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©CLB304940
VoLVIII
A Romance of the Pueblo
(Biograph)
By KARL SCHILLER
It was the time of the year, my brothers, when the shadow of the cactus is sharpest on the alkali plain, and the small, green lizard is torpid and motionless, save for its tongue of forked, red flame — the time of all times in the year, my brothers, for man and maid to gaze into each other's eyes. She was the Apache, Natoma, which is, in the tongue of the white man, the Desired One. He, Mon-a-tu, a Pueblo born, was of the despised folk who dwell in houses, shutting away the Great Spirit's blessings with walls of clay and straw. They loved, my brothers, as in your clean, white youth-days you dreamed of love. Little they spoke, never had their lips touched; yet the Great Spirit sends few sweeter things to mankind than was theirs.
The town — so old that Koto, the wise eagle of stone on the promontory, had forgotten when it was first made — led thru narrow highways and byways, thru cobbled lanes and deserted courtyards, to the mission school in the heart of it. Here two or three pale women, in the strange clothing of the white people, taught the children of the Indians to speak a harsh and alien tongue. The
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parents, hating the conquering race, refused instruction for themselves, but sent their children grudgingly. For English is the language in which money is made, my brothers, and the red man's herds and acres grow fewer year by year. Near-by the school was a squat old 'dobe hut that housed the mission doctor and his wife. At first, these two had an ill time of it, for the natives looked askance at the evil-tasting medicines and white, round pills. How, they asked one another, could such a small pill cure such a large ache? And there were better ways, surely, of driving the evil spirits away than by an ugly taste on the tongue. But the doctor's wife, Cecilie, was as fair as the mesqua lilies, and her smile was a thing to warm the heart. Moreover, was it not the doctor's black magic that had cured old Kamo's toothache and driven the red patches from the sick children's faces? So, little by little, the men of the desert grew to trust the paleface medicine man; for, my brothers, if folly can make my sore finger well, I will honor folly and be healed. And so it was that when Natoma fell sick, in the schoolroom, of a strange faintness, Mon-a-tu, her lover, carried her in