"Real?" cried Sidney. "What do you mean, real?"
"Real in a way. I mean, Sidney, these--I sound crazy to myself saying
it--but I think these are--well, Sid, maybe they're actual prehistoric
Indians."
"Huh?"
"Well, let's put it this way: We asked for them and we got them."
Sidney stared, shocked at George's statement. "You're crazy, all right,"
he said. "Hohokams in the middle of the Twentieth Century?"
"I didn't say they're Hohokams, though they probably are, of the village
here."
"You said they're prehistoric," Sidney accused. He quavered, "Just how
could they be?"
"Sid, you remember in our Indian studies, again and again, we meet the
medicine man who has visions. Even modern ones have done things that are
pretty impossible to explain. I believe they have spiritual powers
beyond the capability of the white man. The prehistoric medicine men may
have developed this power even more. I think the old man there is their
medicine man."
"So?" Sidney invited.
"I'm just supposing now, mind you," George went on. He rubbed his bald
pate again as though afraid of what thoughts were taking place under it.
"Maybe way back--a good many hundreds of years ago--this medicine man
decided to have a vision of the future. And it worked. And here he is
now with some of his people."
"Wait a minute," Sidney objected. "So he had this vision and transported
these people to this moment in time. But if it was hundreds of years ago
they're already dead, been dead for a long time, so how could they--"
"Don't you see, Sid? They can be dead, but their appearance in the
future--for them--couldn't occur until now because it's happened with us
and we weren't living and didn't come along here at the right time until
this minute."