d never forget them again, for the god had
sent them back to him to remember. And Tahn-te trembled at the
wondrous signs given him this night, and sprinkled meal to the four
ways, and held prayer thoughts of exaltation in his heart.

And this was the last day of the boy years of Tahn-te.

He began then the years of the work for which his Other Self told him
he had been born on earth.

CHAPTER VI

TAHN-TE--THE RULER

Summers of the Sun, and winters when the stars danced for the snow,
had passed over the valley of Povi-whah. New people had been born into
the world, and old people had died, but the oldest man in the council,
K[=a]-ye-fah--the Ruler of Things from the Beginning, had lived many
years after the time when he thought the shadow life must come to him.
And to the Woman of the Twilight he had said that it was her son who
kept him living--her son to whom he taught the ancient things of his
own youth. In the keen enthusiasms he had found such a son as he had
longed for. The lost daughter, K[=a]-ye-povi, he had never found--and
never forgotten. To Tahn-te he had talked of her until she almost
lived in their lives. The face of the god-maid on the south mesa had
for K[=a]-ye-fah the outline of chin and backward sweep of hair
strangely akin to the face of the lost child. He liked to think the
god-maid belonged more to his clan of Towa Toan--the High Mesa
clan--than to another.

"If she had not gone into the shadow land, her face would have looked
that way," he said.

"And we could gather bright flowers for her hair,"--said the
boy--"they would be sweeter than the cold, far brightness of the stars
where the god-maid waits," and he pointed to where Antares gleamed
from the heart of the Scorpion above the dusk profile,--"I think of
K[=a]-ye-povi as the dream maid. She will be my always young
sweetheart--my only one."

"That is good," said K[=a]-ye-fah--"very good for the work of the
unborn years."

For the youth was to carry on the tribal prayers to the gods when
K[=a]-ye-fah no longer walked on earth. And his teaching must be
greater than all other teaching, for the Ruler was planning for the
work of the days to come.

And in a day of the early spring the work was made ready, for to
S[=aa]-hanh-que-ah he said:--"A week ago So-hoah-tza went under the
waters of the river and never breathed again. To him was given the
guard of the sacred place of the Sun Father. I have not yet made any
other the guardi