From the brink they looked down into a deep cleft, at the bottom of which the little Rio de Santa Fe winds its course toward the Rio Grande.  This cleft is the gorge which to-day is called Canon de las Bocas.  South of it the plateaus continue with barren undulations and whitish hills.  They rise gradually to the base of a sombre mountain cluster, the bulk of which was wrapped in clouds, as well as the huge mass of the Sandia chain to its right.  Still farther to the right the Rio Grande valley opened.  Sand-whirls chased along that valley to meet a shower which was sending rain-streaks into it.  A cloud had meanwhile gathered over the heads of the wanderers, thunder reverberated, and the raindrops began to fall.  The men paid no attention; they gazed down at the little torrent beneath, at the groups of poplar-trees on its banks, and at the scattered patches of open ground along its course.  Their desire was to descend into the gorge to search for traces of those whom they longed for.

The descent was impracticable from where they had stopped.  A rim of vertical cliffs of lava and trap formed the upper border of the cleft.  Suddenly Hayoue exclaimed,—­

“Umo, they are not down here, or we should see them from above.  Let us go farther, where there are no rocks, and where the stream enters the gorge.  If our people have come through here we must find their tracks at the outlet.”

“It is well,” replied Zashue.

The shower drizzled out; its main force was spent on the southern plateaus, and cool gusts of wind blew across to the north side.  When the brothers had clambered down the rugged slope covered with scattered lava-blocks to the sandy nook where now stands the hamlet of the “Ciene-quilla,” clouds had again lifted over Hashyuko, and on the slope of the high Sierra the bluish cloudlet swam clear and distinct.

Much water ran in the bed of the river at the mouth of the Bocas, and there was no hope of finding any tracks there.

The men staggered up and down, and at last Zashue stood still, bent over, and appeared to examine something.  Then he called aloud,—­

“Come over here!” With this he raised something from the ground.  Hayoue went over to him, and both looked at the object carefully.  It was a piece of cloth made of cotton dyed black, of the size of a hand, torn off but recently, and soiled by mud and moisture.  Hayoue nodded; the find pleased him.

“That is from our women,” said he.

“The women from the Puyatye,” Zashue said doubtingly, “wear skirts like our koitza.”

“It is so, but the women from Hashyuko do not go so far from their homes now.  Nothing is ripe,—­neither cactus, figs, nor yucca fruit.  What should they come out here for?  When do our women ever go so far from the Zaashtesh?”

“Shotaye used to go farther,” objected the elder.

“Shotaye,” Hayoue muttered, “Shotaye was—­you know what she was!  There is none like her in the world.  What she may be doing in case she is alive, nobody can tell.”