Helen wondered with her father whether there were a vein of seriousness in the man’s thought.  Howard squatted on his heels, from which he had removed his spurs; they were very high heels, but none the less he seemed comfortably at home rocking on them.  Longstreet noted with his keen eyes, altered his own squatting position a fraction, and opened his mouth for another question.  But Howard forestalled him, saying casually: 

’I have known queer things to happen here, within a few hundred yards of this place.  I haven’t had time to go finding out the why of them; they didn’t come into my day’s work.  I have listened to some interesting yarns; truth or lies it didn’t matter to me.  They say that ghosts haunt the Pool just yonder.  I have never seen a ghost; there’s nothing in raising ghosts for market, and I’m the busiest man I know trying to chew a chunk that I have bitten off.  They tell you down at San Juan and in Poco Poco, and all the way up to Tecolote, that if you will come here a certain moonlight night of the year and will watch the water of the pool, you’ll see a vision sent up by the gods of the Underworld.  They’ll even tell you how a nice little old god by the name of Pookhonghoya appears now and then by night, hunting souls of enemies—­and running by the side of the biggest, strangest wolf that human eyes ever saw.’

Helen looked at him swiftly.  He had added the last item almost as an afterthought.  She imagined that he had embellished the old tale from his own recent experience, and, further, that Mr. Alan Howard was making fun of them and was no adept in the science of fabrication.

‘They go further,’ Howard spun out his tale.  ’Somewhere in the desert country to the north there is, I believe, a tribe of Hidden People that the white man has never seen.  The interesting thing about them is that they are governed by a young and altogether maddeningly pretty goddess who is white and whose name is Yahoya.  When they come right down to the matter of giving names,’ he added gravely, ’how is a man to go any further than just say, “Quien sabe?"’

‘That is stupid.’ said Longstreet irascibly.  ’It’s a man’s chief affair in life to know.  These absurd legends——­’

‘Don’t you think, papa,’ said Helen coolly, ’that instead of taxing Mr. Howard’s memory and—­and imagination, it would be better if you asked him about our way from here on?’

Howard chuckled.  Professor Longstreet set aside his cup, cleared his throat and agreed with his daughter.

‘I am prospecting,’ he announced, ’for gold.  We are headed for what is known as the Last Ridge country.  I have a map here.’

He drew it from his pocket, neatly folded, and spread it out.  It was a map such as is to be purchased for fifty cents at the store in San Juan, showing the main roads, towns, waterholes and trails.  With a blue pencil he had marked out the way they planned to go.  Howard bent forward and took the paper.