Okoya’s mother scanned her boys with a sober glance, and turned back into the kitchen without uttering a word.

Soon a grating sound issued from that apartment, indicating that toasted corn was being ground on the flat slab called in Queres, yakkat, and now usually termed metate in New Mexico.  The boys meanwhile had approached a niche in the wall.  Each one took a pinch of yellow cornmeal from the painted bowl, and scattered it successively to the north, west, south, east; then threw a little of it up in the air and to the ground before him.  During this performance their lips moved as if in prayer.  Then they separated, for the spirits had been appealed to, and their entrance into their home was under the special protection of Those Above.  Shyuote, whose trout had been ruined during the combat with the girls, threw himself on the roll in the corner, there to mourn over his defeat.  Okoya went out into the court-yard.  Both expected an early meal, for the fire crackled in the dark kitchen, and a clapping of hands gave evidence that corn-cakes were being moulded to appease their hungry stomachs.

The court-yard had become very quiet.  Even the children had gone to rest in a shady place, where they slept in a promiscuous heap, a conglomerate of human bodies, heads, and limbs, intermingled.  The form of an old man rose out of a hatchway in the ground-floor, and a tall figure, slightly stooping, clad in a garment, and with a head of iron gray hair, stood on the flat roof.  He walked toward a beam leading down into the court, seized its upper end and descended with his face toward the wall, but without faltering.  A few steps along the house brought him in front of Okoya, who had squatted near the doorway of his mother’s dwelling.  The youth was so absorbed in gloomy thoughts that the man’s appearance was unexpected.  Starting in surprise and hastily rising, Okoya called into the house,—­

“Yaya, sa umo,—­’Mother, my grandfather!’”

The old man gave a friendly nod to his grandchild, and crossed the threshold, stooping low.  Still lower the tall form had to bend while entering the kitchen door.  He announced his coming to the inmate in a husky voice and the common formula,—­

“Guatzena!”

“Raua,—­’good,’” the woman replied.

Her father squatted close to the fire and fixed his gaze on his daughter.  She knelt on the floor busy spreading dough or thick batter on a heated slab over the fire.  She was baking corn-cakes,—­the well-known tortillas as they are called to-day.

After a short pause the old man quietly inquired,—­

“My child, where is your husband?”

“Zashue Tihua,” the woman answered, without looking up or interrupting her work, “is in the fields.”

“When will he come?”

The woman raised her right hand, and pointed to the hole in the wall, whence light came in from the outside.  The wall faced the west, and the height of the loophole corresponded to that of the sun about one hour before sunset.