THE TRAIL BOOK

BY

MARY AUSTIN

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY MILO WINTER

1918

[Illustration: "'Arr-rr-ump!' I said"]

TO MARY, MY NIECE

IN THE HOPE THAT SHE MAY FIND THROUGH THE TRAILS OF HER OWN COUNTRY THEROAD TO WONDERLAND CONTENTS

 I HOW OLIVER AND DORCAS JANE FOUND THE TRAIL

 II WHAT THE BUFFALO CHIEF TOLD

 III HOW THE MASTODON HAPPENED FIRST TO BELONG TO A MAN, AS TOLD BY ARRUMPA

 IV THE SECOND PART OF THE MASTODON STORY, CONCERNING THE TRAIL TO THE SEA AND THE TALKING STICK OF TAKU-WAKIN

 V HOW HOWKAWANDA AND FRIEND-AT-THE-BACK FOUND THE TRAIL TO THE BUFFALO COUNTRY; TOLD BY THE COYOTE

 VI DORCAS JANE HEARS HOW THE CORN CAME TO THE VALLEY OF THE MISSI-SIPPU; TOLD BY THE CORN WOMAN

 VII A TELLING OF THE SALT TRAIL, OF TSE-TSE-YOTE AND THE DELIGHT-MAKERS; TOLD BY MOKE-ICHA

VIII YOUNG-MAN-WHO-NEVER-TURNS-BACK: A TELLING OF THE TALLEGEWI, BY ONE OF THEM

 IX HOW THE LENNI-LENAPE CAME FROM SHINAKI AND THE TALLEGEWI FOUGHT THEM: THE SECOND PART OF THE MOUND-BUILDER'S STORY

 X THE MAKING OF A SHAMAN: A TELLING OF THE IROQUOIS TRAIL, BY THE ONONDAGA

 XI THE PEARLS OF COFACHIQUE: HOW LUCAS DE AYLLON CAME TO LOOK FOR THEM AND WHAT THE CACICA FAR-LOOKING DID TO HIM; TOLD BY THE PELICAN. 

 XII HOW THE IRON SHIRTS CAME TO TUSCALOOSA: A TELLING OF THE TRIBUTE ROAD BY THE LADY OF COFACHIQUE. 

XIII HOW THE IRON SHIRTS CAME LOOKING FOR THE SEVEN CITIES OF CIBOLA; TOLD BY THE ROAD-RUNNER. 

 XIV HOW THE MAN OF TWO HEARTS KEPT THE SECRET OF THE HOLY PLACES; TOLD BY THE CONDOR. 

 XV HOW THE MEDICINE OF THE ARROWS WAS BROKEN AT REPUBLICAN RIVER; TOLD BY THE CHIEF OFFICER OF THE DOG SOLDIERS

APPENDIX

GLOSSARY

ILLUSTRATIONS

"'ARR-RR-UMP!' I SAID"

THE BUFFALO CHIEF

THE MASTODON

TAKU AND ARRUMPA

THE TRAIL TO THE SEA

THE TRAIL TO THE BUFFALO COUNTRY

SHOT DOWNWARD TO THE LEDGE WHERE HOWKAWANDA AND YOUNGER BROTHER HUGGEDTHEMSELVES (in color)

THE CORN WOMEN

SIGN OF THE SUN AND THE FOUR QUARTERS

MOKE-ICHA

TSE-TSE-YOTE AND MOKE-ICHA (in Color)

TSE-TSE-YOTE AND MOKE-ICHA

THE MOUND-BUILDERS

THE IROQUOIS TRAIL

THE GOLD-SEEKERS

SHE COULD SEE THE THOUGHTS OF A MAN WHILE THEY WERE STILL IN HIS HEART(in Color)

THE CACICA FAR-LOOKING MEETS THE IRON SHIRTS

THE DESERT

THE CONDOR THAT HAS HIS NEST ON EL MORRO

THE DOG SOLDIERS

LINE ART OF BUFFALO

THE TRAIL BOOK

I

HOW OLIVER AND DORCAS JANE FOUND THE TRAIL

From the time that he had first found, himself alone with them, Oliverhad felt sure that the animals could come alive again if they wished. That was one blowy afternoon about a week after his father had been madenight engineer and nobody had come into the Museum for several hours. 

Oliver had been sitting for some time in front of the Buffalo case, wondering what might be at the other end of the trail. The cows thatstood midway in it had such a _going_ look. He was sure it must lead, past the hummock where the old bull flourished his tail, to one of thoseplaces where he had always wished to be. All at once, as the boy satthere thinking about it, the glass case disappeared and the trail shotout like a dark snake over a great stretch of rolling, grass-coveredprairie. 

He could see the tops of the grasses stirring like the hair on the oldBuffalo's coat, and the ripple of water on the beaver pool which wasjust opposite and yet somehow only to be reached after long travelthrough the Buffalo Country. The wind moved on the grass, on the surfaceof the water and the young leaves of the alders, and over all theanimals came the start and stir of life. 

And then the slow, shuffling steps of the Museum attendant startled itall into stillness again. 

The attendant spoke to Oliver as he passed, for even a small boy isworth talking to when you have been all day in a Museum where nothing isnew to you and nobody comes. 

"You want to look out, son, " said the attendant, who really liked theboy and hadn't a notion what sort of ideas he was putting into Oliver'shead. "If you ain't careful, some of them things will come downstairssome night and go off with ye. "

And why should MacShea have said that if he hadn't known for certainthat the animals _did_ come alive at night? That was the way Oliver putit when he was trying to describe this extraordinary experience tohis sister. 

Dorcas Jane, who was eleven and a half and not at all imaginative, eyedhim suspiciously. Oliver had such a way of stating things that were notat all believable, in a way that made them seem the likeliest things inthe world. He was even capable of acting for days as if things were so, which you knew from the beginning were only the most delightful ofmake-believes. Life on this basis was immensely more exciting, but thenyou never knew whether or not he might be what some of his boy friendscalled "stringing you, " so when Oliver began to hint darkly at hisbelief that the stuffed animals in the Mammal room of the Museum camealive at night and had larks of their own, Dorcas Jane offered the mostnoncommittal objection that occurred to her. 

"They couldn't, " she said; "the night watchman wouldn't let them. " Therewere watchmen, she knew, who went the rounds of every floor. 

But, insisted Oliver, why should they have watchmen at all, if not toprevent people from breaking in and disturbing the animals when theywere busy with affairs of their own? He meant to stay up there himselfsome night and see what it was all about; and as he went on to explainhow it would be possible to slip up the great stair while the watchmenwere at the far end of the long hall, and of the places one could hideif the watchman came along when he wasn't wanted, he said "we" and "us. "For, of course, he meant to take Dorcas Jane with him. Where would bethe fun of such an adventure if you had it alone? And besides, Oliverhad discovered that it was not at all difficult to scare himself with thethings he had merely imagined. There were times when Dorcas Jane's frankdisbelief was a great comfort to him. Still, he wasn't the sort of boyto be scared before anything has really happened, so when Dorcas Janesuggested that they didn't know what the animals might do to any one whowent among them uninvited, he threw it off stoutly. 

"Pshaw! They can't do anything to us! They're stuffed, Silly!"

And to Dorcas Jane, who was by this time completely under the spell ofthe adventure, it seemed quite likely that the animals should be stuffedso that they couldn't hurt you, and yet not stuffed so much that theycouldn't come alive again. 

It was all of a week before they could begin. There is a kind of feelingyou have to have about an adventure without which the affair doesn'tcome off properly. Anybody who has been much by himself in the woods hashad it; or sometime, when you are all alone in the house, all at oncethere comes a kind of pricking of your skin and a tightness in yourchest, not at all unpleasant, and a kind of feeling that the furniturehas its eye on you, or that some one behind your shoulder is about tospeak, and immediately after that something happens. Or you feel sure itwould have happened if somebody hadn't interrupted. 

Dorcas Jane _never_ had feelings like that. But about a week afterOliver had proposed to her that they spend a part of the night in thelong gallery, he was standing in front of the Buffalo case, wonderingwhat actually did happen when a buffalo caught you. Quite unexpectedly, deep behind the big bull's glassy eye, he caught a gleam as of anothereye looking at him, meaningly, and with a great deal of friendliness. Oliver felt prickles come out suddenly all over his body, and withoutquite knowing why, he began to move away from that place, tip-toe andslippingly, like a wild creature in the woods when it does not know whomay be about. He told himself it would never do to have the animals comealive without Dorcas Jane, and before all those stupid, staring folk whomight come in at any minute and spoil everything. 

That night, after their father had gone off clanking to his furnaces, Dorcas heard her brother tapping on the partition between their rooms, as he did sometimes when they played "prisoner. " She knew exactly whathe meant by it and tapped back that she was ready. 

Everything worked out just as they had planned. They heard the strange, hollow-sounding echoes of the watchman's voice dying down the halls, asstair by stair they dropped the street lamps below them, and saw strangeshadows start out of things that were perfectly harmless and familiarby day. 

There was no light in the gallery except faint up-and-down glimmers fromthe glass of the cases, and here and there the little spark of an eye. Outside there was a whole world of light, the milky way of the streetwith the meteor roar of the Elevated going by, processions of smallmoons marching below them across the park, and blazing constellations inthe high windows opposite. Tucked into one of the window benches betweenthe cases, the children seemed to swing into another world where almostanything might happen. And yet for at least a quarter of an hournothing did. 

"I don't believe nothing ever does, " said Dorcas Jane, who was not atall careful of her grammar. 

"Sh-sh!" said Oliver. They had sat down directly in front of the BuffaloTrail, though Dorcas would have preferred to be farther away from thePolar Bear. For suppose it hadn't been properly stuffed! But Oliver hadeyes only for the trail. 

"I want to see where it begins and where it goes, " he insisted. 

So they sat and waited, and though the great building was never allowedto grow quite cold, it was cool enough to make it pleasant for them tosit close together and for Dorcas to tuck her hand into the crook ofhis arm. .. . 

All at once the Bull Buffalo shook himself. 

[Illustration: Line Art of Mastadons]

II

WHAT THE BUFFALO CHIEF TOLD

"_Wake! Wake!_" said the Bull Buffalo, with a roll to it, as though theword had been shouted in a deep voice down an empty barrel. He shook thedust out of his mane and stamped his fore-foot to set the herd inmotion. There were thousands of them feeding as far as the eye couldreach, across the prairie, yearlings and cows with their calves of thatseason, and here and there a bull, tossing his heavy head and sending uplight puffs of dust under the pawings of his hoof as he took up theleader's signal. 

"Wake! Wa--ake!"

It rolled along the ground like thunder. At the sound the herds gatheredthemselves from the prairie, they turned back from the licks, they roseup _plop_ from the wallows, trotting singly in the trails that rayed outto every part of the pastures and led up toward the high ridges. 

"Wa-ak--" began the old bull; then he stopped short, threw up his head, sniffing the wind, and ended with a sharp snort which changed the wordsto "_What? What?_"

"What's this, " said the Bull Buffalo, "Pale Faces?"

