asked that she make prayers with them.

The woman with whom the rain and the sweet fruit had come to the far
desert was a woman to be feasted and propitiated--all the more that
she disclaimed aught of the divine for herself; but when they spoke of
her son she was silent. His life was his own in which to prove what he
might be.

Here he saw no girls with the head bands for their burden of water
bottles as in Tusayan. He saw instead the beautifully poised vases on
the heads of the women while they paced evenly over the rock of the
mesa or the treacherous sand hills, and the great walled reservoir of
shining green water was a constant source of delight to him. Eight
times the height of a man was the depth of it, and at the very bottom
in an unseen crevice was the living spring pulsing out its heart for
the long line of women who brought their decorated jars to be filled.

The evening of their arrival he found his mother there in the shadow
of the high rock walls.

"Are you sad, my mother, that you walk alone and sit in the shadow?"
he asked, but she shook her head.

"I come because this place of the deep water is precious to me," she
said. "Make your prayer here, my son, make your prayer for the people
who thirst in the desert of this earth life. There are many deserts to
cross, and the enchanted hills and the enchanted wells of content are
but few on the trail."

He made the prayer, and scattered the sacred pollen of the corn to the
four ways, and again took up his query.

"The enchanted mesa Kat-zi-mo I have seen and already the men have
told me its story," he said. "But of this well there is no story
except that in the ages ago the water was brought high with the wall,
and when the Apache enemies came, the people could not starve for
water even while the fighters fought a long time. That is all the
story--there is no magic in that."

"There is always magic in the waters of the desert," and the Woman of
the Twilight. "One other time I drank of the water of this well. It
was enchanted that time, for every moving light and shadow on its face
have I remembered all the days and all the nights. Give me to drink of
it now with your own hands, and it will be then precious for two
reasons."

He did as she said, and wanted to ask of that other time and could
not.

"Thanks this day, thanks for my son," she said and sprinkled water to
the four ways and drank. "Not again shall I see you--oh joy place in
the desert! Gi