“Dessay.  Them fellers that went down to fight the Apaches was painted up’s savage’s meat-axes.  Probably though ’twas to use up some ’f their paint that was a wastin’.  Equinomical, I sh’d say.”

Mrs. Stanley did not see her way clear to comment either upon the fact or the inference.  There were times when she did not understand Glover, and this was one of the times.  He had queer twistical ways of reasoning which often proved the contrary of what he seemed to want to prove; and she had concluded that he was a dark-minded man who did not always know what he was driving at; at all events, a man not invariably comprehensible by clear intellects.

Her attention was presently engaged by a stir in the pueblo.  Great things were evidently at hand; some spectacle was on the point of presentation; what was it?  Aunt Maria guessed marriage, and Captain Glover guessed a war-dance; but they had no argument, for the skipper gave in.  Meantime the Moquis, men, women, and children, all dressed in their gayest raiment, were gathering in groups on the landings and in the square.  Presently there was a crowd, a thousand or fifteen hundred strong; at last appeared the victims, the performers, or whatever they were.

“Dear me!” murmured Aunt Maria.  “Twenty weddings at once!  I hope divorce is frequent.”

Twenty men and twenty women advanced to the centre of the plaza in double file and faced each other.

The dance began; the performers furnished their own music; each rolled out a deep aw aw aw under his visor.

“Sounds like a swarm of the biggest kind of blue-bottle flies inside the biggest kind ’f a sugar hogset,” was Glover’s description.

The movement was as monotonous as the melody.  The men and women faced each other without changing positions; there was an alternate lifting of the feet, in time with the aw aw and the rattling of the gourds; now and then there was a simultaneous about face.

After a while, open ranks; then rugs and blankets were brought; the maidens sat down and the men danced at them; trot trot, aw aw, and rattle rattle.

Every third girl now received a large empty gourd, a grooved board, and the dry shoulder-bone of a sheep.  Laying the board on the gourd, she drew the bone sharply across the edges of the wood, thus producing a sound like a watchman’s rattle.

They danced once on each side of the square; then retired to a house and rested fifteen minutes; then recommenced their trot.  Meanwhile maidens with large baskets ran about among the spectators, distributing meat, roasted ears of corn, sheets of bread, and guavas.

So the gayety went on until the sun and the visitors alike withdrew.

“After all, I think it is more interesting than our marriages,” declared Aunt Maria.  “I wonder if we ought to make presents to the wedded couples.  There are a good many of them.”

She was quite amazed when she learned that this was not a wedding, but a rain-dance, and that the maidens whom she had admired were boys dressed up in female raiment, the customs of the Moquis not allowing women to take part in public spectacles.