Page:Laughing Boy-1929.djvu/173

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LauvcHING Boy 161 RS A ! contenting itself with merely calling forth that | eeling. She tried to think that these things were native i :nd close to her, but found that she could only ob- <crve them objectively. She was foreign now. | She could sympathize with their spirit, but not = :ater into it. A door had been closed to her, and | i: times, even standing here among the other | =ectators, in the heart of the Navajo country, | <-c was swept again by a hopeless nostalgia for == country and the people, forever lost, of her zm childhood. When she had been a very little girl, she had —=mbled with terror and awe at the sight of the | =v gods coming into the circle of people. Out in ‘Ze darkness one heard their distant call, repeated | = they came nearer, until with the fourth cry | =v entered the firelight. They danced and sang | ere, majestic and strange; then they vanished lac:in to return to their homes in the sacred mzces. Now they were just Indians whom she | mew, dressed up in a rather silly way. Like many lan—ligious people, she kept slipping into the idea Lav: - these worshippers were pretending to be taken =m -v the patently absurd. Most of the adult | s=—ators had been through the Night Chant ini- gm on; all of them knew that the gods were no gm r- than men in masks; how could they be so

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