you never
saw than these delicately nurtured sisters and their swarthy-faced,
black-eyed little wards. These sisters evidently believe that goodness
should be a thing more beautiful, more joyous, more robust than evil;
that the temptation to be good should be greater than the compulsion to
be evil. Sisters are playing tag with the little Indian girls in one
yard; laymen helpers teaching Navajo boys baseball on the open common;
and from one of the upper halls comes the sound of a brass band tuning
up for future festivities.

We were presently ensconced in the quarters set aside for guests; room,
parlor and refectory, where two gentle-faced sisters placed all sorts
of temptations on our plates and gathered news of the big, outside
world. Then Mother Josephine came in, a Southern face with youth in
every feature and youth in her heart, and merry, twinkling, tender,
understanding eyes.

Presently, you hear a bugle-call signal the boys from play; and the bell
sounds to prayers; and a great stillness falls; and you would not know
this was Navajo Land at all but for the bright blanketed folk camped on
the hill to the right--eerie figures seen against the pink glow of the
fading light.

Next morning we attended mass in the little chapel upstairs. Priest in
vestment, altar aglow with lights and flowers, little black-eyed faces
bending over their prayers, the chanting of gently nurtured voices from
the stalls--is it the Desert we are in, or an oasis watered by that
age-old, never-failing spring of Service?

CHAPTER VII

ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT THROUGH NAVAJO LAND (_continued_)

There are two ways to travel even off the beaten trail. One is to take a
map, stake out pins on the points you are going to visit, then pace up
to them lightning-flier fashion. If you want to, and are prepared to
kill your horses, you can cross Navajo Land in from three to four days.
Even going at that pace, you can get a sense of the wonderful coloring
of the Painted Desert, of the light lying in shimmering heat layers
split by the refraction of the dusty air in prismatic hues, of an
atmosphere with the tang of northern ozone and the resinous scent of
incense and frankincense and myrrh. You can see the Desert flowers that
vie with the sun in brilliant coloring; and feel the Desert night sky
come down so close to you that you want to reach up a hand and pluck the
jack-o'-lantern stars swinging so low through the pansy-velvet mist. You
can