There Are Always Solitary Hawks Sailing Above The Mesa, And
Where Some Blue Tower Of Silence Lifts Out Of The Neighboring
Range, An Eagle Hanging Dizzily, And Always Buzzards High Up In The
Thin, Translucent Air Making A Merry-Go-Round.
Between the
coyote and the birds of carrion the mesa is kept clear of miserable
dead.
The wind, too, is a besom over the treeless spaces, whisking
new sand over the litter of the scant-leaved shrubs, and the little
doorways of the burrowers are as trim as city fronts. It takes man
to leave unsightly scars on the face of the earth. Here on the
mesa the abandoned campoodies of the Paiutes are spots of
desolation long after the wattles of the huts have warped in the
brush heaps. The campoodies are near the watercourses, but never
in the swale of the stream. The Paiute seeks rising ground,
depending on air and sun for purification of his dwelling, and when
it becomes wholly untenable, moves.
A campoodie at noontime, when there is no smoke rising and no
stir of life, resembles nothing so much as a collection of
prodigious wasps' nests. The huts are squat and brown and
chimneyless, facing east, and the inhabitants have the faculty of
quail for making themselves scarce in the underbrush at the
approach of strangers. But they are really not often at home
during midday, only the blind and incompetent left to keep the
camp. These are working hours, and all across the mesa one sees
the women whisking seeds of chia into their spoon-shaped
baskets, these emptied again into the huge conical carriers,
supported on the shoulders by a leather band about the forehead.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 75 of 136
Words from 19596 to 19879
of 35837
