In regard to that matter she had scarcely any doubt, unless—­and this thought came to her while she was wending her way slowly homeward—­some one should have followed her and witnessed the strange meeting between her and Cayamo.  In that case everything might be lost.  But there were not the slightest marks of human presence about.  Nature, even, seemed to slumber in the heat of the day; an occasional lizard rustled through the dried twigs and fallen pine needles, a crow sat on a dry limb, and high up in the air an eagle soared below the mares’ tails that streamed over the sky.  It would have been very disagreeable, to say the least, if one or other of the Navajos who were in pursuit of Cayamo should cross her path; but of this she had little fear.  She was already too near the Rito for that.  Soon the gorge opened at her feet, showing a placid, lovely picture,—­the little valley down below, huge pines raising their dark columns by the side of light-green corn-patches, and the tall pile of the big houses looming up like an enormous round tower.  But Shotaye was not affected by scenery.  Walking along the brink to the west she at last reached the upper end, where twelve days ago she had ascended, and where the brook, swollen by late rains, now gushed down the ledges in a series of murmuring cascades.  Here she began her descent, and as the sun disappeared behind threatening clouds over the western mountains, she entered her home again.  Shotaye had spent nearly the whole day on the mesa, had spent it profitably, and was—­so she fancied—­in complete security as regarded her ultimate designs.

And yet had the woman, after taking leave of the strange Indian and after the latter had gone out of sight, peered into the shadow of the pines on one of which the panther had so nimbly captured the unsuspecting turkey, she might have noticed something that would have greatly modified her ideas on this point.  For behind one of them there stood, all the while she and the Tehua were carrying on their pantomime, a human figure intently watching them.  Pressed against the trunk of a tree there was, motionless, quiet, calm, not a common spy, but a cool observer of her doings, whose presence was accidental, but who not only watched but at the same time judged and passed sentence on her actions.

A short time after Shotaye had set out on her walk, Topanashka Tihua also started in the same direction.  With all the self-control he had maintained, inward agitation and sorrow nearly overcame him.  The nearer the hour came when the momentous question that was going to shake the existence of the tribe to its very foundations would be taken in hand, the more conscious he became that he was carrying a terrible load, and that upon his action depended nearly everything.  The feeling of responsibility was crushing.  He had, of course, ascertained nothing new; neither had he thought of making notes of what met his gaze.  But on this last day he felt the necessity of being