ottom up, was the coffin with fresh
chips beside it hewn out that morning in further excavation. Children
played around the coffin and people lounged on its upturned
bottom. Near the front of the house a pot of water was always hot
over a smoldering, smoking fire. Now and then a chicken was brought,
light wood was tossed under the pot, the chicken was beaten to death
-- first the wings, then the neck, and then the head. The fowl was
quickly sprawled over the blaze, its feathers burned to a crisp, and
rubbed off with sticks. Its legs were severed from the body with the
battle-ax and put in the pot. From its front it was then cut through
its ribs with one gash. The back and breast parts were torn apart,
the gall examined and nodded over; the intestines were placed beneath
a large rock, and the gizzard, breast of the chicken, and back with
head attached dropped in the pot. During the killing and dressing
neither of the two men who prepared the feast hurried, yet scarcely
five minutes passed from the time the first blow was struck on the
wing of the squawking fowl until the work was over and the meat in
the boiling pot. The cooking of a fowl always brought a crowd of boys
who hung over the fragrant vessel, and they usually got their share
when, in about twenty minutes, the meat came forth. Three times in
the afternoon a fowl was thus distributed. Cooked pork was passed
among the people, and rice was always being brought. Twice a man went
through the crowd with a large winnowing tray of cooked carabao hide
cut in little blocks. This food was handed out on every side, people
tending children receiving double share. The people gathered and ate
in the congested spaces about the dwelling. The heat was intense --
there was scarcely a breath of air stirring. The odor from the body
was heavy and most sickening to an American, and yet there was no
trace of the unusual on the various faces.

New arrivals came to take their last look at Som-kad', now a black,
bloated, inhuman-looking thing, and they turned away apparently
unaffected by the sight.

The sun slid down behind the mountain ridge lying close to the pueblo,
and a dozen men armed with digging sticks and dirt baskets filed along
the trail some fifteen rods to the last fringe of houses. There they
dug a grave in a small, unused sementera plat where only the old,
rich men of the pueblo are buried. A group of twenty-five old women
gathered standing at the front of the house swa