his hold he
fell, and when he sat up his face was wet with sweat.

"Try it," he said to Shefford, with his lazy smile. "See if you can
heave it."

Shefford was strong, and there had been a time when he took pride in
his strength. Something in Joe's supreme effort and in the gloom of the
Indian's eyes made Shefford curious about this stone. He bent over and
grasped it as Joe had done. He braced himself and lifted with all his
power, until a red blur obscured his sight and shooting stars seemed to
explode in his head. But he could not even stir the stone.

"Shefford, maybe you'll be able to heft it some day," observed Joe. Then
he pointed to the stone and addressed Nas Ta Bega.

The Indian shook his head and spoke for a moment.

"This is the Isende Aha of the Navajos," explained Joe. "The young
braves are always trying to carry this stone. As soon as one of them can
carry it he is a man. He who carries it farthest is the biggest man. And
just so soon as any Indian can no longer lift it he is old. Nas Ta
Bega says the stone has been carried two miles in his lifetime. His own
father carried it the length of six steps."

"Well! It's plain to me that I am not a man," said Shefford, "or else I
am old."

Joe Lake drawled his lazy laugh and, mounting, rode up the trail. But
Shefford lingered beside the Indian.

"Bi Nai," said Nas Ta Bega, "I am a chief of my tribe, but I have never
been a man. I never lifted that stone. See what the pale-face education
has done for the Indian!"

The Navajo's bitterness made Shefford thoughtful. Could greater injury
be done to man than this--to rob him of his heritage of strength?

Joe drove the bobbing pack-train of burros into the cedars where the
smoke of the hogans curled upward, and soon the whistling of mustangs,
the barking of dogs, the bleating of sheep, told of his reception. And
presently Shefford was in the midst of an animated scene. Great, woolly,
fierce dogs, like wolves, ran out to meet the visitors. Sheep and goats
were everywhere, and little lambs scarcely able to walk, with others
frisky and frolicsome. There were pure-white lambs, and some that
appeared to be painted, and some so beautiful with their fleecy white
all except black faces or ears or tails or feet. They ran right under
Nack-yal's legs and bumped against Shefford, and kept bleating their
thin-piped welcome. Under the cedars surrounding the several hogans were
mustangs that took Shefford's eye. He saw an