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"Puyatye Zaashtesh," Hayoue replies; and each looks at the other inquiringly. Where we might have seen but the usual dim haze veiling distant objects, they have discovered a bluish tint capping the hills like a pale streak. It denotes the presence of smoke, therefore fire.
Her large eyes beamed upon him with an expression of softness and deep joy. "But whither shall we go? Here we are strangers; and the Puyatye, although they are very good to us, speak a tongue we do not understand. Shall we return to the Tyuonyi and live with my mother and the hanutsh?" "Are you sure that your mother is still alive? Are you sure that there is a single one of our people alive?"
Zashue could not control his mirth at the sight of the men in such guise; he broke out in a ringing laugh, pointed at them, and shouted, "Puyatye!" then to himself with the exclamation, "Koshare!" The salutations called forth no reply. The Tanos continued to stare. It was not merely astonishment which caused them to remain motionless; there was quite as much embarrassment on their part.
Those village Indians that dwell east of the Rio Grande are Tanos, and the Queres call them Puyatye. There must be a Tano village in that corner far away where the bluish film hovers. Hayoue is right, a Puyatye Zaashtesh stands where to-day lies the capital of New Mexico, the old Spanish settlement of Santa Fé.
The brothers cast their eyes to the ground; both seem to be in doubt, Zashue is the first to speak. "Do you suppose that our people might be at that Zaashtesh?" Hayoue shrugged his shoulders. "It may be, I don't know." "Will it be safe for us to go to the Puyatye?" the other inquired doubtfully. The younger sighs and answers, "They have never done wrong to us."
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?"
He knew from the talk of old men that the Tanos inhabited villages farther south, and it was possible that the fugitives, afraid of the dispositions of the Puyatye that lived closer to the Tehuas, had avoided them in order to take refuge at a greater distance from the people of the Puye.
"Still if the Tehuas have gone to see them, saying, 'The Queres from the Tyuonyi came to strike us like Moshome over night; look and see that they do not hurt you also, and now we come with shield, bow, and arrow, what can the Puyatye think other than that we are Moshome Queres?" Hayoue feels the weight of this observation; he casts his eye to the ground and remains silent. Zashue continues,
"In the Sierra del Valle are only those whom the Moshome have captured; the others must have turned back along the river, crossing it to go to the Puyatye; for there are no Moshome over here, and if the Puyatye speak like the Tehuas, their hearts are different and more like ours. I think we should go to the Zaashtesh yonder, at the foot of the big kote where the snow is hanging.
"Still they speak the tongue of the people of Karo." "It is true, but they live nearer to us." "But they are Tehuas too, like the people of the north, and " Hayoue interrupts him, saying, "Our folk have gone to them as often as they wished buffalo-hides, and the Puyatye have received them well, giving them what was right. Why should they now be hard toward us?"
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