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Far to the front the pink cliffs, the ragged mesas, the dark, volcanic spurs of the Big Colorado stood up and beckoned us onward. But they were a far hundred miles across the shifting sands, and baked day, and ragged rocks. Always in the rear rose the San Francisco peaks, cold and pure, startlingly clear and close in the rare atmosphere.
There are six other villages, three of them ten miles, and the other three about twenty miles, to the east of Oraibi. They, also, are perched upon high mesas, which thrust themselves, like long fingers, into the sandy desert. On the middle mesa are Shungopavi, Mashongnovi and Shipaulovi, while on the eastern mesa are Walpi, Sichomovi and Hano. Sandstone Houses.
Formerly almost as inaccessible as the Himalayas, the Grand Cañon in Arizona can now be reached by the most luxurious methods of modern travelling. From Williams, on the Santa Fé road, a branch line of sixty miles runs over the rolling mesas to the "Bright Angel" hotel at the "Bright Angel Trail."
Dick saw that the travel was fast, but by no means noiseless. The pack animals at times crashed and ripped through the narrow places. It seemed to Gale that any one within a mile could have heard these sounds. From the tops of knolls or ridges he looked back, trying to locate the mesas where the light had danced and the dog had barked alarm.
Homeward then we rode, carrying the dead wolf, and exulting over this, the first death-blow we had been able to inflict on the Currumpaw pack. At intervals during the tragedy, and afterward as we rode homeward, we heard the roar of Lobo as he wandered about on the distant mesas, where he seemed to be searching for Blanca.
And looking in the direction indicated by his outstretched arm, they beheld in the dim distance numerous columns of smoke rising heavenward in the clear morning air from the tops of the mesas that dotted the plain. "'Tis the sign of your coming, Princess!" he continued. "The people have bowed to the will of the White Cloud acknowledged the authority of the White Chief."
Then he lost his temper, and began a serious reproof to the levity of his neighbor, which ended in a good round scolding, as the saucy chat continued to repeat his taunting laugh. This went on till the red-breast flew away in high dudgeon. Why our little brothers in feathers are so much more boisterous than elsewhere, "Up in the parks and the mesas wide, Under the blue of the bluest sky,"
But in general the steep plunges, the white swirls, green and tawny pools, the gliding hush of waters between the meadows and the mesas afford little fishing and few flowers. One looks for these to begin again when once free of the rifted canon walls; the high note of babble and laughter falls off to the steadier mellow tone of a stream that knows its purpose and reflects the sky.
There are rugs from every part of the Navajo Land, and specimens of pottery from the Three Mesas especially from Nampaii, the wonderful woman pottery maker of the First Mesa and fine silver-work gathered from the Navajo silversmiths.
"Now, this here Demijohn, who was by rights a city fella, got to takin' to the timber and the mesas, with John followin' him around lively.
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