'll
take Helen over to Talavenka's."

Walter went over to call the Pittsburgh young men and Miss Gray and
Helen were together a moment. Helen suddenly asked:

"Do you know Mr. Van Shaw, Lucy? Didn't I hear you say to mother
yesterday that he was related distantly to your mother?"

"Yes," said Miss Gray slowly. "He is. What do you want to know?"

"Anything you can tell me."

Miss Gray looked troubled.

"Are you willing to tell me why you want to know?"

Helen hesitated. Walter and the young men were approaching.

"Give me your full confidence," Miss Gray smiled at Helen. "And I will
know better what to tell."

"I will when there is time for it," Helen said and that was all she
could say, before she was carried into Talavenka's house.

Once inside the little square room with its corn grinding boxes taking
up one whole side of it there was so much of interest that Helen let
everything else wait, as she watched the preparations for the meal soon
to be served. It would be several hours before the snake dance and in
that time there was no likelihood that Van Shaw would try to speak to
her again. She was not afraid of that, but she felt uneasy at the
thought of some future scene, just what she was not clear about, but it
vexed and allured her until finally the surroundings compelled all her
attention and drove everything else out of her imagination.

Her father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Masters and Miss Gray were invited
with her to the mid day meal in the house. The rest of the Tolchaco
party ate out of doors on the platform by the door. There was boiled
mutton, red, white and blue wafer bread made of corn meal that made one
think he was eating wall paper, Elijah Clifford said, melons, green peas
taken from a can that had a Ft. Wayne, Ind., label on it, and to Mr. and
Mrs. Douglas's astonishment some delicious peaches brought by
Talavenka's brother all the way from their little garden down by the
Oraibi Wash. In reply to questions from Mr. Masters, who used Talavenka
as interpreter, Schewingoiashchi said, as if it were an ordinary every
day occurrence, that her oldest boy nineteen years old had run
twenty-five miles that forenoon to get the peaches from the orchard for
their anticipated guests.

About an hour before sunset they all went out to the village plaza to
witness the great event of the year in Oraibi. And as long as they live
they will need no photographs or pictures to make the weird scene vivid
to the