"Perhaps they taught our fathers also to eat when they were hungered
and take wives when the time came!" he scoffed.

While they spoke, Ka-yemo crossed a terrace and halted to look at
them, and Po-tzah commented on the fine beads now worn by Ka-yemo
since he had taken a wife--but Po-tzah thought the wife very ugly and
very stupid, and he would rather see his own wife even if her father
had been a cripple and a poor man,--and the girl have never a garment
but a poor one of her own making.

"Ka-yemo is the most beautiful man in the village," said Tahn-te,--"He
has fine looks plenty for one house."

"Tahn-te"--and his friend came more close and spoke softly, "you are
Po-Ahtun-ho, and you know wise things and many things. Do you know
enough to care nothing that Ka-yemo and his friends are not your
friends?"

[Illustration: KA-YEMO _Page 118_]

"Why is it that you think in such a way?" asked Tahn-te quietly.

"He knows the white strangers will deal with one man of the tribe if
they come,--and that will be honor for that man. He knows the words of
the strangers. If you were not the most wise he would be chosen to
make all talks, and he would be a great man. Not much has he
said;--but his friends say things! Already they ask what magic touched
the old men when you were made ruler. They say the Po-Ahtun-ho for all
time was born in the place where he says prayers."

"And I was not born in this place," said Tahn-te, as he looked at the
river valley, and remembered the desert sands of Tusayan, and the
island of rock on which he had lived and been happy once. "It is true,
Po-tzah. But the people forget when they say no other Ruler was born
apart from his people. Po-se-yemo came from a cave in the cliff. He
came down from the mountain to the people. He taught them to listen to
mountain thoughts. I come from a rock in the desert, and the old men
say I brought the Sign that the god made my way. We are yet young,
Po-tzah, when we are older we will know whether the way of the gods is
the way for this people. I know the words of Ka-yemo--but they are not
to be talked of. Alone I go to face the Ancient Father--Sinde-hesi. I
go to the mountain of the Stone Face--I go to dance the dance for
ancient wisdom. The old men know that the time has come for that."

"Alone? No one in our day has danced alone before the faces! No one
has danced in that place since the time of the fire across the sky,
and that dancer did not live. You can