"They are very young, " said the young cow, the one with the _going_look. She had just been taken into the herd that season and had theplace of the favorite next to the leader. 

"If you please, sir, " said Oliver, "we only wished to know where thetrail went. "

"Why, " said the Buffalo Chief, surprised, "to the Buffalo roads, ofcourse. We must be changing pasture. " As he pawed contempt upon theshort, dry grass, the rattlesnake, that had been sunning himself at thefoot of the hummock, slid away under the bleached buffalo skull, and thesmall, furry things dived everywhere into their burrows. 

"That is the way always, " said the young cow, "when the Buffalo Peoplebegin their travels. Not even a wolf will stay in the midst of theherds; there would be nothing left of him by the time the hooves hadpassed over. "

The children could see how that might be, for as the thin lines began toconverge toward the high places, it was as if the whole prairie hadturned black and moving. Where the trails drew out of the flat lands tothe watersheds, they were wide enough for eight or ten to walk abreast, trodden hard and white as country roads. There was a deep, continuousmurmur from the cows like the voice of the earth talking to itselfat twilight. 

"Come, " said the old bull, "we must be moving. "

"But what is that?" said Dorcas Jane, as a new sound came from thedirection of the river, a long chant stretching itself like a snakeacross the prairie, and as they listened there were words that liftedand fell with an odd little pony joggle. 

"That is the Pawnees, singing their travel song, " said the BuffaloChief. 

And as he spoke they could see the eagle bonnets of the tribesmen comingup the hollow, every man mounted, with his round shield and the point ofhis lance tilted forward. After them came the women on the pack-ponieswith the goods, and the children stowed on the travoises of lodge-polesthat trailed from the ponies' withers. 

"Ha-ah, " said the old bull. "One has laid his ear to the ground in theirlodges and has heard the earth tremble with the passing of theBuffalo People. "

"But where do they go?" said Dorcas. 

"They follow the herds, " said the old bull, "for the herds are theirfood and their clothes and their housing. It is the Way Things Are thatthe Buffalo People should make the trails and men should ride in them. They go up along the watersheds where the floods cannot mire, where thesnow is lightest, and there are the best lookouts. "

"And, also, there is the easiest going, " said a new voice with a snarlyrunning whine in it. It came from a small gray beast with pointed earsand a bushy tail, and the smut-tipped nose that all coyotes have hadsince their very first father blacked himself bringing fire to Man fromthe Burning Mountain. He had come up very softly at the heels of theBuffalo Chief, who wheeled suddenly and blew steam from his nostrils. 

"That, " he said, "is because of the calves. It is not because a buffalocannot go anywhere it pleases him; down ravines where a horse wouldstumble and up cliffs where even you, O Smut Nose, cannot follow. "

"True, Great Chief, " said the Coyote, "but I seem to remember trailsthat led through the snow to very desirable places. "

This was not altogether kind, for it is well known that it is only whensnow has lain long enough on the ground to pack and have a hard coatingof ice, that the buffaloes dare trust themselves upon it. When it isnew-fallen and soft they flounder about helplessly until they die ofstarvation, and the wolves pull them down, or the Indians come and killthem. But the old bull had the privilege which belongs to greatness, ofnot being obliged to answer impertinent things that were said to him. Hewent on just as if nothing had interrupted, telling how the buffalotrails had found the mountain passes and how they were rutted deep intothe earth by the migrating herds. 

"I have heard, " he said, "that when the Pale Faces came into the countrythey found no better roads anywhere than the buffalo traces--"

"Also, " purred Moke-icha, "I have heard that they found trails throughlands where no buffalo had been before them. " Moke-icha, the Puma, layon a brown boulder that matched so perfectly with her watered coat thatif it had not been for the ruffling of the wind on her short fur and thetwitchings of her tail, the children might not have discovered her. "Look, " she said, stretching out one of her great pads toward the south, where the trail ran thin and white across a puma-colored land, streakedwith black lava and purple shadow. Far at the other end it lifted inred, wall-sided buttes where the homes of the Cliff People stuck likehoneycombs in the wind-scoured hollows. 

"Now I recall a trail in that country, " said Moke-icha, "that was olderthan the oldest father's father of them could remember. Four times ayear the People of the Cliffs went down on it to the Sacred Water, andcame back with bags of salt on their shoulders. "

Even as she spoke they could see the people coming out of the Cliffdwellings and the priests going into the kivas preparing forthe journey. 

That was how it was; when any animal spoke of the country he knew best, that was what the children saw. And yet all the time there was thebeginning of the buffalo trail in front of them, and around them, drawnthere by that something of himself which every man puts into the work ofhis hands, the listening tribesmen. One of these spoke now in answer toMoke-icha. 

"Also in my part of the country, " he said, "long before there were PaleFaces, there were trade trails and graded ways, and walled ways betweenvillage and village. We traded for cherts as far south as Little Riverin the Tenasas Mountains, and north to the Sky-Blue Water for copperwhich was melted out of rocks, and there were workings at Flint Ridgethat were older than the great mound at Cahokia. "

"Oh, " cried both the children at once, "Mound-Builders!"--and theystared at him with interest. 

He was probably not any taller than the other Indians, but seemed so onaccount of his feather headdress which was built up in front with acurious cut-out copper ornament. They thought they recognized the broadbanner stone of greenish slate which he carried, the handle of which wastasseled with turkey beards and tiny tails of ermine. He returned thechildren's stare in the friendliest possible fashion, twirling hisbanner stone as a policeman does his night stick. 

"Were you? Mound-Builders, you know?" questioned Oliver. 

"You could call us that. We called ourselves Tallegewi, and our trailswere old before the buffalo had crossed east of the Missi-Sippu, theFather of all Rivers. Then the country was full of the horned people, thick as flies in the Moon of Stopped Waters. " As he spoke, he pointedto the moose and wapiti trooping down the shallow hills to thewatering-places. They moved with a dancing motion, and the multitude oftheir horns was like a forest walking, a young forest in the springbefore the leaves are out and there is a clicking of antlered bough onbough. "They would come in twenty abreast to the licks where we lay inwait for them, " said the Tallega. "They were the true trail-makers. "

"Then you must have forgotten what I had to do with it, " said a voicethat seemed to come from high up in the air, so that they all looked upsuddenly and would have been frightened at the huge bulk, if the voicecoming from it in a squeaky whisper had not made it seem ridiculous. Itwas the Mastodon, who had strolled in from the pre-historic room, thoughit was a wonder to the children how so large a beast could moveso silently. 

"Hey, " said a Lenni-Lenape, who had sat comfortably smoking all thistime, "I've heard of you--there was an old Telling of myfather's--though I hardly think I believed it. What are you doing here?"

"I've a perfect right to come, " said the Mastodon, shufflingembarrassedly from foot to foot. "I was the first of my kind to have aman belonging to me, and it was I that showed him the trail to the sea. "

"Oh, please, would you tell us about it?" said Dorcas. 

The Mastodon rocked to and fro on his huge feet, embarrassedly. 

"If--if it would please the company--"

Everybody looked at the Buffalo Chief, for, after all, it was he whobegan the party. The old bull pawed dust and blew steam from hisnostrils, which was a perfectly safe thing to do in case the storydidn't turn out to his liking. 

"Tell, tell, " he agreed, in a voice like a man shouting down twenty rainbarrels at once. 

And looking about slyly with his little twinkling eyes at the attentivecircle, the Mastodon began. 

III

HOW THE MASTODON HAPPENED FIRST TO BELONG TO A MAN, AS TOLD BY ARRUMPA

"In my time, everything, even the shape of the land was different. FromTwo Rivers it was all marsh, marsh and swamp with squidgy islands, withswamp and marsh again till you came to hills and hard land, beyond whichwas the sea. Nothing grew then but cane and coarse grass, and the waterrotting the land until there was no knowing where it was safe treadingfrom year to year. Not that it mattered to my people. We kept to thehills where there was plenty of good browse, and left the swamp to theGrass-Eaters--bunt-headed, woolly-haired eaters of grass!"

Up came Arrumpa's trunk to trumpet his contempt, and out from thehillslope like a picture on a screen stretched for a moment the flatreed-bed of Two Rivers, with great herds of silly, elephant-lookingcreatures feeding there, with huge incurving trunks and backs thatsloped absurdly from a high fore-hump. They rootled in the tall grass orshouldered in long, snaky lines through the canes, theirtrunks waggling. 

"Mammoths they were called, " said Arrumpa, "and they hid in the swampbecause their tusks curved in and they were afraid of Saber-Tooth, theTiger. There were a great many of them, though not so many as ourpeople, and also there was Man. It was the year my tusks began to growthat I first saw him. We were coming up from the river to thebedding-ground and there was a thin rim of the moon like a tusk over thehill's shoulder. I remember the damp smell of the earth and the goodsmell of the browse after the sun goes down, and between them a thinblue mist curling with a stinging smell that made prickles come alongthe back of my neck. 

"'What is that?' I said, for I walked yet with my mother. 

"'It is the smell which Man makes so that other people may know where heis and keep away from him, ' she said, for my mother had never beenfriends with Man and she did not know any better. 

"Then we came up over the ridge and saw them, about a score, naked anddancing on the naked front of the hill. They had a fire in their midstfrom which the blue smell went up, and as they danced they sang--

"'Hail, moon, young moon!Hail, hail, young moon!Bring me something that I wish, Hail, moon, hail!'

"--catching up fire-sticks in their hands and tossing them toward thetusk of the moon. That was how they made the moon grow, by working fireinto it, so my man told me afterwards. But it was not until I began towalk by myself that he found me. 

"I had come up from the lower hills all one day, " said the Mastodon. "There was a feel in the air as if the Great Cold had breathed into it. It curdled blue as pond water, and under the blueness the forest colorshowed like weed under water. I walked by myself and did not care whoheard me. Now and then I tore up a young tree, for my tusks had grownfast that year and it was good to feel the tree tug at its roots andstruggle with me. Farther up, the wind walked on the dry leaves with asound like a thousand wapiti trooping down the mountain. Every littlewhile, for want of something to do, I charged it. Then I carried a pine, which I had torn up, on my tusks, until the butt struck a boulder whichwent down the hill with an avalanche of small stones that set all theechoes shouting. 

"In the midst of it I lifted up my voice and said that I was I, Arrumpa, walking by myself, --and just then a dart struck me. The men had come upunder cover of the wind on either side so that there was nothing for meto do but to move forward, which I did, somewhat hurriedly. 

"I had not come to my full size then, but I was a good weight for myyears, " said Arrumpa modestly, --"a very good weight, and it was myweight that saved me, for the edge of the ravine that opened suddenly infront of me crumbled, so that I came down into the bottom of it with agreat mass of rubbish and broken stone, with a twisted knee, and verymuch astonished. 

