange
gods!

Tahn-t