ere a child's, and on they go, slowly, painfully, and silently.

It is night now, and the forest is more full of life. The dread voices
of the darkness are heard around them; coyotes howl and whine; in the
distance owls hiss and shriek and flit from tree to tree, as the panting
men approach. They think not of danger, not even of those who so
ruthlessly slaughtered their great and good maseua; on they go as fast
as the heavy load permits and as their heavy hearts afford them
strength.

Now one of them stumbles and falls, and as he rises he notices that the
object over which he has tripped is still clinging to his foot. He
cannot see what it is, but grasping it, discovers a round war-sandal,
over which he has stumbled, whose thongs have remained between his toes.
This discovery he communicates to his companion. With fresh vigour they
resume their dismal march. It is dark, so dark that nothing more can be
seen; nothing more is heard save distant thunder and the discordant
voices of the night in the forest. Slowly and silently they proceed
homeward with their gory but precious burden.

CHAPTER XVI.

Lamentations over a dead body are everywhere a sad and sickening
performance to witness and to hear. Among the aborigines of New
Mexico--among the sedentary tribes at least--the official death-wail is
carried on for four days. The number four plays a conspicuous role in
the lives of those people. And it is natural that it should. Four are
the cardinal points, four the seasons, four times five digits depend
from hands and feet. The Queres has not even a distinct term for finger
or for toe. He designates the former as one above the hand, the latter
as one above the foot. Four days the redman fasts or does penance; four
days he mourns, for that is the time required by the soul to travel from
the place where it has been liberated from the thralls of earthly life
to the place of eternal felicity. At the time of which we are speaking,
the body was still cremated, and with it everything that made up the
personal effects of the deceased.[11] If a man, his clothes, his
weapons, his loom, in case he had practised the art of weaving, were
burned; if a woman, the cooking utensils were "killed;" that is, either
perforated at the bottom or broken over the funeral pyre and afterward
consumed. In this manner the deceased was accompanied by his worldly
goods, in the shape of smoke and steam, through that air in which the
soul travell