What is he doing here?  It is now more than three weeks since he and his brother Hayoue took leave of the Tyuonyi in order to search for their lost people.  They went forth into that limited, yet for the Indian immensely vast, world to-day called central New Mexico.  In a month a travelling Indian may easily be hundreds of miles away if unimpeded in his march.  But we find him here, barely a day’s journey from the Rito.  A strong man cannot have spent all this time in going such a little distance.  He must have wandered far, strayed back and forth, up and down, perhaps into the western mountains, where the Navajos lurk,—­the bad men who frightened his wife and children away from their homes, or who perhaps captured or killed them.  Or he may have gone to the south, where the black cloud is hanging, and where it thunders, and the rain-streaks hang like long black veils of mourning.  He has perchance tramped down the Rio Grande valley, through sand, by groves of poplar-trees, and where the sand-storms howl and wail.  Now he comes back, unrequited for all his labour and sufferings, for those whom he sought are not with him!

His gaze was not directed to the north when the wolf espied him, but to the east.  He may be on the homeward stretch, but he has not given up all hope.  His eyes look for those whom he has lost; he is loath to give up the search, loath to return alone to the home which the enemy has soiled with the lifeblood of his youngest child.  He is changed in appearance, lean, and with hollow burning eyes he gazes at the clouds as if there he might find his missing wife and children.

As he kneels and gazes, another Indian rises from amidst the shaggy blocks of lava a short distance off, stands up, and then sits down upon a rock.  He turns his head to the east.  He too is gaunt and thin, his features are pale, and his eyes lie deep in their sockets.  On his back hangs a shield; but it is soiled, beaten, and perforated.  To his arm is fastened a war-club, and the quiver on his back is half-filled with newly made arrows.  As this Indian turns his face to the north we recognize him also.  It is Hayoue, Hayoue as emaciated and careworn as his brother Zashue.  They are alone.  Neither has found anything yet.

Zashue rises to go where his brother is sitting.  As the latter perceives him he points with his arm to the east.  There at the farthest end of the plain, at the foot of the high cloud-veiled mountains, a long row of foot-hills recedes in an angle.  To this angle Hayoue is pointing.  An untrained eye would have seen nothing but cedar-clad hills and the lower end of slopes dark and frowning, above which seething clouds occasionally disclose higher folds of mountains whose tops are shrouded in mist.  But Zashue has no untrained eye; he gazes and gazes; at last he turns around to his brother with an approving nod and says,—­

“Fire.”

“Puyatye Zaashtesh,” Hayoue replies; and each looks at the other inquiringly.