“Stupid as his own burro, and not nearly so handsome,” Beverly commented.

The boy turned quietly and stared at my cousin, who had not meant to be overheard.  Nobody could read the meaning of that look, for his face was as impenetrable as the adobe walls of the Palace of the Governors.

“Bev, you are laying up trouble.  An Indian never forgets, and you’ll be finding that fellow under your pillow every night till he gets your scalp,” Rex Krane declared, as we went on our way.

Beverly laughed and stiffened his sturdy young arms.

“He’s welcome to it if he can get it,” he said, carelessly.  “How many million miles do we go to-day, Mr. Krane?”

“Yonder is your terminal,” Rex replied, pointing to a little settlement of mud huts huddling together along the trail.  “They call that little metropolis Agua Fria—­’pure water’—­because there ain’t no water there.  It’s the last place to look for anybody.  That’s why we look there.  You will go in like gentlemen, though—­and don’t be surprised nor make any great noise over anything you see there.  If a riot starts I’ll do the startin’.”

Carelessly as this was said, we understood the command behind it.

Near the village, I happened to glance back over the way we had come, and there, striding in, soft-footed as a cat behind us, was that young Indian.  I turned again just as we reached the first straggling houses at the outskirts of the settlement, but he had disappeared.

It was a strange little village, this Agua Fria.  Its squat dwellings, with impenetrable adobe walls, had sat out there on the sandy edge of the dry Santa Fe River through many and many a lagging decade; a single trail hardly more than a cart-width across ran through it.  A church, mud-walled and ancient, rose above the low houses, but of order or uniformity of outline there was none.  Hands long gone to dust had shaped those crude dwellings on this sunny plain where only man decays, though what he builds endures.

Nobody was in sight and there was something awesome in the very silence everywhere.  Rex lounged carelessly along, as one who had no particular aim in view and was likely to turn back at any moment.  But Beverly and I stared hard in every direction.

At the end of the village two tiny mud huts, separated from each other by a mere crack of space, encroached on this narrow way even a trifle more than the neighboring huts.  As we were passing these a soft Hopi voice called: 

“Beverly!  Beverly!” And Little Blue Flower, peeping shyly out from the narrow opening, lifted a warning hand.

“The church!  The church!” she repeated, softly, then darted out of sight, as if the brown wall were but thick brown vapor into which she melted.

“Why, it’s our own little girl!” Beverly exclaimed, with a smile, just as Little Blue Flower turned away, but I am sure she caught his words and saw his smile.