almost as time!

The wind came soughing up the canyon with the sound of the sea. The note
of a lonely song sparrow broke the silence in a stab. Somewhere, down
among the tender green, lining the canyon stream, a mourning dove uttered
her sad threnody--then, silence and the soughing wind; then, more
silence; then, if I had done what I wanted to, I would have sat down on
the edge of the canyon wall and let the palpable past come touching me
out of the silence.

A community house of some hundreds of rooms lay directly under me in the
floor of the valley. This was once a populous city twelve miles long, a
city of one long street, with the houses tier on tier above each other,
reached by ladders, and steps worn hip-deep in the stone. Where had the
people gone; and why? What swept their civilization away? When did the
age-old silence fall? Seven thousand people do not leave the city of
their building and choice, of their loves and their hates, and their
wooing and their weddings, of their birth and their deaths--do not leave
without good reason. What was the reason? What gave this place of beauty
and security and thrift over to the habitation of bat and wolf? Why did
the dead race go? Did they flee panic-stricken, pursued like deer by the
Apache and the Ute and the Navajo? Or were they marched out captives,
weeping? Or did they fall by the pestilence? Answer who can! Your guess
is as good as mine! But there is the sacred ceremonial underground
chamber where they worshiped the sacred fire and the plumed serpent,
guardian of the springs; where the young boys were taken at time of
manhood and instructed in virtue and courage and endurance and
cleanliness and reticence. "If thou art stricken, die like the deer with
a silent throat," says the adage of the modern Pueblo Indian. "When the
foolish speak, keep thou silent." "When thou goest on the trail, carry
only a light blanket." Good talk, all of it, for young boys coming to
realize themselves and life! And there farther down the valley is the
stone circle or dancing floor where the people came down from their
cliff to make merry and express in rhythm the emotions which other
nations express in poetry and music. The whole city must have been the
grandstand when the dancing took place down there.

It was Gregoire who called me to myself.

"We cannot take the wagon down there," he said. "No wagon has ever gone
down here. You walk down slow and I come with the horses, one by one.