Page:Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society V.djvu/215

Rh wand of turquoise. They went but a short distance (about three hundred yards)233 when they came, on the top of a small hill, to a large, smooth stone, adorned with turquoise, sticking in the ground like a stopple in a water-jar. She touched this rock stopple with her wand in four different directions — east, south, west, north — and it sprang up out of the ground. She touched it in an upward direction, and it lay over on its side, revealing a hole which led to a flight of four stone steps.

527. She entered the hole and beckoned to him to follow. When they descended the steps they found themselves in a square apartment with four doors of rock crystal, one on each side. There was a rainbow over each door. With her wand she struck the eastern door and it flew open, disclosing a vast and beautiful country, like this world, but more beautiful. How vast it was the Navaho knew not, for he could not see the end of it. They passed through the door. The land was filled with deer and covered with beautiful flowers. The air was filled with the odor of pollen and the odor of fragrant blossoms. Birds of the most beautiful plumage were flying in the air, perching on the flowers, and building nests in the antlers of the deer. In the distance a light shower of rain was falling, and rainbows shone in every direction. "This, then, is the farm of my father-in-law which you promised to show me," said the Navaho. "It is beautiful; but in truth it is no farm, for I see nothing planted here." She took him into three other apartments. They were all as beautiful as the first, but they contained different animals. In the apartment to the south there were antelope; in that to the west, Rocky Mountain sheep; in that to the north, elk.

528. When they closed the last door and came out to the central apartment they found Deer Raiser there. "Has my son-in-law been in all the rooms and seen all the game?" he asked. "I have seen all," said Natĭ'nĕsthani. "Do you see two sacrificial cigarettes of the deer above the rainbow over the eastern door?" "I see them now," responded the Navaho, "but I did not notice them when I entered." The old man then showed him, over the door in the south, two cigarettes of the antelope; over the door in the west, two cigarettes of the Rocky Mountain sheep; over the door in the north, the single white cigarette of Hastséyalti234 (the elk had no cigarette), and at the bottom of the steps by which they had entered, two cigarettes of the fawn. "Look well at these cigarettes," said the old man, "and remember how they are painted, for such we now sacrifice in our ceremonies." "Are you pleased?" "Do you admire what you have seen?" "What do you think of it all?" Such were the questions the old man asked, and the Navaho made answer: "I thank you. I am glad that I have seen your farm and your pets. Such things I never saw before."