ly into the
eyes of her son.

"I say it!"

And he remembered that it was more than his mother who spoke, it was
the Medicine Woman of the Twilight and of the strange places, and the
far off thoughts.

He lifted her hand and breathed on it. "I am again Tahn-te," he said,
and smiled. "You make me find myself!"

CHAPTER IV

WHITE SEEKERS OF TREASURE

When Alvarado marched his band of adventurers into the pueblo Ua-lano
to the sound of tom-toms and flutes of welcome, an Indian woman with a
slender boy stood by the gate and watched the welcome of the
strangers.

An exceedingly reckless, rakish lot they were--this flower of the
Mexican forces who the Viceroy was only too willing should explore all
lands, and seas, so they kept themselves away from the capitol.

The women and the children shrank back as the horses clattered in.
Some laughed to cover their fear, others threw prayer meal, and their
fright made the commander notice the blanketed figure of the woman
whose eyes alone shone above the draperies held close, and who stared
so keenly into each white face as they passed.

"Who is the dame in the mask of the blanket?" he asked of his host
Chief Bigotes--the courteous barbarian who had crossed seventy leagues
of the desert to ask that his village be honored by the god-like ones
from the south.

Bigotes looked at her, did not know, but after inquiring came back and
spoke.

"It is a strange thing but it is true," said the interpreter, "she is
called the One from the Twilight Land. She went as a girl from Te-hua
to Ah-ko for study with the medicine people of one order there. One
night it was as if she go into the earth, or up in the sky. No one
ever see her any more. It was the year of the fire of the star across
the sky. Now she comes from the west and so great a medicine woman is
she that leading men are sent to guard her on the trail to the Te-hua
people--and to guard her son."

"Faith! Your strangers are a handsome pair. The boy would make a fine
page in a civilized land. He is the fairest Indian I've seen."

The boy knew that his mother and himself were objects of query, and
stood stolid, erect and disdainful,--the stranger should see that all
their clanking iron, their dominating swagger, and their trained
animals could not make him move an eyelash of wonder.

But to his mother he said:

"They have much that we will need if we ever fight them; their
clanking clothes and shields can break ma