Into this circle marched the long line of Snake and Antelope priests, participants in this supreme drama of the year. Very awe-inspiring they looked, their bodies rubbed with red paint, their blackened chins rimmed with a broad line of white and their bare arms glittering with barbaric ornaments. To a sort of hissing chant they marched about an improvised sipapuh which had been located in the broadest part of the court, shaking their rattles and stamping their feet upon the slab as they passed. Four times they made the circuit, as in the ceremony in the kiva, then suddenly breaking into groups of three they rushed to the bush-covered kisi near the end of the circle. A group stopped for a moment before this shrine, and in a moment proceeded, the foremost priest, one of the Snake Clan, carrying in his mouth a squirming snake. The Antelope priest who followed him, in an apparent frenzy of excitement, waved a feathered prayer-stick to and fro to attract the reptile’s attention, but the snake only coiled the more tightly about the head and shoulders of the carrier. One after another each group paused at the kisi and secured one of the wriggling reptiles. Round and round they marched, and then, at a sign from Mosu, an attendant suddenly darted forward and outlined a circle on the floor with sacred meal. Into this the snakes were dropped, to be sprinkled with meal as they fell. A wild scramble ensued, and in a few minutes the snakes were recaptured by the third priests of the groups, who darted across the court and down the niche stairway to replace the reptiles in their native dens. From there they would carry the prayers for rain to the deities of the clouds, the lightning and the thunder, who would thus be brought to bless the crops and insure abundance for the coming year. “And now we are done with games,” said Wiki softly, as he and Kwasa descended the ladder into the kiva to remove their masks and deposit their prayer-plumes before the sanded altar at the end of the chamber. “Yes,” returned Kwasa soberly, “but I shall keep the dice. They have brought us good luck.” CHAPTER V In the Far Fields Spring in the canyons! How good the warm, moist air felt after the rains, and how bright and fresh the young grass looked along the little river so far below the cliff village. The rusty red of the pinons and oaks, and of the dull little cedars, too, had been turned to deep, rich green, and the yucca tufts which clambered bravely almost to the top of the gorge were sending up new lances of vivid color. Life was in the air, and it stirred even the oldest people of the cliff village to a keen interest in the year’s greatest event.