of finely tempered steel, timed to hair trigger exactness. Their lean faces wore an intent look, hardly heeding the antics of the _koshari_ who gamboled around them, standing on their heads, tumbling, shouting, and pulling each other’s tails like monkeys. About evergreen trees planted in the center, they pivoted to all four points of the compass. The dance varied little. The song, the tombés, the shivery gourds and shells, the syncopated beat of each tireless foot on the earth became a background to the color and picnic movement of the village, drowsy in the sunshine, steaming with the odors of people, dogs, jerked beef, cedar smoke and buckskin, whiffs of lilac, fresh willow, snowy sprays of wild pear, and a wet breeze from the Rio Grande. Because rain in that parched country is literally life, the Indians hold this rain dance too sacred to admit as participants any women save the two who beat the drums. “Tomorrow,” said the fat young _koshari_, “nice dance. We dance with the girls then.” [Illustration: RAIN DANCE, SAN YLDEFONSO. They stamped in light, unvarying rhythm.] I dare not claim any authority for the interpretation of the costumes of the Rain Dance. Several natives of the pueblo, including quiet-eyed Juan, the governor, gave us various versions which did not tally in every particular. We had learned that an Indian’s meaning of a lie, which he is fairly scrupulous in avoiding, does not include the answers to questions touching his cherished customs and the private code of his race. The evergreen, all agreed, stood for fertility or verdure; the eagle feathers, with their white and black tips, for the black and white of slashing rain and lowering clouds; the yellow fox-skins represented the yellow of ripe corn; the red and green tassels at the waist the flowers and grass of spring; the white tassels, snow or hail. The symbolism of the thunder clouds was repeated in the black and white of the skunk fur moccasins; the gourds echoed the swish of rain, and the drum-beats the rumble of the thunder; the tortoise shell rattles at the ankle meant either rain and wind, or were a symbol, like the shell necklaces most of them wore, of the ocean, which all desert tribes especially revere, as the Father of all Waters.