"I may not dance, but I also will fast, and I will work with you,"
said Po-tzah. "Others will work with you when they know. Speak for our
children to the god!"

Then he breathed on the hand of Tahn-te who was to do high work and
high penance for the tribe, and Tahn-te felt glad music in his heart
because of the words of his friend, and when he laid aside his white
robe and left his house, he spoke to no other man, but went silent to
the shrine on the mesa where the Arrow-Stone clan build the signal
fire to the mountain god in the night time. There he said the prayers
which were long prayers, and the people who had noted him as he passed
(nude but for the girdle and the downy breath feathers of the eagle)
halted at their work among the corn and the melon vines and watched
him at the shrine. From the terraced roofs also the women turned from
their weaving, or the shaping of pottery, and looked after the tall
bronze figure girded, and white plumed. They could see his
wide-stretched hands scatter the sacred meal of prayer, and then they
saw only a brown runner on the mesa outlined against the western sky.
He had entered the ceremonial run in which there is no moment of rest
from the mesa of the river to the mountains of the pine.

CHAPTER XI

THE MAID OF DREAMS

Indian prayer is not the placid acceptance of thoughts comforting. The
complete man is both mind and body--and all of him must work when the
gods are called upon for work, and by fasting and exhaustion must the
spirit path be made clear for dreams.

The first day Tahn-te had sat in meditation before the sacred wall of
the stone face, chanting the songs to the clouds and the yellow birds
of the sun color, watching the pictured rock until the lines moved
when his body swayed to the chant, and a living thing seemed before
him--the accumulated faiths of all the devotees in that place since
the god was born!

As the sun went behind the mountain he knew the village herald was
telling the people, and the leaders of Povi-whah would fast that night
and send their thoughts to him. Po-tzah would fast although Po-tzah
was not called upon by his position to do so.

And Po-tzah had said, "Speak for our children to the god."

He seemed to hear Po-tzah's voice, and the words repeat themselves in
the dusk, and--stranger still--another voice back of Po-tzah's! it
also spoke of children--through the chanted prayer he heard
it--baffling yet insistent.

Then he k