Topanashka had for several days been keeping the informal fast upon which he had determined for the benefit of his grandson’s wooing.  It was a warm, pleasant afternoon.  Since the rain which followed upon the ayash tyucotz the sky had been blue again as before; the season for daily showers had not yet commenced, and the people were in the corn-patches as busy as possible, improving the bright days in weeding and putting the ground in order.  The bottom of the gorge therefore presented an active appearance.  Men and women moved about the houses, in and out of the cave-dwellings, and in the fields.  From the tasselled corn that grew in these plots a tall figure emerged; it was Topanashka himself, and he directed his steps toward the cliffs at the lower end, where the Turquoise people dwelt.  The old man moved as usual with a silent, measured step which would have appeared stately had not his head leaned forward.  He was clad in a wrap of unbleached cotton, and a leather belt girded his loins.  Around his neck a string of crystals of feldspar was negligently thrown; and a fetich of white alabaster, representing rudely the form of a panther, depended from the necklace hanging upon his breast.

The people of the Turquoise or Shyuamo resided on the lower range of cliffs, and formed the most easterly group of cave-dwellings on the Rito.  Here the rocks are no longer absolutely perpendicular; they form steps; and the slope leading to them is overgrown with shrubbery, except where erosive action of wind, as well as of water or frost, has scooped out strange formations in advance of the main wall.  These erosions are mostly regular cones, tent-shaped, between and behind which open chasms and deep rents like the one above which, as we recollect, lies the estufa of the Koshare.  Topanashka walked toward the upper part of the cluster of dwellings of Shyuamo, where the ascending slope was sparsely covered with brush.  In front of one of the caves sat a woman.  She was unusually tall for an Indian, and neither young nor old.  She appeared to be busy extracting the filaments from shrivelled leaves of the yucca, which had been dried by roasting, and afterward had been buried to allow the texture to decay.  So engrossed was the woman by her task that only when the old man stood by her side, and asked, “Where is the tapop?” did she notice his presence.

Koay, for it was she, the towering consort of the governor of the Tyuonyi, did not condescend to reply in words to the inquiry of the war-captain.  She resorted to a lazy pantomime by gathering her two lips to a snout-like projection and thrusting this protuberance forward in the direction of the doorway before which she was squatting.  Then she resumed her occupation.