We were presently ensconced in the quarters set aside for guests; room, parlor and refectory, where two gentle-faced sisters placed all sorts of temptations on our plates and gathered news of the big, outside world. Then Mother Josephine came in, a Southern face with youth in every feature and youth in her heart, and merry, twinkling, tender, understanding eyes. Presently, you hear a bugle-call signal the boys from play; and the bell sounds to prayers; and a great stillness falls; and you would not know this was Navajo Land at all but for the bright blanketed folk camped on the hill to the right--eerie figures seen against the pink glow of the fading light. Next morning we attended mass in the little chapel upstairs. Priest in vestment, altar aglow with lights and flowers, little black-eyed faces bending over their prayers, the chanting of gently nurtured voices from the stalls--is it the Desert we are in, or an oasis watered by that age-old, never-failing spring of Service? CHAPTER VII ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT THROUGH NAVAJO LAND (_continued_) There are two ways to travel even off the beaten trail. One is to take a map, stake out pins on the points you are going to visit, then pace up to them lightning-flier fashion. If you want to, and are prepared to kill your horses, you can cross Navajo Land in from three to four days. Even going at that pace, you can get a sense of the wonderful coloring of the Painted Desert, of the light lying in shimmering heat layers split by the refraction of the dusty air in prismatic hues, of an atmosphere with the tang of northern ozone and the resinous scent of incense and frankincense and myrrh. You can see the Desert flowers that vie with the sun in brilliant coloring; and feel the Desert night sky come down so close to you that you want to reach up a hand and pluck the jack-o'-lantern stars swinging so low through the pansy-velvet mist. You can even catch a flying glimpse of the most picturesque Indian race in America, the Navajos. Their _hogans_ or circular, mud-wattled houses, are always somewhere near the watering pools and rock springs; and just when you think you are most alone, driving through the sagebrush and dwarf juniper, the bleat of a lamb is apt to call your attention to a flock of sheep and goats scattered almost invisibly up a blue-green hillside. Blue-green, did you say? Yes: that's another thing you can unlearn on a flying trip--the geography definition of a Desert is about as wrong as a definition could be made. A Desert isn't necessarily a vast sandy plain, stretching out in flat and arid waste. It's as variegated in its growth and landscape as your New England or Old England hills and vales, only your Eastern rivers flow all the time, and your Desert rivers are apt to disappear through evaporation and sink below the surface during the heat of the day, coming up again in floods during the rainy months, and in pools during the cool of morning and evening.