Where we might have seen but the usual dim haze veiling distant objects, they have discovered a bluish tint capping the hills like a pale streak.  It denotes the presence of smoke, therefore fire.  Not a burning forest, for there is no high timber on that range of foot-hills, but smoke arising from a place where people are dwelling.  The roaming mountain Indians, the Apaches or Navajos, settle nowhere permanently.  The smoke has not been produced by their straggling camp-fires; it indicates the location of a permanent village.  Those village Indians that dwell east of the Rio Grande are Tanos, and the Queres call them Puyatye.  There must be a Tano village in that corner far away where the bluish film hovers.  Hayoue is right, a Puyatye Zaashtesh stands where to-day lies the capital of New Mexico,—­the old Spanish settlement of Santa Fe.

The brothers cast their eyes to the ground; both seem to be in doubt, Zashue is the first to speak.

“Do you suppose that our people might be at that Zaashtesh?”

Hayoue shrugged his shoulders.

“It may be, I don’t know.”

“Will it be safe for us to go to the Puyatye?” the other inquired doubtfully.

The younger sighs and answers,—­

“They have never done wrong to us.”

“Still they speak the tongue of the people of Karo.”

“It is true, but they live nearer to us.”

“But they are Tehuas too, like the people of the north, and—­”

Hayoue interrupts him, saying,—­

“Our folk have gone to them as often as they wished buffalo-hides, and the Puyatye have received them well, giving them what was right.  Why should they now be hard toward us?”

“Still if the Tehuas have gone to see them, saying, ’The Queres from the Tyuonyi came to strike us like Moshome over night; look and see that they do not hurt you also,’ and now we come with shield, bow, and arrow, what can the Puyatye think other than that we are Moshome Queres?”

Hayoue feels the weight of this observation; he casts his eye to the ground and remains silent.  Zashue continues,—­

“It is true that the Moshome Dinne cannot have killed all our people.  This we found out on the R[=a]tye,” pointing to the Sierra de San Miguel; “ere I killed the old man to take ahtzeta from him, he lifted all of his fingers four times and pointed over here.  Do you not think, satyumishe, that he meant to tell me thereby that forty of our people escaped and fled to Hanyi?”

“I do; and that is the reason why I believe we shall find them in Hashyuko,”—­the eastern corner, the Queres name for the place where Santa Fe stands,—­replied the other, very positively.  “Behold, satyumishe, we have searched everywhere we could, have followed every trail we could follow.  Nearly all the tracks were those of our people, of that I am sure, and how far have we not gone after them?  Ten days at least we were in the mountains on the tracks of the Moshome