"I remember blowing to get the blood and dust out of my eyes, --there wasa dart stuck in my forehead, --and seeing the men come swarming over theedge of the ravine, which was all walled in on every side, shaking theirspears and singing. That was the way with men; whatever they did theyhad to sing about it. 'Ha-ahe-ah!' they sang--

"'Great Chief, you're about to die, The Gods have said it. '

"So they came capering, but there was blood in my eyes and my knee hurtme, so when one of them stuck his spear almost up to the haft in myside, I tossed him. I took him up lightly on my tusks and he lay stillat the far end of the ravine where I had dropped him. That stopped theshouting; but it broke out again suddenly, for the women had come downthe wild vines on the walls, with their young on their shoulders, andthe wife of the man I had tossed found him. The noise of the hunters wasas nothing to the noise she made at me. Madness overtook her; she leftoff howling over her man and seizing her son by the hand, --he was nomore than half-grown, not up to my shoulder, --she pushed him in front ofme. 'Take him! Take my son, Man-Killer!' she screamed. 'After you havetaken the best of the tribe, will you stop at a youngling?' Then all theothers screeched at her like gulls frightened from their rock, andstopped silent in great fear to see what I would do about it. 

"I did not know what to do, for there was no way I could tell her I wassorry I had killed her husband; and the lad stood where she had pushedhim, not making any noise at all but a sharp, steady breathing. So Itook him up in my trunk, for, indeed, I did not know what to do, and asI held him at the level of my eyes, I saw a strange thing, --that the boywas not afraid. He was not in the least afraid, but very angry. 

"'I hate you, Arrumpa, ' he said, 'because you have killed my father. Iam too little to kill you for it now, but when I am a man I shall killyou. ' He struck me with his fists. 'Put me down, Man-Killer!'

"So I put him down. What else was there to do? And there was a sensationin my breast, a sensation as of bending the knees and bowing theneck--not at all unpleasant--He stood where I placed him, between mytusks, and one of the hunters, who was a man in authority, called out tohim to come away while they killed me. 

"'That you shall not, ' said my manling, 'for he has killed my father, therefore he is mine to kill according to the custom of killing. '

"Then the man was angry. 

"'Come away, little fool, ' he said. 'He is our meat. Have we notfollowed him for three days and trapped him?'

"The boy looked at him under his brows, drawn level. 

"'That was my father's spear that stuck in him, Opata, ' he said. 

"Now, as the man spoke, I began to see what they had done to me thesethree days, for there was no way out of the ravine, and the women hadbrought their fleshing-knives and baskets: but the boy was quicker eventhan my anger. He reached up a hand to either of my tusks, --he couldbarely lay hands on them, --and his voice shook, though I do not think itwas with anger. 'He is mine to kill, ' he said, 'according to custom. Heis my Arrumpa, and I call the tribe to witness. Not one of you shall layhands on him until one of us has killed the other. '

"Then I lifted up my trunk over him, for my heart swelled against thehunters, and I gave voice as a bull should when he walks by himself. 

"'Arr-rr-ump!' I said. And the people were all silent with astonishment. 

"Finally the man who had first spoken, spoke again, very humbly, 'GreatChief, give us leave to take away your father. ' So we gave them leave. They took the hurt man--his back was broken--away by the vine ladders, and my young man went and lay face down where his father had lain, andshook with many strange noises while water came out of his eyes. When hesat up at last and saw me blowing dust on the spear-cut in my side tostop the bleeding, he gathered broad leaves, dipped them in pine gum, and laid them on the cut. Then I blew dust on these, and seeing that Iwas more comfortable, Taku-Wakin--that was what I learned to callhim--saluted with both hands to his head, palms outward. 'Friend, ' hesaid, --'for if you are not my friend I think I have not one other in theworld, --besides, I am too little to kill you, --I go to bury my father. '

"For three days I bathed my knee in the spring, and saw faces come topeer about the edge of it and heard the beat of the village drums. Thethird day my young man came, wearing his father's collar of bear'steeth, with neither fire-stick nor food nor weapon upon him. "'Now I amall the man my mother has, ' he said; 'I must do what is necessary tobecome a tribesman. '

"I did not know then what he meant, but it seems it was a custom. "

All the Indians in the group that had gathered about the Mastodon, nodded at this. 

"It was so in my time, " said the Mound-Builder. "When a youth has cometo the age where he is counted a man, he goes apart and neither eats nordrinks until, in the shape of some living thing, the Great Mystery hasrevealed itself to him. 

"It was so he explained it to me, " agreed Arrumpa; "and for three dayshe ate and drank nothing, but walked by himself talking to his god. Other times he would talk to me, scratching my hurts and taking theticks out of my ears, until--I do not know what it was, but between meand Taku-Wakin it happened that we understood, each of us, what theother was thinking in his heart as well as if we had words--Is this alsoa custom?"

A look of intelligence passed between the members of his audience. 

"Once to every man, " said an Indian who leaned against Moke-icha'sboulder, "when he shuts all thought of killing out of his heart andgives himself to the beast as to a brother, knowledge which is differentfrom the knowledge of the chase comes to both of them. 

"Oh, " said Oliver, "I had a dog once--" But he became very muchembarrassed when he discovered that he had drawn the attention of thecompany. It had always been difficult for him to explain why it was hehad felt so certain that his dog and he had always known what the otherwas thinking; but the Indians and the animals understood him. 

"All this Taku explained to me, " went on Arrumpa. "The fourth day, whenTaku fainted for lack of food, I cradled him in my tusks and was greatlytroubled. At last I laid him on the fresh grass by the spring and blewwater on him. Then he sat up laughing and spluttering, but faintly. 

"'Now am I twice a fool, ' he said, 'not to know from the first that youare my Medicine, the voice of the Mystery. '

"Then he shouted for his mother, who came down from the top of theravine, very timidly, and fed him. 

"After that he would come to me every day, sometimes with a bough ofwild apples or a basket of acorns, and I would set him on my neck so hecould scratch between my ears and tell me all his troubles. His father, he said, had been a strong man who put himself at the head of the fivechiefs of the tribe and persuaded them to leave off fighting one anotherand band together against the enemy tribes. Opata, the man who hadwished to kill me, was the man likeliest to be made High Chief in hisfather's place. 

"'And then my bad days will begin, ' said Taku-Wakin, 'for he hates mefor my father's sake, and also a little for yours, Old Two-Tails, and hewill persuade the Council to give my mother to another man and I shallbe made subject to him. Worse, ' he said, --'the Great Plan of my fatherwill come to nothing. '

"He was always talking about this Great Plan and fretting over it, but Iwas too new to the customs of men to ask what he meant by it. 

"'If I had but a Sign, ' he said, 'then they would give me my father'splace in the Council . .. But I am too little, and I have not yet killedanything worth mentioning. '

"So he would sit on my neck and drum with his heels while he thought, and there did not seem to be anything I could do about it. By this timemy knee was quite well. I had eaten all the brush in the ravine and wasbeginning to be lonely. Taku wasn't able to visit me so often, for hehad his mother and young brothers to kill for. 

"So one night when the moon came walking red on the trail of the day, far down by Two Rivers I heard some of my friends trumpeting; thereforeI pulled down young trees along the sides of the ravine, with greatlumps of earth, and battered the rotten cliffs until they crumbled in aheap by which I scrambled up again. 

"I must have traveled a quarter of the moon's course before I heard thepatter of bare feet in the trail and a voice calling:--

"'Up! Take me up, Arrumpa!'

"So I took him up, quite spent with running, and yet not so worn out butthat he could smack me soundly between the eyes, as no doubt I deserved. 

"'Beast of a bad heart, ' he said, 'did I not tell you that to-morrow themoon is full and the Five Chiefs hold Council?' So he had, but my thickwits had made nothing of it. 'If you leave me this night, ' said Taku, 'then they will say that my Medicine has left me and my father's placewill be given to Opata. '

"'Little Chief, ' I said, 'I did not know that you had need of me, but itcame into my head that I also had need of my own people. Besides, thebrush is eaten. '

"'True, true!' he said, and drummed on my forehead. 'Take me home, ' hesaid at last, 'for I have followed you half the night, and I must notseem wearied at the Council. '

"So I took him back as far as the Arch Rock which springs high over thetrail by which the men of Taku's village went out to the hunting. Therewas a cleft under the wing of the Arch, close to the cliff, and everyman going out to the hunt threw a dart at it, as an omen. If it stuck, the omen was good, but if the point of the dart broke against the faceof the cliff and fell back, the hunter returned to his hut, and if hehunted at all that day, he went out in another direction. We could seethe shafts of the darts fast in the cleft, bristling in the moonlight. 

"'Wait here, under the Arch, ' said Taku-Wakin, 'till I see if the arrowof my thought finds a cleft to stick into. '

"So we waited, watching the white, webby moons of the spiders, wet inthe grass, and the man huts sleeping on the hill, and felt the Dawn'sbreath pricking the skin of our shoulders. The huts were mere heaps ofbrush like rats' nests. 

"'Shall I walk on the huts for a sign, Little Chief?' said I. 

"'Not that, Old Hilltop, ' he laughed; 'there are people under the huts, and what good is a Sign without people?'

"Then he told me how his father had become great by thinking, not forhis own clan alone, but for all the people--it was because of the longreach of his power that they called him Long-Hand. Now that he was gonethere would be nothing but quarrels and petty jealousies. 'They willhunt the same grounds twice over, ' said Taku-Wakin; 'they will kill oneanother when they should be killing their enemies, and in the end theGreat Cold will get them. '

"Every year the Great Cold crept nearer. Itcame like a strong arm and pressed the people west and south so that thetribes bore hard on one another. 

"'Since old time, ' said Taku-Wakin, 'my people have been sea people. Butthe People of the Great Cold came down along the ice-rim and cut themoff from it. My father had a plan to get to the sea, and a Talking Stickwhich he was teaching me to understand, but I cannot find it in any ofthe places where he used to hide it. If I had the Stick I think theywould make me chief in my father's place. But if Opata is made chief, then I must give it to him if I find it, and Opata will have all theglory. If I had but a Sign to keep them from making Opata chief. .. ' Sohe drummed on my head with his heels while I leaned against the ArchRock--oh, yes, I can sleep very comfortably, standing--and the moon sliddown the hill until it shone clear under the rock and touched thefeathered butts of the arrows. Then Taku woke me. 

"'Up, put me up, Arrumpa! For now I have thought of a Sign that even theFive Chiefs will have respect for. '

"So I put him up until his foot caught in the cleft of the rock and hepried out five of the arrows. 

"'Arrows of the Five Chiefs, ' he said, --'that the chiefs gave to thegods to keep, and the gods have given to me again!'

"That was the way always with Taku-Wakin, he kept all the god customs ofthe people, but he never doubted, when he had found what he wanted todo, that the gods would be on his side. He showed me how every arrow wasa little different from the others in the way the blood drain was cut orthe shaft feathered. 

"'No fear, ' he said. 'Every man will know his own when I come to theCouncil. '

"He hugged the arrows to his breast and laughed over them, so I huggedhim with my trunk, and we agreed that once in every full moon I was tocome to Burnt Woods, and wait until he called me with something that hetook from his girdle and twirled on a thong. I do not know what it wascalled, but it had a voice like young thunder. 

