se houses were built either of adobe or of stone, plastered over with
adobe mud; and nearly all those on the ground floor were entered, as
Robinson Crusoe entered his castle, by climbing a ladder to the roof,
and descending another that led down through a skylight. Thus, if an
enemy should succeed in forcing his way through the narrow tunnel into
the plaza, the people would merely retire to their house-tops, draw up
their ladders, and he would find it as hard to get at them as ever.

The upper tiers of houses had doors opening on the roofs of those below
them; but ladders were necessary to climb up from one terrace to
another, so that they were everywhere the most prominent feature of the
place.

There were but few of the inhabitants in the plaza, or in the narrow
lanes leading from it to other open squares; but they swarmed on the
flat house-tops, and gazed down on our friends as eagerly as the latter
gazed up at them. Americans were curiosities to the people of Zuni in
those days.

"Hello!" exclaimed Glen, as they stood in the middle of the plaza,
wondering which way they should go. "Here come some white fellows
dressed up like Indians. I wonder who they can be?"

Sure enough, two young men, having white skins, blue eyes, and yellow
hair, but wearing the leggings and striped blankets of Indians, entered
the square as Glen spoke. He shouted to them, both in English and
Mexican, but they only glanced at him in a startled manner, and then,
hurriedly climbing the nearest ladder, they joined a group who were
curiously inspecting Glen and his companion from a roof.

"Well! that is queer," said the former. "Who do you suppose those chaps
are?"

"I shouldn't be a bit surprised if they were two of the white Indians I
have read of," answered "Billy" Brackett; "and, if so, they are the
greatest curiosities we'll see in this town."

"I never heard of them," said Glen. "Where did they come from?"

"That's more than I can tell, or anybody else. All we know is that the
earliest Spaniards found a race of white people living among the Pueblo
Indians, whom they describe as being exactly like these chaps grinning
at us from that roof. In one respect they are a distinct race, as they
have never been allowed to marry with the dark-skinned Indians; but in
every other respect they are thorough Puebloes, and there is no
tradition going back far enough to show that they were ever anything
else. I believe that the race is nearly extin