Little José grew up to boyhood, his status in the world a rather anomalous one—a little lower than the half-blood Mexican peon on the rolling country to the south, a little above the pagan Huichol in the mountains, yet despised by both. Yet that worried him little. For was he not surrounded by loving parents and friends and a not ungenerous nature? To north and south stretched the canyon or barranca of the Bolaños, a great rent in the earth’s crust, carved out through countless ages by the little silvery rivulet hiding in its bottom. Hardly more than a brook in the dry season, it swelled to an impassable, turbulent torrent during the rains. On either side rose the steep sides of the barranca, those to the east leading to the rolling, flat country populated by the “neighbors,” the Mexicans, while to the west the mountains rose higher and higher to form the great Sierra Madre range in which lived the pagan Huichol and Cora Indians. Occasionally small groups of Huichol passed by or through the village on their way to or from their mountain homes, and José peeked at them from behind the shelter of his mother’s skirts, and wondered at their strange dress with many little woven bags around the waist, their queer hats, their bows and arrows.