My relief, a special officer who would await the appointment of my
successor, asked me to supervise that August Snake Dance. So a day or
two before leaving my post I was once more policing the Walpi ledge
among the rattlesnakes. Then I left the “provinces of the Mohoce or
Mohoqui,” and the Indian Agency I had either built or reconstructed. It
was not the barren, cheerless place I had receipted for. It had been my
home in those long, silent, desert years, and I had come to know every
rock, every bush, every tree, or so it seemed; and where once I had
thought to effect escape in a feeling of rare relief, that was not
exactly my emotion. I looked back and saw the Agency as a little town
asleep in the ancient, mellowed cañon, dreaming under turquoise skies.
Some last Indian waved a farewell. Then the car turned one of the
desert “corners,” and while I was not going beyond the Enchanted
Empire,—for the mystic country of the Pueblos is only another wonderful
province,—yet I had left its heart, and its simplest, kindest people.
A long time after that, I heard this story: One of the interpreters,
who for years had been my voice, moped around the Agency for days,
gloomy, half sullen. He had been a merry fellow.
“What’s wrong with you, Quat-che—sick?” asked an employee.
The Indian looked surprised, and seemed to think for a reason.
“I am unhappy,” he said, finally. “Sometimes I listen—and I miss the
boss’s footsteps.”