"Like this?" The Mound-Builder cut the air with an oddly shaped bit ofwood swung on an arm's-length of string, once lightly, like a covey ofquail rising, and then loud like a wind in the full-branched forest. 

"Just such another. Thrice he swung it so that I might not mistake thesound, and that was the last I saw of him, hugging his five arrows, withthe moon gone pale like a meal-cake, and the tame wolves that skulkbetween the huts for scraps, slinking off as he spoke to them. "

"And did they--the Five Chiefs, I mean--have respect for his arrows?"Dorcas Jane wondered. 

"So he told me. They came from all the nine villages and sat in acouncil ring, each with the elders of his village behind him, and infront his favorite weapon, tied with eagle feathers for enemies he hadslain, and red marks for battles, and other signs and trophies. At thehead of the circle there was the spear of Long-Hand, and a place leftfor the one who should be elected to sit in it. But before the Councilhad time to begin, came Taku-Wakin with his arms folded--though he toldme it was to hide how his heart jumped in his bosom--and took hisfather's seat. Around the ring of the chiefs and elders ran a growl likethe circling of thunder in sultry weather, and immediately it was turnedinto coughing; every man trying to eat his own exclamation, for, as hesat, Taku laid out, in place of a trophy, the five arrows. 

"'Do we sit at a game of knuckle-bone?' said Opata at last, 'or is thisa Council of the Elders?'

"'Game or Council, ' said Taku-Wakin, 'I sit in my father's place until Ihave a Sign from him whom he will have to sit there. '"

"But I don't understand--" began Oliver, looking about the circle oflistening Indians. "His father was dead, wasn't he?"

"What is 'dead'?" said the Lenni-Lenape; "Indians do not know. Ourfriends go out of their bodies; where? Into another--or into a beast?When I was still strapped in my basket my father set me on a bear thathe had killed and prayed that the bear's cunning and strength shouldpass into me. Taku-Wakin's people thought that the heart of Long-Handmight have gone into the Mastodon. "

"Why not?" agreed Arrumpa gravely. "I remember that Taku would call meFather at times, and--if he was very fond of me--Grandfather. But all hewanted at that tune was to keep Opata from being elected in his father'splace, and Opata, who understood this perfectly, was very angry. 

"'It is the custom, ' he said, 'when a chief sleeps in the HighPlaces, '--he meant the hilltops where they left their dead on poles ortied to the tree branches, --'that we elect another to his place inthe Council. '

"'Also it is a custom, ' said Taku-Wakin, 'to bring the token of hisgreat exploit into Council and quicken the heart by hearing of it. Youhave heard, O Chiefs, " he said, "that my people had a plan for the goodof the people, and it has come to me in my heart that that plan wasstronger in him than death. For he was a man who finished what he hadbegun, and it may be that he is long-handed enough to reach back fromthe place where he has gone. And this is a Sign to me, that he has takenhis cut stick, which had the secret of his plan, with him. '

"Taku-Wakin fiddled with the arrows, laying them straight, hardly daringto look up at Opata, for if the chief had his father's cut stick, nowwould be the time that he would show it. Out of the tail of his eye hecould see that the rest of the Council were startled. That was the waywith men. Me they would trap, and take the skin of Saber-Tooth to wraptheir cubs in, but at the hint of a Sign, or an old custom slighted, they would grow suddenly afraid. Then Taku looked up and saw Opatastroking his face with his hand to hide what he was thinking. He was nofool, and he saw that if the election was pressed, Taku-Wakin, boy as hewas, would sit in his father's place because of the five arrows. Taku-Wakin stood up and stretched out his hand to the Council. 

"'Is it agreed, O Chiefs, that you keep my father's place until there isa Sign?'--and a deep _Hu-huh_ ran all about the circle. It was signenough for them that the son of Long-Hand played unhurt with arrows thathad been given to the gods. Taku stretched his hand to Opata, 'Is itagreed, O Chief?'

"'So long as the tribe comes to no harm, ' said Opata, making the best ofa bad business. 'It shall be kept until Long-Hand or his Talking Rodcomes back to us. '

"'And, ' said Taku-Wakin to me, 'whether Opata or I first sits in it, depends on which one of us can first produce a Sign. '"

[Illustration: TAKU AND ARRUMPA. ]

IV

THE SECOND PART OF THE MASTODON STORY CONCERNING THE TRAIL TO THE SEAAND THE TALKING STICK OF TAKU-WAKIN

"It was the Talking Stick of his father that Taku-Wakin wanted, " saidArrumpa. "He still thought Opata might have it, for every now and thenTaku would catch him coming back with marsh mud on his moccasins. Thatwas how I began to understand that the Great Plan was really a plan tofind a way _through_ the marsh to the sea on the other side of it. 

"'Opata has the Stick, ' said Taku, 'but it will not talk to him;therefore he goes, as my father did, when the waters are low and thehummocks of hard ground stand up, to find a safe way for the tribe tofollow. But my father had worked as far as the Grass Flats and beyondthem, to a place of islands. '

"'Squidgy Islands, ' I told him. 'The Grass-Eaters go there to drop theircalves every season. ' Taku kicked me behind the ears. 

"'Said I not you were a beast of a bad heart!' he scolded. But howshould I know he would care to hear about a lot of silly Mammoths. 'Also, ' he said, 'you are my Medicine. You shall find me the trail ofthe Talking Stick, and I, Taku, son of Long-Hand, shall leadthe people. '

"'In six moons, ' I told him, 'the Grass-Eaters go to the Islands tocalve--'

"'In which time, ' said Taku, 'the chiefs will have quarreled six times, and Opata will have eaten me. Drive them, Arrumpa, drive them!'

"Umph, uh-ump!" chuckled the old beast reminiscently. "We drove; wedrove. What else was there to do? Taku-Wakin was my man. Besides, it wasgreat fun. One-Tusk helped me. He was one of our bachelor herd who hadlost a tusk in his first fight, which turned out greatly to hisadvantage. He would come sidling up to a refractory young cow with hiseyes twinkling, and before anybody suspected he could give such a prodwith his one tusk as sent her squealing. .. . But that came afterward. TheMammoth herd that fed on our edge of the Great Swamp was led by awrinkled old cow, wise beyond belief. Scrag we called her. She wouldtake the herd in to the bedding-ground by the river, to a landing-pointon the opposite side, never twice the same, and drift noiselesslythrough the canebrake, choosing blowy hours when the swish of cane overwoolly backs was like the run of the wind. Days when the marsh would befull of tapirs wallowing and wild pig rootling and fighting, there mightbe hundreds feeding within sound of you and not a hint of it except theoccasional _toot-toot_ of some silly cow calling for Scrag, or a youngbull blowing water. 

"They bedded at the Grass Flats, but until Scrag herself had a mind totake the trail to the Squidgy Islands, there was nobody but Saber-Toothcould persuade her. 

"'Then Saber-Tooth shall help us, ' said my man. 

"Not for nothing was he called Taku-Wakin, which means 'The Wonderful. 'He brought a tiger cub's skin of his father's killing, dried stiff andsewed up with small stones inside it. At one end there was a thong witha loop in it, and it smelled of tiger. I could see the tip of One-Tusk'strunk go up with a start every time he winded it. There was a curledmoon high up in the air like a feather, and a moon-white tusk glintinghere and there, where the herds drifted across the flats. There was notrouble about our going among them so long as Scrag did not wind us. _They_ claimed to be kin to us, and they cared nothing for Man even whenthey smelled him. We came sidling up to a nervous young cow, and Takudropped from my neck long enough to slip the thong over a hind foot asshe lifted it. The thong was wet at first and scarcely touched her. Presently it tightened. Then the cow shook her foot to free it and theskin rattled. She squealed nervously and started out to find Scrag, whowas feeding on the far side of the hummock, and at every step thetiger-skin rattled and bounced against her. Eyes winked red with alarmand trunks came lifting out of the tall grass like serpents. One-Tuskmoved silently, prod-prodding; we could hear the click of ivory and thebunting of shoulder against shoulder. Then some silly cow had a whiff ofthe skin that bounded along in their tracks like a cat, and raised thecry of 'Tiger! Tiger!' Far on the side from us, in the direction of theSquidgy Islands, Scrag trumpeted, followed by frantic splashing as thefrightened herd plunged into the reed-beds. Taku slipped from my neck, shaking with laughter. 

"'Follow, follow, ' he said; 'I go to bring up the people. '

"It was two days before Scrag stopped running. 

"From the Grass Flats on to the Islands it was all one reed-bed wherethe water gathered into runnels between hummocks of rotten rushes, whereno trail would lie and any false step might plunge you into black bog tothe shoulder. About halfway we found the tiger-skin tramped into themire, but as soon as we struck the Islands I turned back, for I was inneed of good oak browse, and I wished to find out what had become ofTaku-Wakin. It was not until one evening when I had come well up intothe hills for a taste of fir, that I saw him, black against the sun withthe tribe behind him. The Five Chiefs walked each in front of his ownvillage, except that Taku-Wakin's own walked after Opata, and there weretwo of the Turtle clan, each with his own head man, and two underApunkéwis. Before all walked Taku-Wakin holding a peeled stick uprightand seeing the end of the trail, but not what lay close in front of him. He did not even see me as I slipped around the procession and left a wettrail for him to follow. 

"That was how we crossed to the Islands, village by village, withTaku-Wakin close on my trail, which was the trail of the Grass-Eaters. They swam the sloughs with their children on their shoulders, and maderafts of reeds to push their food bundles over. By night they camped onthe hummocks and built fires that burned for days in the thick litter ofreeds. Red reflections glanced like fishes along the water. Then therewould be the drums and the--the thunder-twirler--"

"But what kept him so long and how did he persuade them?" Dorcas Janesquirmed with curiosity. 

"He'd been a long time working out the trail through the canebrake, "said Arrumpa, "making a Talking Stick as his father had taught him; onering for a day's journey, one straight mark for so many man's paces;notches for turns. When he could not remember his father's marks he madeup others. When he came to his village again he found they had all goneover to Opata's. Apunkéwis, who had the two villages under Black Rockand was a friend of Long-Hand, told him that there would be a Sign. 

"'There will, ' said Taku-Wakin, 'but I shall bring it. ' He knew thatOpata meant mischief, but he could not guess what. All the way toOpata's his thought went round and round like a fire-stick in thehearth-hole. When he heard the drums he flared up like a spark in thetinder. Earlier in the evening there had been a Big Eating at Opata's, and now the men were dancing. 

"'_Eyah, eyah!_' they sang. 

"Taku-Wakin whirled like a spark into the ring. '_Eyah, eyah!_' heshouted, --

"'Great are the peopleThey have found a sign, The sign of the Talking Rod!Eyah! My people!'

"He planted it full in the firelight where it rocked and beckoned. '_Eyah_, the rod is calling, ' he sang. 

