But this is a long digression from the sunlit plaza, splashed with the scarlet Pendleton blankets and sky-blue jerkins of visiting chiefs, and the pink sateen Mother-Hubbard of the squaw next me, whose too solid flesh was anchored with pounds and pounds of silver and turquoise,--enough to pawn at the trader’s for a thousand or two of _bahana_ money. To our questions of the symbolism of the dance they made child-like answers: it is to “make rain,”--_mucha agua_ (Spanish is the lingua franca of the Pueblo Indian). Babies in every state of dress from a string of wampum up, crowded shyly for our fast melting chocolates; aged crones, half-blind from the too prevalent trachoma, hospitably invited us into their neat white-washed living rooms, or offered us chairs at their doorways. Doors were wide open; the town kept open house. It gave us an opportunity to see their houses without prying. Our first reaction was surprise at their universal ship-shapeness. We saw dirt floors, on which two or three pallets were folded in neat rows, or in the grander houses, a white enamel bed with one sheet only, and a lace counterpane; a crucifix and two or three portraits of saints on the walls, next a gayly flowered cover of some seed catalogue; a rafter hung with rugs, clothing, and strings of wampum and silver; slings in which the beds are suspended at night, and a blackened stone fireplace in the corner. And nearly always, a blooming plant in a tin can on the wide windowsill, and a lilac bush just outside. Houses are strategically situated in a Pueblo village to permit of every one knowing everything which goes on. If a dog barks, or a stranger takes a snap-shot without toll, twenty women are at their doors shouting malediction. There can be no secrets,--gossip screamed cat-a-corners across a plaza with a face at every door and window and the roofs thronged loses much of its piquancy.