“The doc’ has vamoosed,” he said, grinning; “but that won’t do him any good. They’ll run him down in the scrub, and bring him in hog-tied. I’ve told a dozen old women that he is stingy with his dancing. Self-defense—otherwise you an’ me’d have to do it all.” “Explain this dancing act,” I requested. “Don’t worry,” Robert replied. “The squaws will attend to everything for yeh. Just yield gracefully—an’ pay ’em. Don’t forget that.” Now from the hogan came a band of solemn-featured men, led by an old gentleman of the tribe who bore a strong resemblance to Rameses III, straight out of glass case No. 12, as you go down the east corridor, save that he was slightly animated. He bore a staff, to which a little gourd-drum was tied. The group formed a wedge behind him. Silently they swayed together, shoulders touching, for several seconds. Then the old one tapped the drum and intoned a howl, and with one accord they were off, like a flock of coon dogs on a cold night. In time with the curious rhythm they continued swaying, and occasionally did a hop-step without moving forward. The fire beat upon them and, as they warmed to the chanting, heads thrown back, mouths agape, and vocal chords never missing a note, the sweat beaded on their foreheads. “This,” said Roberts to me, in solemn appreciation, “this is some singing—I never heard better.” And I agreed with him. It laid over anything I had ever heard, including a Mott Street theatre choir. It is impossible to describe the nuances of the Navajo chants. At the farthest northern trading-post there lives a lady who can translate the Rain Song, the Prayer before Day, and other of their invocations; and I know a white man who had a “medicine sing” held over him to comfort his Navajo wife; but until you meet up with Roberts, properly chaperoned nowadays in the great Jedito Wash, I pass giving any idea of that weird combination of sounds. A long sustained note at times, now a crooning melody, now a sad, half-wild cry, filled with minor effects that would be the delight and the despair of any jazz artist, it is indeed a song of the Desert.