The Navajo, dark, stately, inscrutable, faced the sun—­his god.  This was his Great Spirit.  The desert was his mother, but the sun was his life.  To the keeper of the winds and rains, to the master of light, to the maker of fire, to the giver of life the Navajo sent up his prayer: 

 Of all the good things of the Earth let me always have plenty. 
 Of all the beautiful things of the Earth let me always have plenty. 
 Peacefully let my horses go and peacefully let my sheep go. 
 God of the Heavens, give me many sheep and horses. 
 God of the Heavens, help me to talk straight. 
 Goddess of the Earth, my Mother, let me walk straight. 
 Now all is well, now all is well, now all is well, now all is well.

Hope and faith were his.

A chief would be born to save the vanishing tribe of Navajos.  A bride would rise from a wind—­kiss of the lilies in the moonlight.

He drank from the clear, cold spring bubbling from under mossy rocks.  He went into the cedars, and the tracks in the trails told him of the visitors of night.  His mustangs whistled to him from the ridge-tops, standing clear with heads up and manes flying, and then trooped down through the sage.  The shepherd-dogs, guardians of the flocks, barked him a welcome, and the sheep bleated and the lambs pattered round him.

In the hogan by the warm, red fire his women baked his bread and cooked his meat.  And he satisfied his hunger.  Then he took choice meat to the hogan of a sick relative, and joined in the song and the dance and the prayer that drove away the evil spirit of illness.  Down in the valley, in a sandy, sunny place, was his corn-field, and here he turned in the water from the ditch, and worked awhile, and went his contented way.

He loved his people, his women, and his children.  To his son he said:  “Be bold and brave.  Grow like the pine.  Work and ride and play that you may be strong.  Talk straight.  Love your brother.  Give half to your friend.  Honor your mother that you may honor your wife.  Pray and listen to your gods.”

Then with his gun and his mustang he climbed the slope of the mountain.  He loved the solitude, but he was never alone.  There were voices on the wind and steps on his trail.  The lofty pine, the lichened rock, the tiny bluebell, the seared crag—­all whispered their secrets.  For him their spirits spoke.  In the morning light Old Stone Face, the mountain, was a red god calling him to the chase.  He was a brother of the eagle, at home on the heights where the winds swept and the earth lay revealed below.

In the golden afternoon, with the warm sun on his back and the blue canyon at his feet, he knew the joy of doing nothing.  He did not need rest, for he was never tired.  The sage-sweet breath of the open was thick in his nostrils, the silence that had so many whisperings was all about him, the loneliness of the wild was his.  His falcon eye saw mustang and sheep, the puff of dust down on the cedar level, the Indian riding on a distant ridge, the gray walls, and the blue clefts.  Here was home, still free, still wild, still untainted.  He saw with the eyes of his ancestors.  He felt them around him.  They had gone into the elements from which their voices came on the wind.  They were the watchers on his trails.