Myths and Legends
the raft as it passes into the current, and, with many a turn and pitch, whirls on faster and faster. The death-song rises triumphant above the lash of the waves and that distant but awful booming that is to be heard in the canyon. Every red man has his face turned toward the foe with a look of defiance, and the tones of the death-chant have in them something of mockery no less than hate and vaunting.
The raft is now between the jaws of rock that yawn so hungrily. Beyond and below are vast walls, shelving toward the floor of the gulf a thousand feet beneath—their brilliant colors shining in the sun of morning that sheds as peaceful a light on wood and hill as if there were no such thing as brother hunting brother in this free land of ours. The raft is galloping through the foam like a race-horse, and, hardened as the soldiers are, they cannot repress a shudder as they see the fate that the savages have chosen for themselves. Now the brink is reached. The raft tips toward the gulf, and with a cry of triumph the red men are launched over the cataract, into the bellowing chasm, where the mists weep forever on the rocks and mosses.
THE BROAD HOUSE
DOWN in the canyon of Chaco, New Mexico, stands a building evidently coeval with those of the cliff-dwellers, that is still in good preservation and is called the Broad House, When Noqoilpi,
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