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Our Town House stood here, on the top of this mound, and on that other, the tallest, stood the god-house, with the Sacred Fire, and the four old men watchers to keep it burning." "I thought," said Oliver, trying to remember what he had read about it, "that the mounds were for burials. People dig into them, you know."
"You had such a charm, she said, for she knew well enough that the sacred charm was kept in the god-house and never shown to the people except on very great occasions. She was sure that the priests had never dared to tell the people that their Sacred Stone had disappeared with the escaped captive. "Given-to-the-Sun took the Medicine bag from her neck and swung it in her fingers.
Two of them hid in their clothing as much Seed as they could lay hands on and went down toward the river. They were watched and followed. So they came back to the house where Waits-by-the-Fire prayed daily with her hand on the Medicine of the Sun. "So came the last day of the feast when the sacred seed would be sealed up in the god-house.
There the Seven laid up their offering of poor food before the altar and stood on the steps of the god-house until the head priestess noticed them. Wisps of incense smoke floated out of the carved doorways and the drone of the priestess like bees in a hollow log.
Every year when the seed is gathered seven ears are laid up in the god-house in memory of the Seven, and for the seed which must be kept for next year's crop there are seven watchers" the Corn Woman included the dancers and herself in a gesture of pride. "We are the keepers of the Seed," she said, "and no man of the tribe knows where it is hidden.
She was Given-to-the-Sun, and she stood by the carved stone corn of the god-house and laughed at them, shuffling and shouldering like buffaloes in the stamping-ground, and not knowing what to think. Voices began to call for the man she had spoken to, 'Toto, O Toto!
It was as much as any Spaniard could do to tell one half-naked Indian from another. "The pearls, too," she touched the casket with her foot, "the finest that Soto had selected from the god-house, I kept by me.
The Tenasas had boats, round like baskets, covered with buffalo hide, and they floated us over, two swimmers to every boat to keep us from drifting downstream. "Here we made a town and a god-house, to keep the corn contented.
There were long councils between Waits-by-the-Fire and the Corn Woman and the priests that came running from the Temple of the Sun. Outside the rumor and the wonder swelled around the god-house like a sudden flood. Faces bobbed up like rubbish in the flood into the bright blocks of light that fell through the doorway, and were shifted and shunted by other faces peering in.
"Far-Looking sat in the god-house at Talimeco, and sent her thought along the trail to turn the strangers back; but what is the thought of one woman against six hundred men! It reached nobody but the lad Perico, and shook him with a midnight terror, so that he screamed and threw himself about. The Spaniards came running with book and bell, for the priest thought the boy was plagued by a devil.
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