"The moment he had sight of Opata's face he knew that whatever the chiefhad meant to do, he did not have his father's Stick. Taku caught up hisown and twirled it, and finally he hid it under his coat, for if any onehad handled it he could have seen that this was not the Stick ofLong-Hand, but fresh-peeled that season. But because Opata wanted theStick of Long-Hand, he thought any stick of Taku's must be the one hewanted. And what Opata thought, the rest of the tribe thought also. Sothey rose up by clans and villages and followed after the Sign. That washow we came to the Squidgy Islands. There were willows there and youngalders and bare knuckles of rock holding up the land. 

"Beyond that the Swamp began; the water gathered itself into bayous thatwent slinking, wolflike, between the trees, or rose like a wolf throughthe earth and stole it from under your very foot. It doubled into blacklagoons to doze, and young snakes coiled on the lily-pads, so that whenthe sun warmed them you could hear the shi-shisi-ss like a wind rising. Also by night there would be greenish lights that followed the trailsfor a while and went out suddenly in whistling noises. Now and then inbroad day the Swamp would fall asleep. There would be the plop ofturtles falling into the creek and the slither of alligators in the mud, and all of a sudden not a ripple would start, and between the clackingof one reed and another would come the soundless lift and stir of theSwamp snoring. Then the hair on your neck would rise, and some mancaught walking alone in it would go screaming mad with fear. 

"Six moons we had to stay in that place, for Scrag had hidden the herdso cleverly that it was not until the week-old calves began to squeakfor their mothers that we found them. And from the time they were ableto run under their mother's bodies, One-Tusk and I kept watch and watchto see that they did not break back to the Squidgy Islands. It wasnecessary for Taku-Wakin's plan that they should go out on the otherside where there was good land between the Swamp and the Sea, notclaimed by the Kooskooski. We learned to eat grass that summer andsquushy reeds with no strength in them--did I say that all theGrass-Eaters were pot-bellied? Also I had to reason with One-Tusk, whohad not loved a man, and found that the Swamp bored him. By this time, too, Scrag knew what we were after; she covered her trail and crossed itas many times as a rabbit. Then, just as we thought we had it, the wolfwater came and gnawed the trail in two. 

"Taku-Wakin would come to me by the Black Lagoon and tell me how Opataworked to make himself chief of the nine villages. He had his own andTaku-Wakin's, for Taku had never dared to ask it back again, and thechief of the Turtle clan was Opata's man. 

"'He tells the people that my Stick will not talk to me any more. Buthow can it talk, Arrumpa, when you have nothing to tell it?'

"'Patience, ' I said. 'If we press the cows too hard they will break backthe way they have come, and that will be worse than waiting. '

"'And if I do not get them forward soon, ' said Taku-Wakin, 'the peoplewill break back, and my father will be proved a fool. I am too littlefor this thing, Grandfather, ' he would say, leaning against my trunk, and I would take him up and comfort him. 

"As for Opata, I used to see him sometimes, dancing alone to increasehis magic power, --I speak but as the people of Taku-Wakin spoke, --andonce at the edge of the lagoon, catching snakes. Opata had made a nooseof hair at the end of a peeled switch, and he would snare them as theydarted like streaks through the water. I saw him cast away some that hecaught, and others he dropped into a wicker basket, one with a narrowneck such as women used for water. How was I to guess what he wantedwith them? But the man smelled of mischief. It lay in the thick air likethe smell of the lagoons; by night you could hear it throbbing with thedrums that scared away the wandering lights from the nine villages. 

"Scrag was beginning to get the cows together again; but by that timethe people had made up their minds to stay where they were. They builtthemselves huts on platforms above the water and caught turtles inthe bayous. 

"'Opata has called a Council, ' Taku told me, 'to say that I must make myStick talk, or they will know me for a deceiver, a maker of short lifefor them. '

"'Short life to him, ' I said. 'In three nights or four, the Grass-Eaterswill be moving. '

"'And my people are fast in the mud, ' said Taku-Wakin. 'I am a mud-headmyself to think a crooked rod could save them. ' He took it from hisgirdle warped by the wet and the warmth of his body. 'My heart is sick, Arrumpa, and Opata makes them a better chief than I, for I have onlytried to find them their sea again. But Opata understands them. This isa foolish tale that will never be finished. '

"He loosed the stick from his hand over the black water like a boyskipping stones, but--this is a marvel--it turned as it flew and cameback to Taku-Wakin so that he had to take it in his hand or it wouldhave struck him. He stood looking at it astonished, while the moon cameup and made dart-shaped ripples of light behind the swimming snakes inthe black water. For he saw that if the Stick would not leave him, neither could he forsake--Is this also known to you?" For he saw thechildren smiling. 

The Indian who leaned against Moke-icha's boulder drew a crooked stick, shaped something like an elbow, from under his blanket. Twice he tossedit lightly and twice it flew over the heads of the circle and back likea homing pigeon as he lightly caught it. 

"Boomerangs!" cried the children, delighted. 

"We called it the Stick-which-kills-flying, " said the Indian, and hid itagain under his blanket. 

"Taku-Wakin thought it Magic Medicine, " said the Mastodon. "It was aSign to him. Two or three times he threw the stick and always it cameback to him. He was very quiet, considering what it might mean, as Itook him back between the trees that stood knee-deep in the smellywater. We saw the huts at last, built about in a circle and the sacredfire winking in the middle. I remembered the time I had watched withTaku under the Arch Rock. 

"'Give me leave, ' I said, 'to walk among the huts, and see what will comeof it. '

"Taku-Wakin slapped my trunk. 

"'Now by the oath of my people, you shall walk, ' he said. 'If the herdsbegin to move, and if no hurt comes to anybody by it, you shall walk;for as long as they are comfortable, even though the Rod should speak, they would not listen. '

"The very next night Scrag began to move her cows out toward the hardland, and when I had marked her trail for five man journeys, I came backto look for Taku-Wakin. There was a great noise of singing a little backfrom the huts at the Dancing-Place, and all the drums going, and thesmoke that drifted along the trails had the smell of a Big Eating. Istole up in the dark till I could look over the heads of the villagerssquatted about the fire. Opata was making a speech to them. He wasworking himself into a rage over the wickedness of Taku-Wakin. He wouldstrike the earth with his stone-headed spear as he talked, and the tribewould yelp after him like wolves closing in on a buck. If the TalkingStick which had led them there was not a liar, let it talk again andshow them the way to their sea. Let it talk! And at last, when they hadscreeched themselves hoarse, they were quiet long enough to hear it. 

"Little and young, Taku-Wakin looked, standing up with his Stick in hishand, and the words coming slowly as if he waited for them to reach himfrom far off. The Stick was no liar, he said; it was he who had lied tothem; he had let them think that this was his father's Stick. It was anew stick much more powerful, as he would yet show them. And who was heto make it talk when it would not? Yet it would talk soon. .. Verysoon. .. He had heard it whispering. .. Let them not vex the Stick lest itspeak strange and unthought-of things. .. 

"Oh, but he was well called 'The Wonderful. ' I could see the heads ofthe tribesmen lifting like wolves taking a new scent, and motherstighten their clutch on their children. Also I saw Opata. Him I watched, for he smelt of mischief. His water-basket was beside him, and as thepeople turned from baiting Taku-Wakin to believing him, I saw Opata pushthe bottle secretly with his spear-butt. It rolled into the clearedspace toward Taku-Wakin, and the grass ball which stopped its mouth fellout unnoticed. _But no water came out!_

"Many of the waters of the Swamp were bitter and caused sickness, so itwas no new thing for a man to have his own water-bottle at Council. Butwhy should he carry a stopped bottle and no water in it? Thus I watched, while Taku-Wakin played for his life with the people's minds, and Opatawatched neither the people nor him, but the unstopped mouth of thewater-bottle. 

"I looked where Opata looked, for I said to myself, from that pointcomes the mischief, and looking I saw a streak of silver pour out of themouth of the bottle and coil and lift and make as a snake will for thenearest shadow. It was the shadow of Taku-Wakin's bare legs. Then I knewwhy Opata smelled of mischief when he had caught snakes in the lagoon. But I was afraid to speak, for I saw that if Taku moved the snake wouldstrike, and there is no cure for the bite of the snake calledSilver Moccasin. 

"Everybody's eyes were on the rod but mine and Opata's, and as I sawTaku straighten to throw, I lifted my voice in the dark and trumpeted, 'Snake! Snake!' Taku leaped, but he knew my voice and he was not sofrightened as the rest of them, who began falling on their faces. Takuleaped as the Silver Moccasin lifted to strike, and the stick as it flewout of his hand, low down like a skimming bird, came back in acircle--he must have practiced many times with it--and dropped the snakewith its back broken. The people put their hands over their mouths. Theyhad not seen the snake at all, but a stick that came back to thethrower's hand was magic. They waited to see what Opata would doabout it. 

"Opata stood up. He was a brave man, I think, for the Stick was Magic tohim, also, and yet he stood out against it. Black Magic he said it was, and no wonder it had not led them out of the Swamp, since it was a falsestick and Taku-Wakin a Two-Talker. Taku-Wakin could no more lead themout of the Swamp than his stick would leave him. Like it, they would bethrown and come back to the hand of Taku-Wakin for his own purposes. 

"He was a clever man, was Opata. He was a fine tall man, beaked like aneagle, and as he moved about in the clear space by the fire, making apantomime of all he said, as their way is in speech-making, he began totake hold on the minds of the people. Taku-Wakin watched sidewise; hesaw the snake writhing on the ground and the unstopped water-bottle withthe ground dry under it. I think he suspected. I saw a little ripple goover his naked body as if a thought had struck him. He stepped asideonce, and as Opata came at him, threatening and accusing, he changed hisplace again, ever so slightly. The people yelped as they thought theysaw Taku fall back before him. Opata was shaking his spear, and I beganto wonder if I had not waited too long to come to Taku-Wakin's rescue, when suddenly Opata stopped still in his tracks and shuddered. He wentgray in the fire-light, and--he was a brave man who knew his death whenhe had met it--from beside his foot he lifted up the broken-backed snakeon his spear-point. Even as he held it up for all of them to see, hislimbs began to jerk and stiffen. 

"I went back to look for One-Tusk. The end of those who are bitten bythe moccasin is not pretty to see, and besides, I had business. One-Tuskand I walked through all nine villages. .. And when we had come out on theother side there were not two sticks of them laid together. Then thepeople came and looked and were afraid, and Taku-Wakin came and made asound as when a man drops a ripe paw-paw on the ground. 'Pr-r-utt!' hesaid, as though it were no more matter than that. 'Now we shall have theless to carry. ' But the mother of Taku-Wakin made a terrible outcry. Inthe place where her hut had been she had found the Talking Stick ofTaku's father, trampled to splinters. 

"She had had it all the time hidden in her bundle. Long-Hand had toldher it was Magic Medicine and she must never let any one have it. _She_thought it was the only thing that had kept her and her children safe onthis journey. But Taku told them that it was his father's Rod which hadbewitched them and kept them from going any farther because it had cometo the end of its knowledge. Now they would be free to follow his ownStick, which was so much wiser. So he caught their minds as he hadcaught the Stick, swinging back from disaster. For this is the way withmen, if they have reason which suits them they do not care whether it isreasonable or not. It was sufficient for them, one crooked stick beingbroken, that they should rise up with a shout and follow another. "

Arrumpa was silent so long that the children fidgeted. 

