-cu-ye killed him too?"

"They made him die when they said I must not take beans or meal to him
where he lived in a cave, and where he made prayers for their shadow
spirits."

"You wanted that he should have food?" asked the Ruler.

"I wanted that he should live to teach me all the books before the end
came," said the boy simply. "It is not all to be learned in two
winters and one summer."

"That is true," said K[=a]-ya-fah the Ruler. "All of a man's life is
needed to learn certain things of magic. It is time now that you come
back and begin the work of the Orders. You have earned the highest
right a boy has yet earned, and no doors will be closed for you on the
sacred things given to people."

"We think that is so," said the governor--"no doors will be closed for
the son of S[=aa]-hanh-que-ah, the Woman of the Twilight."

This was the hour he had dreamed of through the months which had
seemed horrible as the white man's hell. One needs only to read the
several accounts of Coronado's quest for the golden land of the Gran
Quivera in 1540-42 to picture what the life of a little native page
must have been with the dissatisfied adventurers, by whom all
"Indians" were considered as slaves should their service be required.

Men had died beside him on the trail--and there had been times when he
felt he too would die but for the thought of this hour when he could
come back, and the council could say--"It is well!"

"I thank you, and my mother will thank you," he said with his eyes on
the stones of the kiva lest the men see that his eyes were wet. "My
mother said prayers with me always, and that helped me to come back."

"The prayers of the Shadow Woman are high medicine," assented one of
the men. "She brought back my son to live when the breath was gone
away."

"As a little child she had a wisdom not to be taught," affirmed the
Ruler--"and now it is her son who brings us the magic of the iron men.
Tell us how you left the people of Ci-cu-ye."

"They were having glad dances that the Christians were gone, and that
the padres were dead as other men die. So long as they let me I
carried food and water to Padre Luis. Then they guarded me in the
kiva, and laughed at me, and when they let me go I knew it was
because he was no longer alive. No:--they did not harm me. They were
too pleased that I could tell them of where their slave whom they
called the 'Turk'--led the gold hunters searching for the Quivera of
yellow metal