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Briefly the Lieutenant told the old man that he loved Barbara and wished to marry her. Inside the house the girl stood out of sight, listening anxiously for her father’s reply, although she well knew what it would be.

“The senor forgets that my daughter is an Indian and that he is a white man.”

“I do not care whether she is Indian or white. I love her and I want her to be my wife.”

“You mean that you do not care what she is now. But after she is your wife you want her to be a white woman in her heart. You want to take her away from me, her father, and away from her mother, and her clan, and all our people, and make her forget us and forget that she is an Indian. No!”

“No, senor!” urged the Lieutenant, “I do not wish her to forget you. She shall come back to visit you whenever she wishes.”

A crafty look came into Ambrosio’s eyes. “There is one way,” he went on quietly, not heeding Wemple’s reply, “in which you may make her your wife. But there is only one.”

The officer leaned eagerly forward in his saddle and the girl inside the door clasped her hands and listened breathlessly. The old Indian went on, slowly and deliberately, as if to give his listener time to weigh his words, while his keen eyes searched the white man’s face.

“You think my daughter loves you well enough to forsake and forget her people if I would let her. Do you love her well enough to leave your people and become one of us? Do you love her well enough to be an Indian all the rest of your life, wear your hair in side-locks, enter the clan of the eagle, or the panther, become Koshare or Cuirana, dance at the feasts, forget your people, and never again be other than an Indian? If you do, speak, and she shall be your wife.”

Ambrosio shut his lips tightly and waited for the young man’s answer. And the young man stared back, his ruddy cheek paling under its sunburn, and spoke not. A whirling panorama of visions was filling his brain as he realized what the old chief’s words meant. He saw himself living the life of these people; renouncing everything that meant “the world” and “life” to him–everything except Barbara; driving burros loaded with wood to town and tramping about its streets with a basket of pottery at his back; saw himself with painted face and nude, smeared body dancing the clownish antics of the Koshare; planting prayer sticks; sprinkling the sacred meal; taking part and pretending belief in all the heathen rites of the pueblo secret religion–and then Barbara sprang out of the house, crying to her father in the Indian tongue, “Wait! Wait!”

Both men turned toward her inquiringly. She stood before them, hesitating, excited, her eyes on the ground, as if anxious but yet unwilling to speak.

“Father,” she began in Spanish, “it is useless for you and the senor to speak longer about this. For since I have returned to my home I do not feel as I did before.” She stopped an instant and then went on hurriedly, pouring out her words with now and then little, gasping stops for breath. “Now I do not wish to marry him. I wish to marry one of my own people. He is not an Indian and never can become one. I know now that I can never be anything but an Indian and so it is better for me to marry one of my own people. I do not wish to marry the senor, even if he should become one of us.”

Wemple looked at her blankly, as if hardly comprehending her words, and then cried out, “Barbara! You cannot mean this!”