"But it couldn't have been just as easy as that, " Dorcas insisted. "Andwhat did they do when they got to the sea finally?"

"They complained of the fishy taste of everything, " said Arrumpa; "alsothey suffered on the way for lack of food, and Apunkéwis was eaten by analligator. Then they were afraid again when they came to the placebeyond the Swamp where the water went to and fro as the sea pushed it, until some of the old men remembered they had heard it was the sea'scustom. Twice daily the water came in as if to feed on the marsh grass. Great clouds of gulls flew inland, screaming down the wind, and acrossthe salt flats they had their first sight of the low, hard land. 

"We lost them there, for we could not eat the salt grass, and Scrag hadturned north by a mud slough where the waters were bitter, and red mossgrew on the roots of the willows. We ate for a quarter of the moon'scourse before we went back around the hard land to see what had becomeof Taku-Wakin. We fed as far as there was any browse between the sea andthe marsh, and at last we saw them come, across the salt pastures. Theywere sleek as otters with the black slime of the sloughs, and there wasnot a garment left on them which had not become water-soaked anduseless. Some of the women had made slips of sea-birds' skins and netsof marsh grass for carrying their young. It was only by these thingsthat you could tell that they were Man. They came out where the hardland thinned to a tusk, thrust far out into the white froth and thethunder. We saw them naked on the rocks, and then with a great shoutjoin hands as they ran all together down the naked sand to worship thesea. But Taku-Wakin walked by himself. .. "

"And did you stay there with him?" asked Oliver when he saw by the stirin the audience that the story was quite finished. 

"We went back that winter--One-Tusk and I; in time they all went, " saidArrumpa. "It was too cold by the sea in winter. And the land changed. Even in Taku-Wakin's time it changed greatly. The earth shook and thewater ran out of the marsh into the sea again, and there was hard groundmost of the way to Two Rivers. Every year the tribes used to go down byit to gather sea food. "

The Indians nodded. 

"It was so in our time, " they said. "There were great heaps of shells bythe sea where we came and dried fish and feasted. "

"Shell Mounds, " said Oliver. "I've heard of those, too. But I neverthought they had stories about them. "

"There is a story about everything, " said the Buffalo Chief; and by thistime the children were quite ready to believe him. 

[Illustration]

V

HOW HOWKAWANDA AND FRIEND-AT-THE-BACK FOUND THE TRAIL TO THE BUFFALOCOUNTRY TOLD BY THE COYOTE

"Concerning that Talking Stick of Taku-Wa-kin's, "--said the Coyote, asthe company settled back after Arrumpa's story, --"there is a Telling of_my_ people . .. Not of a Rod, but a Skin, a hide of thy people, GreatChief, "--he bowed to the Bull Buffalo, --"that talked of Tamal-Pyweackand a Dead Man's Journey--" The little beast stood with lifted paw andnose delicately pointed toward the Bighorn's country as it lifted fromthe prairie, drawing the earth after it in great folds, high crestbeyond high crest flung against the sun; light and color like the insideof a shell playing in its snow-filled hollows. 

Up sprang every Plainsman, painted shield dropped to the shoulder, righthand lifted, palm outward, and straight as an arrow out of every throat, the "Hey a-hey a-huh!" of the Indian salutation. 

"Backbone of the World!" cried the Blackfoot. "Did you come over that, Little Brother?"

"Not I, but my father's father's first father. By the Crooked Horn, "--heindicated a peak like a buffalo horn, and a sag in the crest below it. 

"Then that, " said Bighorn, dropping with one bound from his aeriallookout, "should be _my_ story, for my people made that trail, and itwas long before any other trod in it. "

"It was of that first treading that the Skin talked, " agreed the Coyote. He looked about the company for permission to begin, and then addressedhimself to Arrumpa. "You spoke, Chief Two-Tails, of the 'tame wolves' ofTaku-Wakin; _were_ they wolves, or--"

"Very like you, Wolfling, now that I think of it, " agreed the Mastodon, "and they were not tame exactly; they ran at the heels of the huntersfor what they could pick up, and sometimes they drove up game for him. "

"Why should a coyote, who is the least of all wolves, hunt for himselfwhen he can find a man to follow?" said the Blackfoot, who sat smoking agreat calumet out of the west corridor. "Man is the wolf's Medicine. Inhim he hears the voice of the Great Mystery, and becomes a dog, which isgreat gain to him. "

Pleased as if his master had patted him, without any furtherintroduction the Coyote began his story. 

"Thus and so thought the First Father of all the Dogs in the year whenhe was called Friend-at-the-Back, and Pathfinder. That was the timeof the Great Hunger, nearly two years after he joined the man packat Hidden-under-the-Mountain and was still known by his lair nameof Younger Brother. He followed a youth who was the quickestafoot and the readiest laugher. He would skulk about the camp atHidden-under-the-Mountain watching until the hunters went out. SometimesHow-kawanda--that was the young man he followed--would give a coyote cryof warning, and sometimes Younger Brother would trot off in thedirection where he knew the game to be, looking back and pointing untilthe young men caught the idea; after which, when they had killed, thehunters would laugh and throw him pieces of liver. 

"The Country of Dry Washes lies between the Cinoave on the south and thePeople of the Bow who possessed the Salmon Rivers, a great gray land cutacross by deep gullies where the wild waters come down from theWall-of-Shining-Rocks and worry the bone-white boulders. The People ofthe Dry Washes live meanly, and are meanly spoken of by the People ofthe Coast who drove them inland from the sea borders. After the Rains, when the quick grass sprang up, vast herds of deer and pronghorn comedown from the mountains; and when there were no rains the people atelizards and roots. In the moon of the Frost-Touching-Mildly clouds cameup from the south with a great trampling of thunder, and flung out overthe Dry Washes as a man flings his blanket over a maiden. But if theRains were scant for two or three seasons, then there was Hunger, andthe dust devils took the mesas for their dancing-places. 

"Now, Man tribe and Wolf tribe are alike in one thing. When there isscarcity the packs increase to make surer of bringing down the quarry, but when the pinch begins they hunt scattering and avoid one another. That was how it happened that the First Father, who was still calledYounger Brother, was alone with Howkawanda when he was thrown by a buckat Talking Water in the moon of the Frost-Touching-Mildly. Howkawandahad caught the buck by the antlers in a blind gully at the foot of theTamal-Pyweack, trying for the throw back and to the left which drops abuck running, with his neck broken. But his feet slipped on the grasswhich grows sleek with dryness, and by the time the First Father came upthe buck had him down, scoring the ground on either side of the man'sbody with his sharp antlers, lifting and trampling. Younger Brotherleaped at the throat. The toss of the antlers to meet the stroke drewthe man up standing. Throwing his whole weight to the right he drovehome with his hunting-knife and the buck toppled and fell as a treefalls of its own weight in windless weather. 

"'Now, for this, ' said Howkawanda to my First Father, when they hadbreathed a little, 'you are become my very brother. ' Then he marked thecoyote with the blood of his own hurts, as the custom is when men arenot born of one mother, and Younger Brother, who had never been touchedby a man, trembled. That night, though it made the hair on his neck risewith strangeness, he went into the hut of Howkawanda atHidden-under-the-Mountain and the villagers wagged their heads over it. 'Hunger must be hard on our trail, ' they said, 'when the wolves come tohouse with us. '

"But Howkawanda only laughed, for that year he had found a maiden whowas more than meat to him. He made a flute of four notes which he wouldplay, lying out in the long grass, over and over, until she came out tohim. Then they would talk, or the maiden would pull grass and pile it inlittle heaps while Howkawanda looked at her and the First Father lookedat his master, and none of them cared where the Rains were. 

"But when no rain fell at all, the camp was moved far up the shrunkencreek, and Younger Brother learned to catch grasshoppers, and atejuniper berries, while the men sat about the fire hugging their leanbellies and talking of Dead Man's Journey. This they would do wheneverthere was a Hunger in the Country of the Dry Washes, and when they werefed they forgot it. "

The Coyote interrupted his own story long enough to explain that thoughthere were no buffaloes in the Country of the Dry Washes, on the otherside of the Wall-of-Shining-Rocks the land was black with them. "Now andthen stray herds broke through by passes far to the north in the Land ofthe Salmon Rivers, but the people of that country would not letHowkawanda's people hunt them. Every year, when they went up by tribesand villages to the Tamal-Pyweack to gather pine nuts, the People of theDry Washes looked for a possible trail through the Wall to the BuffaloCountry. There was such a trail. Once a man of strange dress and speechhad found his way over it, but he was already starved when they pickedhim up at the place called Trap-of-the-Winds, and died before he couldtell anything. The most that was known of this trail atHidden-under-the-Mountain was that it led through Knife-Cut Cañon; butat the Wind Trap they lost it. 

"I have heard of that trail, 'said the First Father of all the Dogs toHowkawanda, one day, when they had hunted too far for returning andspent the night under a juniper: 'a place where the wind tramplesbetween the mountains like a trapped beast. But there is a trail beyondit. I have not walked in it. All my people went that way at thebeginning of the Hunger. '

"'For your people there may be a way, ' said Howkawanda, 'but formine--they are all dead who have looked for it. Nevertheless, YoungerBrother, if we be not dead men ourselves when this Hunger is past, youand I will go on this Dead Man's Journey. Just now we have otherbusiness. '

"It is the law of the Hunger that the strongest must be fed first, sothat there shall always be one strong enough to hunt for the others. ButHowkawanda gave the greater part of his portion to his maiden. 

"So it happened that sickness laid hold on Howkawanda between two days. In the morning he called to Younger Brother. 'Lie outside, ' he said, 'lest the sickness take you also, but come to me every day with yourkill, and let no man prevent you. '

"So Younger Brother, who was able to live on juniper berries, huntedalone for the camp of Hidden-under-the-Mountain, and Howkawanda heldback Death with one hand and gripped the heart of the First Father ofall the Dogs with the other. For he was afraid that if he died, YoungerBrother would turn wolf again, and the tribe would perish. Every day hewould divide what Younger Brother brought in, and after the villagerswere gone he would inquire anxiously and say, 'Do you smell the Rain, Friend and Brother?'

"But at last he was too weak for asking, and then quite suddenly hisvoice was changed and he said, 'I smell the Rain, Little Brother!' Forin those days men could smell weather quite as well as the otheranimals. But the dust of his own running was in Younger Brother's nose, and he thought that his master's mind wandered. The sick man counted onhis fingers. 'In three days, ' he said, 'if the Rains come, the back ofthe Hunger is broken. Therefore I will not die for three days. Go, hunt, Friend and Brother. '

"The sickness must have sharpened Howkawanda's senses, for the next daythe coyote brought him word that the water had come back in the gullywhere they threw the buck, which was a sign that rain was fallingsomewhere on the high ridges. And the next day he brought word, 'Thetent of the sky is building. ' This was the tentlike cloud that wouldstretch from peak to peak of the Tamal-Pyweack at the beginning of theRainy Season. 

