Touch gently! They—all children will be gone soon enough. A little while and you can rest from anæmic policies and sophist sermons. The Desert will be lonely without its simple shepherds and their simple customs. Those who strain to inherit it, through legislation, will pack with them no poetry and attract no culture. Great cattle- and sheep-camps, monopolies, grimy oil-rigs, and yawning coal-drifts will mar the Desert. A few old books, a few paintings,—their creators gone, too,—will picture what you once possessed, and experimented with, and auctioned off. For one Shelton, discredited perhaps by a clamor of sanctimonious mediocrity, you have entrusted these people and their empire to twenty Bumbles. Twice you have sought to partition their community life, to make swift the end, to hasten the advent of the speculator who follows estates and bids for the possessions of the dead. At length,—because at length you will succeed in selling the desert heritage,—there will be only the museum case, and dust, and a ticket. The days of approach to a major celebration in the Desert, such as the Snake Dance, were passed in a ferment of preparation and a stew of unrest. All employees would be imposed on in one way or another. Some would be called on to act as stewards, others would surrender their quarters to house unappreciative idlers. And certainly the men would have to drag cars from muddy sloughs, ferry them across dangerous washes, repair them when broken, and perhaps by main strength push some into havens of rest. Certain camps would have to be arranged, and some supplied. No! we did not welcome these extra duties, so often repaid with meagre thanks. But we did enjoy meeting cordial people, both neighbors and visitors, who, catching the holiday freedom of the moment, invigorated by the tonic of the fresh desert air, gave us entertainment of a kind that was relief from long monotonies. The Snake Dance ends very close to sunset. The crowds leave the mesa-top, down the trails afoot or mule-back, down the rocky roads in rough wagons, a scrambling multitude. The sun is gilding the western walls of First Mesa, throwing the east-side roads and trails in shadow, and above, the ruined crest of the headland loom black in a gorgeous halo. The farther eastern valley is bathed in a strange lemon light. The far-away northern capes gleam luminously in scarlet and gold, and then suddenly are gone. Huh-kwat-we, the Terrace of the Winds, pales in lavender and grayish green. Twilight, with its mysterious desert hush, steals over Hopi-land. Something has been fulfilled in accordance with an ancient prophecy. The desert gods have been appeased.