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waited. For several minutes no one spoke or even moved.
The Indians remained standing for a time; then seated themselves.
Presently August Naab greeted them in the Navajo language. This was a
signal for Hare to use his eyes and ears. Another interval of silence
followed before they began to talk. Hare could see only their blanketed
shoulders and black heads.
    "Jack, come round here," said Naab at length. "I've been telling them
about you. These Indians do not like the whites, except my own family.
I hope you'll make friends with them."
    "How do?" said the chief whom Naab had called Eschtah, a stately,
keen-eyed warrior, despite his age.
    The next Navajo greeted him with a guttural word. This was a warrior
whose name might well have been Scarface, for the signs of conflict were
there. It was a face like a bronze mask, cast in the one expression of
untamed desert fierceness.
    Hare bowed to each and felt himself searched by burning eyes, which were
doubtful, yet not unfriendly.
    "Shake," finally said Eschtah, offering his hand.
    "Ugh!" exclaimed Scarbreast, extending a bare silver-braceleted arm.
    This sign of friendship pleased Naab. He wished to enlist the sympathies
of the Navajo chieftains in the young man's behalf. In his ensuing
speech, which was plentifully emphasized with gestures, he lapsed often
into English, saying "weak—no strong" when he placed his hand on Hare's
legs, and "bad" when he touched the young man's chest, concluding with
the words "sick—sick."
    Scarbreast regarded Hare with great earnestness, and when Naab had
finished he said: "Chineago—ping!" and rubbed his hand over his stomach.
    "He says you need meat—lots of deer-meat," translated Naab.
    "Sick," repeated Eschtah, whose English was intelligible. He appeared to
be casting about in his mind for additional words to express his knowledge
of the white man's tongue, and, failing, continued in Navajo: "Tohodena—
moocha—malocha."
    Hare was nonplussed at the roar of laughter from the Mormons. August
shook like a mountain in an earthquake.
    "Eschtah says, 'you hurry, get many squaws—many wives.'"
    Other Indians, russet-skinned warriors, with black hair held close by
bands round their foreheads, joined the circle, and sitting before the
fire clasped their knees and talked. Hare listened awhile, and then,
being fatigued, he sought the cedar-tree where he had left his blankets.
The dry mat of needles made an odorous bed. He placed a sack of grain
for a pillow, and doubling up one blanket to lie upon, he pulled the
others over him. Then he watched and listened. The cedar-wood burned
with a clear flame, and occasionally snapped out a red spark. The voices
of the Navajos, scarcely audible, sounded "toa's" and "taa's"—syllables
he soon learned were characteristic and dominant—in low, deep murmurs.
It reminded Hare of something that before had been pleasant to his ear.
Then it came to mind: a remembrance of Mescal's sweet voice, and that
recalled the kinship between her and the Navajo chieftain. He looked
about, endeavoring to find her in the ring of light, for he felt in her a
fascination akin to the charm of this twilight hour. Dusky forms passed
to and fro under the trees; the tinkle of bells on hobbled mustangs rang
from the forest; coyotes had begun their night quest with wild howls; the
camp-fire burned red, and shadows flickered on the blanketed Indians; the
wind now moaned, now lulled in the cedars.
    Hare lay back in his blankets and saw lustrous stars through the network
of branches. With their light in his face and the cold wind waving his
hair on his brow he thought of the strangeness of it all, of its
remoteness from anything ever known to him before, of its inexpressible
wildness. And a rush of emotion he failed wholly to stifle proved to him
that he could have loved this life if—if he had not of late come to
believe that he had not long to live. Still Naab's influence exorcised
even that one sad thought; and he flung it from him in