"Howkawanda rose up in his bed and called the people. 'Go, hunt! go, hunt!' he said; 'the deer have come back to Talking Water. ' Then he laystill and heard them, as many as were able, going out joyfully. 'Stayyou here, Friend and Brother, ' he said, 'for now I can sleep a little. '

"So the First Father of all the Dogs lay at his master's feet and whineda little for sympathy while the people hunted for themselves, and themyriad-footed Rain danced on the dry thatch of the hut and the bakedmesa. Later the creek rose in its withered banks and began to talk toitself in a new voice, the voice of Raining-on-the-Mountain. 

"'Now I shall sleep well, 'said the sick man. So he fell into deeper anddeeper pits of slumber while the rain came down in torrents, the grasssprouted, and far away Younger Brother could hear the snapping of thebrush as the Horned People came down the mountain. 

"It was about the first streak of the next morning that the people wakedin their huts to hear a long, throaty howl from Younger Brother. Howkawanda lay cold, and there was no breath in him. They thought thecoyote howled for grief, but it was really because, though his masterlay like one dead, there was no smell of death about him, and the FirstFather was frightened. The more he howled, however, the more certain thevillagers were that Howkawanda was dead, and they made haste to disposeof the body. Now that the back of the Hunger was broken, they wished togo back to Hidden-under-the-Mountain. 

"They drove Younger Brother away with sticks and wrapped the young manin fine deerskins, binding them about and about with thongs, with hisknife and his fire-stick and his hunting-gear beside him. Then they madeready brush, the dryest they could find, for it was the custom of theDry Washes to burn the dead. They thought of the Earth as their motherand would not put anything into it to defile it. The Head Man made aspeech, putting in all the virtues of Howkawanda, and those that hemight have had if he had been spared to them longer, while the womencast dust on their hair and rocked to and fro howling. Younger Brothercrept as close to the pyre as he dared, and whined in his throat as thefire took hold of the brush and ran crackling up the open spaces. 

"It took hold of the wrapped deerskins, ran in sparks like little deerin the short hair, and bit through to Howkawanda. But no sooner had hefelt the teeth of the flame than the young man came back from the placewhere he had been, and sat up in the midst of the burning. He leaped outof the fire, and the people scattered like embers and put their handsover their mouths, as is the way with men when they are astonished. Howkawanda, wrapped as he was, rolled on the damp sand till the fireswere out, while Younger Brother gnawed him free of the death-wrappings, and the people's hands were still at their mouths. But the first step hetook toward them they caught up sticks and stones to threaten. 

"It was a fearful thing to them that he should come back from beingdead. Besides, the hair was burned half off his head, and he wasstreaked raw all down one side where the fire had bitten him. He stoodblinking, trying to pick up their meaning with his eyes. His maidenlooked up from her mother's lap where she wept for him, and fledshrieking. 

"'Dead, go back to the dead!' cried the Head Man, but he did not stop tosee whether Howkawanda obeyed him, for by this time the whole pack wassquealing down the creek to Hidden-under-the-Mountain. Howkawanda lookedat his maiden running fast with the strength of the portion he had savedfor her; looked at the empty camp and the bare hillside; looked once atthe high Wall of the Pyweack, and laughed as much as his burns wouldlet him. 

"'If we two be dead men, Brother, ' he said, 'it may be we shall haveluck on a Dead Man's Journey. '

"It would have been better if they could have set out at once, for rainin the Country of Dry Washes means snow on the Mountain. But they had towait for the healing of Howkawanda's burns, and to plump themselvesout a little on the meat--none too fat--that came down on itsown feet before the Rains. They lay in the half-ruined huts andheard, in the intervals of the storm, the beating of tom-toms atHidden-under-the-Mountain to keep off the evil influences of one who hadbeen taken for dead and was alive again. 

"By the time they were able to climb to the top of Knife-Cut Cañon thesnow lay over the mountains like a fleece, and at every turn of the windit shifted. From the Pass they dropped down into a pit between theranges, where, long before they came to it, they could hear the windbeating about like a trapped creature. Here great mountain-heads had runtogether like bucks in autumn, digging with shining granite hooves deepinto the floor of the Cañon. Into this the winds would drop from thehigh places like broken-winged birds, dashing themselves against thepolished walls of the Pyweack, dashing and falling back and cryingwoundedly. There was no other way into this Wind Trap than the wayHowkawanda and Younger Brother had come. If there was any way out onlythe Four-Footed People knew it. 

"But over all their trails snow lay, deepening daily, and great riversof water that fell into the Trap in summer stood frozen stiff like icevines climbing the Pyweack. 

"The two travelers made them a hut in broad branches of a great fir, forthe snow was more than man-deep already, and crusted over. They laidsticks on the five-branched whorl and cut away the boughs above themuntil they could stand. Here they nested, with the snow on the upperbranches like thatch to keep them safe against the wind. They ran on thesurface of the snow, which was packed firm in the bottom of the Trap, and caught birds and small game wintering in runways under the snowwhere the stiff brush arched and upheld it. When the wind, worn out withits struggles, would lie still in the bottom of the Trap, the two wouldrace over the snow-crust whose whiteness cut the eye like a knife, working into every winding of the Cañon for some clue to the DeadMan's Journey. 

[Illustration: "Shot downward to the ledge where Howkawanda and YoungerBrother hugged themselves"]

"On one of these occasions, caught by a sudden storm, they huggedthemselves for three days and ate what food they had, mouthful bymouthful, while the snow slid past them straight and sodden. It closedsmooth over the tree where their house was, to the middle branches. Twodays more they waited until the sun by day and the cold at night hadmade a crust over the fresh fall. On the second day they saw somethingmoving in the middle of the Cañon. Half a dozen wild geese had beencaught in one of the wind currents that race like rivers about the HighPlaces of the World, and dropped exhausted into the Trap. Now they roseheavily; but, starved and blinded, they could not pitch their flight tothat great height. Round and round they beat, and back they dropped fromthe huge mountain-heads, bewildered. Finally, the leader rose alonehigher and higher in that thin atmosphere until the watchers almost losthim, and then, exhausted, shot downward to the ledge where Howkawandaand Younger Brother hugged themselves in the shelter of a wind-drivendrift. They could see the gander's body shaken all over with the pumpingof his heart as Younger Brother took him hungrily by the neck. 

"'Nay, Brother, ' said Howkawanda, 'but I also have been counted dead, and it is in my heart that this one shall serve us better living thandead. ' He nursed the great white bird in his bosom and fed it with thelast of their food and a little snow-water melted in his palm. In anhour, rested and strengthened, the bird rose again, beating a widecircle slowly and steadily upward, until, with one faint honk offarewell, it sailed slowly out of sight between the peaks, sure of itsdirection. 

"'That way, ' said Howkawanda, 'lies Dead Man's Journey. '

"When they came back over the same trail a year later, they werefrightened to see what steeps and crevices they had covered. But forthat first trip the snow-crust held firm while they made straight forthe gap in the peaks through which the wild goose had disappeared. Theytraveled as long as the light lasted, though their hearts sobbed andshook with the thin air and the cold. 

"The drifts were thinner, and the rocks came through with clusters ofwind-slanted cedars. By nightfall snow began again, and they moved, touching, for they could not see an arm's length and dared not stop lestthe snow cover them. And the hair along the back of Younger Brotherbegan to prick. 

"'Here I die, indeed, ' said Howkawanda at last, for he suffered mostbecause of his naked skin. He sank down in the soft snow at YoungerBrother's shoulder. 

"'Up, Master, ' said Younger Brother, 'I hear something. '

"'It is the Storm Spirit singing my death song, ' said Howkawanda. Butthe coyote took him by the neck of his deerskin shirt and dragged hima little. 

"'Now, ' he said, 'I smell something. '

"Presently they stumbled into brush and knew it for red cedar. Patchesof it grew thick on the high ridges, matted close for cover. As thetravelers crept under it they heard the rustle of shoulder againstshoulder, the moving click of horns, and the bleat of yearlings fortheir mothers. They had stumbled in the dark on the bedding-place of aflock of Bighorn. 

"'Now we shall also eat, ' said Younger Brother, for he was quite empty. 

"The hand of Howkawanda came out and took him firmly by the loose skinbetween the shoulders. 

"'There was a coyote once who became brother to a man, ' he said, 'andmen, when they enter a strange house in search of shelter and direction, do not first think of killing. '

"'One blood we are, ' said the First Father of Dogs, remembering howHowkawanda had marked him, ' but we are not of one smell and the rams maytrample me. '

"Howkawanda took off his deerskin and put around the coyote so that heshould have man smell about him, for at that time the Bighorn had notlearned to fear man. 

"They could hear little bleats of alarm from the ewes and the huddlingof the flock away from them, and the bunting of the Chief Ram's horns onthe cedars as he came to smell them over. Younger Brother quivered, forhe could think of nothing but the ram's throat, the warm blood and thetender meat, but the finger of Howkawanda felt along his shoulders forthe scar of the Blood-Mixing, the time they had killed the buck atTalking Water. Then the First Father of all the Dogs understood that Manwas his Medicine and his spirit leaped up to lick the face of the man'sspirit. He lay still and felt the blowing in and out of Howkawanda'slong hair on the ram's breath, as he nuzzled them from head to heel. Finally the Bighorn stamped twice with all his four feet together, as asign that he had found no harm in the strangers. They could feel theflock huddling back, and the warmth of the packed fleeces. In the midstof it the two lay down and slept till morning. 

"They were alone in the cedar shelter when they woke, but the track ofthe flock in the fresh-fallen snow led straight over the crest under theCrooked Horn to protected slopes, where there was still some browse andopen going. 

"Toward nightfall they found an ancient wether the weight of whose hornshad sunk him deep in the soft snow, so that he could neither go forwardnor back. Him they took. It was pure kindness, for he would have diedslowly otherwise of starvation. That is the Way Things Are, " said theCoyote; "when one _must_ kill, killing is allowed. But before theykilled him they said certain words. 

"Later, " the Coyote went on, "they found a deer occasionally andmountain hares. Their worst trouble was with the cold. Snow lay deepover the dropped timber and the pine would not burn. Howkawanda wouldscrape together moss and a few twigs for a little fire to warm the frontof him and Younger Brother would snuggle at his back, so between twofriends the man saved himself. "

The Blackfoot nodded. "Fire is a very old friend of Man, " he said; "soold that the mere sight of it comforts him; they have come a long waytogether. " "Now I know, " said Oliver, "why you called the first dogFriend-at-the-Back. "

"Oh, but there was more to it than that, " said the Coyote, "for the nextdifficulty they had was to carry their food when they found it. Howkawanda had never had good use of his shoulder since the fire bit it, and even a buck's quarter weights a man too much in loose snow. So hetook a bough of fir, thick-set with little twigs, and tied the kill onthat. This he would drag behind him, and it rode lightly over thesurface of the drifts. When the going was bad, Younger Brother would tryto tug a little over his shoulder, so at last Howkawanda made a harnessfor him to pull straight ahead. Hours when they would lie storm-boundunder the cedars, he whittled at the bough and platted the twigstogether till it rode easily. 

