After this refreshment they mounted to their roof and watched the preparations for the festivities of the next day. Mr. Sanchez pointed out the entrance to the _estufa_, or underground council-chamber, into which the young men of the tribe were disappearing for the celebration of mysterious pagan rites.
"I thought the Pueblos were Roman Catholics," Mr. Armstrong remarked.
The Catholic priest shook his head sadly. "Our converts have always remained half pagan," he said; "the early missionaries were content to engraft as much Christianity as they could on the old customs, thinking that the better faith would gradually supplant the old, but the old rites and ceremonies have remained. Still we must hesitate to say that the Fathers did wrong, since it was the only way to win the savages to the holy faith."
The priest strolled away to visit the church and to find a Mexican brother who was to celebrate Mass on the next day. The church was a ruinous building which stood apart from the others. The army officer told of the siege which it sustained during the Mexican War, and pointed to the indentations made in its walls by cannon-balls.
The situation was such a strange one that Jim slept but little. All night long he could hear the dull beat of the tom-toms in the _estufa_, and as soon as the first streak of dawn illumined the sky the pueblo was awake and all excitement. Indians from neighboring towns poured in, some on foot, and others mounted on ponies or donkeys.
In the plaza stood a great pole resembling a flag-staff, but instead of a banner there dangled from the top a live sheep and a basket of bread and grain, with a garland of fruits and vegetables. The church bell was clanging for Mass, and Jim followed the others. An old Mexican priest was the celebrant, and a few young Indians in red cotton petticoats and coarse lace overskirts waited upon him awkwardly as altar-boys. When the Host was elevated, an Indian at the door beat the tom-tom, and four musket-shots were fired. The priest then marched down the centre of the church, followed by the altar-boys, one of whom bore a hideous painting, which Mr. Sanchez assured them was painted in Spain by the great Murillo, and might be had, through him, for a trifling sum. The congregation joined in the procession and followed to the race-track, where games, races, and dances were participated in by fifty young men of Taos against fifty from other pueblos. The sports were witnessed by fully two thousand spectators, who swarmed along the terraces, and formed a packed mass of men, women, children, horses, and donkeys around the race-track. There was a group of visitors standing near our travelers, who regarded the races with intense interest. It consisted of an old man dressed in white linen blouse and trousers, with a red handkerchief knotted about his gray locks, an obese and not over cleanly old lady in full Indian toggery, and a young girl in a pink calico dress, with a black shawl over her head and shoulders. They watched one of the runners with the most intense excitement, and when he came off victor in several of the contests, their enthusiasm knew no bounds. "That old man is the Governor of the pueblo of ----," said Mr. Sanchez. "It is his son who has just stepped out to lead the corn-dance. The daughter, little Rosaria, is pretty, is she not?" He approached her as he spoke, with easy assurance, and taking her by the chin, made some remarks in the Pueblo language intended to be complimentary; but the girl twisted herself from his grasp with hot indignation; and Sanchez returned, grumbling that since she had been to the Ramona School at Santa Fé she was too much of a lady to speak to anyone. Jim was standing beside her; and sure, from her manner, that she understood English, he asked her to explain the corn-dance to him. She did so, very kindly, and the hunt-dance which followed, when the painted clowns brought out grotesque clay images, and after adoring them fired at them, and shattered them in fragments, the crowd scrambling for the pieces. The young man who had been pointed out as the Governor's son secured a piece, and brought it to the girl in triumph. "That is the ear of a wolf," she said. "It means that he will have success in the south; we, who have been taught better, do not believe these old charms any more."