The Delight Makers | Page 7

the straight and lofty pine trunks a whitish glare soon appeared.
Brilliant sunlight broke through the tree-tops, and played around the
dark needles, turning them into a brighter, lighter, emerald green. A
background of yellow and cream-coloured rocks, visible now through

openings in the shrubbery, showed that the boys were approaching a
clear space.
Here the elder one suddenly stopped, turned to his brother, looked
straight at him, and asked,--
"Shyuote, what have you heard about the Koshare?"
Instead of answering the child looked down, indifferent and silent, as if
he had not heard the query.
"What have you heard, boy?" continued the other.
Shyuote shrugged his shoulders. He had no inclination to reply.
"Why don't you answer?" Okoya persisted.
His brother looked up, cast a furtive glance at the interlocutor, then
stared vacantly, but with head erect, before him. His eyes were glassy
and without any expression.
[Illustration: The east end of the Cañon of the Tyuonyi]
Whenever the Indian does not wish to speak on any subject, whatever it
be, no power on earth can compel him to break silence. Okoya, as an
Indian, felt rather than understood this; and the child's refusal to answer
a very simple question aroused his suspicions. He looked at the
stubborn boy for a moment, undecided whether he would not resort to
force. The child's taunts had mortified his pride in the first place; now
that child's reticence bred misgivings. He nevertheless restrained both
anger and curiosity for the present, not because of indifference but for
policy's sake, and turned to go. Shyuote looked for a moment as if he
wished to confess to his brother all that the latter inquired about, but
soon pouted, shrugged his shoulders, and set out after Okoya in a lively
fox-trot again.
The valley lay before them; they had reached the end of the grove.
Smiling in the warm glow of a June day, with a sky of deepest azure,

the vale of the Rito expanded between the spot which the boys had
reached and the rocky gateways in the west, where that valley seemed
to begin. Fields, small and covered with young, bushy maize-plants,
skirted the brook, whose silvery thread was seen here and there as its
meanderings carried it beneath the shadow of shrubs and trees, or
exposed it to the full light of the dazzling sun. In the plantations human
forms appeared, now erect, now bent down over their work. A ditch of
medium size bordered the fields on the north, carrying water from the
brook for purposes of irrigation. Still north of the ditch, and between it
and the cliffs, arose a tall building, which from a distance looked like a
high clumsy pile of clay or reddish earth.
This pile was irregularly terraced. Human beings stood on the terraces
or moved along them. Now and then one was seen to rise from the
interior of the pile to one of the terraced roofs, or another slowly sank
from sight, as if descending into the interior of the earthy heap. On the
outside, beams leaned against it, and on them people went up and down,
as if climbing ladders. Thin films of smoke quivered in the air from
imperceptible flues.
The cliffs themselves extended north of this building and east and west
as far as the range of view permitted, like a yellowish ribbon of
towering height with innumerable flexures and alternations of light and
shade. Their base was enlivened by the bustle of those who dwelt in
caves all along the foot of the imposing rocky wall. Where to-day only
vacant holes stare at the visitor, at the hour on the day when our story
begins, human eyes peered through. Other doors were closed by
deer-hides or robes. Sometimes a man, a woman, or a child, would
creep out of one of these openings, and climbing upward, disappear in
the entrance of an upper tier of cave-dwellings. Others would descend
the slope from the cliffs to the fields, while still others returned from
the banks of the ditch or of the brook. At the distance from which the
boys viewed the landscape all passed noiselessly; no human voice, no
clamour disturbed the stillness of the scene.
Peaceful as Nature appeared, neither of the youth were in the least
struck by its charms or influenced by the spell which such a tranquil

and cheerful landscape is likely to exercise upon thinking and feeling
man. With both it was indifference; for the Indian views Nature with
the eyes of a materially interested spectator only. But the elder brother
had another reason for not noticing the beauty of the scene. He was not
only troubled, he was seriously embarrassed. The hint thrown out by
his little brother about the Koshare had struck him; for it led to