"In the moon of Tender Leaves, the people of the Buffalo Country, whenthey came up the hills for the spring kill, met a very curiousprocession coming down. They saw a man with no clothes but a few tattersof deerskin, all scarred down one side of his body, and following at hisback a coyote who dragged a curiously plaited platform, by means of twopoles harnessed across his shoulders. It was the first travoise. The menof the Buffalo Country put their hands over their mouths, for they hadnever seen anything like it. "

The Coyote waited for the deep "huh-huh" of approval which circled theattentive audience at the end of the story. 

"Fire and a dog!" said the Blackfoot, adding a little pinchof sweet-grass to his smoke as a sign of thankfulness, --"Friend-on-the-Hearth and Friend-at-the-Back! Man may go far with them. "

Moke-icha turned her long flanks to the sun. "Now I thought the talebegan with a mention of a Talking Skin--"

"Oh, that!" The Coyote recalled himself. "After he had been a year inthe Buffalo Country, Howkawanda went back to carry news of the trail tothe Dry Washes. All that summer he worked over it while his dogs huntedfor him--for Friend-at-the-Back had taken a mate and there were fourcubs to run with them. Every day, as Howkawanda worked out the trail, hemarked it with stone and tree-blazes. With colored earth he marked it ona buffalo skin; from the Wind Trap to the Buffalo Country. 

"When he came to Hidden-under-the-Mountain he left his dogs behind, forhe said, 'Howkawanda is a dead man to them. ' In the Buffalo Country hewas known as Two-Friended, and that was his name afterward. He wasdressed after the fashion of that country, with a great buffalo robethat covered him, and his face was painted. So he came toHidden-under-the-Mountain as a stranger and made signs to them. And whenthey had fed him, and sat him in the chief place as was the custom withstrangers, he took the writing from under his robe to give it to thePeople of the Dry Washes. There was a young woman near by nursing herchild, and she gave a sudden sharp cry, for she was the one that hadbeen his maiden, and under the edge of his robe she saw his scars. Butwhen Howkawanda looked hard at her she pretended that the child hadbitten her. "

Dorcas Jane and Oliver drew a long breath when they saw that, so far asthe rest of the audience was concerned, the story was finished. Therewere a great many questions they wished to ask, --as to what became ofHowkawanda after that, and whether the People of the Dry Washes everfound their way into the Buffalo Country, --but before they could beginon them, the Bull Buffalo stamped twice with his fore-foot for a sign ofdanger. Far down at the other end of the gallery they could hear thewatchman coming. 

[Illustration]

VI

DORCAS JANE HEARS HOW THE CORN CAME TO THE VALLEY OF THE MISSI-SIPPU;TOLD BY THE CORN WOMAN

It was one of those holidays, when there isn't any school and the Museumis only opened for a few hours in the afternoon, that Dorcas Jane hadcome into the north gallery of the Indian room where her father was atwork mending the radiators. This was about a week after the children'sfirst adventure on the Buffalo Trail, but it was before the holes hadbeen cut in the Museum wall to let you look straight across the bend inthe Colorado and into the Hopi pueblo. Dorcas looked at all the wallcases and wondered how it was the Indians seemed to have so much cornand so many kinds of it, for she had always thought of corn as acivilized sort of thing to have. She sat on a bench against the wallwondering, for the lovely clean stillness of the room encouragedthinking, and the clink of her father's hammers on the pipes fellpresently into the regular _tink-tink-a-tink_ of tortoise-shell rattles, keeping time to the shuffle and beat of bare feet on the dancing-placeby the river. The path to it led across a clearing between littlehillocks of freshly turned earth, and the high forest overhead wasbursting into tiny green darts of growth like flame. The rattles weresewed to the leggings of the women--little yellow and blackland-tortoise shells filled with pebbles--who sang as they danced andcut themselves with flints until they bled. 

"Oh, " said Dorcas, without waiting to be introduced, "what makes you dothat?"

"To make the corn grow, " said the tallest and the handsomest of thewomen, motioning to the others to leave off their dancing while sheanswered. "Listen! You can hear the men doing their part. "

From the forest came a sudden wild whoop, followed by the sound of adrum, little and far off like a heart beating. "They are scaring off theenemies of the corn, " said the Corn Woman, for Dorcas could see by herheaddress, which was of dried corn tassels dyed in colors, and by a kindof kilt she wore, woven of corn husks, that that was what sherepresented. 

"Oh!" said Dorcas; and then, after a moment, "It sounds as if you weresorry, you know. "

"When the seed corn goes into the ground it dies, " said the Corn Woman;"the tribe might die also if it never came alive again. Also we lamentfor the Giver-of-the-Corn who died giving. "

"I thought corn just grew, " said Dorcas; "I didn't know it came from anyplace. "

"From the People of the Seed, from the Country of Stone Houses. It wasbought for us by Given-to-the-Sun. Our people came from the East, fromthe place where the Earth opened, from the place where the Noise was, where the Mountain thundered. .. . This is what I have heard; this is whatthe Old Ones have said, " finished the Corn Woman, as though it were somesort of song. 

She looked about to the others as if asking their consent to tell thestory. As they nodded, sitting down to loosen their heavy leggings, Dorcas could see that what she had taken to be a shock of last year'scornstalks, standing in the middle of the dancing-place, was really tiedinto a rude resemblance to a woman. Around its neck was one of theIndian's sacred bundles; Dorcas thought it might have something to dowith the story, but decided to wait and see. 

"There was a trail in those days, " said the Corn Woman, "from thebuffalo pastures to the Country of the Stone House. We used to travel itas far as the ledge where there was red earth for face-painting, and totrade with the Blanket People for salt. 

"But no farther. Hunting-parties that crossed into Chihuahua returnedsometimes; more often they were given to the Sun. --On the tops of thehills where their god-houses were, " explained the Corn Woman seeing thatDorcas was puzzled. "The Sun was their god to them. Every year they gavecaptives on the hills they built to the Sun. "

Dorcas had heard the guard explaining to visitors in the Aztec room. "Teocales, " she suggested. 

"That was one of their words, " agreed the Corn Woman. "They calledthemselves Children of the Sun. This much we knew; that there was aSeed. The People of the Cliffs, who came to the edge of the WindsweptPlain to trade, would give us cakes sometimes for dried buffalo tongues. This we understood was _mahiz_, but it was not until Given-to-the-Suncame to us that we thought of having it for ours. Our men were hunters. They thought it shame to dig in the ground. 

"Shungakela, of the Three Feather band, found her at the fork of theTurtle River, half starved and as fierce as she was hungry, but _he_called her 'Waits-by-the-Fire' when he brought her back to his tipi, andit was a long time before we knew that she had any other name. Shebelonged to one of the mountain tribes whose villages were raided by thePeople of the Sun, and because she had been a child at the time, she wasmade a servant. But in the end, when she had shot up like a red lily andher mistress had grown fond of her, she was taken by the priests ofthe Sun. 

"At first the girl did not know what to make of being dressed sohandsomely and fed upon the best of everything, but when they paintedher with the sign of the Sun she knew. Over her heart they painted it. Then they put about her neck the Eye of the Sun, and the same day thewoman who had been her mistress and was fond of her, slipped her a seedwhich she said should be eaten as she went up the Hill of the Sun, soshe would feel nothing. Given-to-the-Sun hid it in her bosom. 

"There was a custom that, in the last days, those who were to go up theHill of the Sun could have anything they asked for. So the girl asked towalk by the river and hear the birds sing. When they had walked out ofsight of the Stone Houses, she gave her watchers the seed in their foodand floated down the river on a piece of bark until she came ashore inthe thick woods and escaped. She came north, avoiding the trails, andafter a year Shungakela found her. Between her breasts there was thesign of the Sun. "

The Corn Woman stooped and traced in the dust the ancient sign of theintertwined four corners of the Earth with the Sun in the middle. "Around her neck in a buckskin bag was the charm that is known as theEye of the Sun. She never showed it to any of us, but when she was introuble or doubt, she would put her hand over it. It was her Medicine. "

"It was good Medicine, too, " spoke up the oldest of the dancing women. 

"We had need of it, " agreed the Corn Woman. "In those days the Earth wastoo full of people. The tribes swarmed, new chiefs arose, kin huntedagainst kin. Many hunters made the game shy, and it removed to newpastures. Strong people drove out weaker and took away theirhunting-grounds. We had our share of both fighting and starving, but ourtribe fared better than most because of the Medicine ofWaits-by-the-Fire, the Medicine of the Sun. She was a wise woman. Shewas made Shaman. When she spoke, even the chiefs listened. But whatcould the chiefs do except hunt farther and fight harder? SoWaits-by-the-Fire talked to the women. She talked of corn, how it wasplanted and harvested, with what rites and festivals. 

"There was a God of the Seed, a woman god who was served by women. Whenthe women of our tribe heard that, they took heart. The men had beenafraid that the God of the Corn would not be friendly to us. I think, too, they did not like the idea of leaving off the long season ofhunting and roving, for corn is a town-maker. For the tending andharvesting there must be one place, and for the guarding of the winterstores there must be a safe place. So said Waits-by-the-Fire to thewomen digging roots or boiling old bones in the long winter. She was awise woman. 

"It was the fight we had with the Tenasas that decided us. That was ayear of great scarcity and the Tenasas took to sending their young men, two or three at a time, creeping into our hunting-grounds to start thegame, and turn it in the direction of their own country. When our youngmen were sure of this, they went in force and killed inside the bordersof the Tenasas. They had surprised a herd of buffaloes at Two KettleLicks and were cutting up the meat when the Tenasas fell upon them. Waits-by-the-Fire lost her last son by that battle. One she had lost inthe fight at Red Buttes and one in a year of Hunger while he was little. This one was swift of foot and was called Last Arrow, for Shungakela hadsaid, 'Once I had a quiver full. ' Waits-by-the-Fire brought him back onher shoulders from the place where the fight was. She walked with himinto the Council. 

"'The quiver is empty, ' she said; 'the food bags, also; will you waitfor us to fill one again before you fill the other?'

"Mad Wolf, who was chief at the time, threw up his hand as a man doeswhen he is down and craves a mercy he is too proud to ask for. 'We havefought the Tenasas, ' he said; 'shall we fight our women also?'

"Waits-by-the-Fire did not wait after that for long speeches in theCouncil. She gathered her company quickly, seven women well seasoned andnot comely, --'The God of the Corn is a woman god, ' she said, sharpsmiling, --and seven men, keen and hard runners. The rest she appointedto meet her at Painted Rock ten moons from their going. "

"So long as that!" said Dorcas Jane. "Was it so far from where you livedto Mex--to the Country of Stone Houses?"

"Not so far, but they had to stay from planting to harvest. Of what usewas the seed without knowledge. Traveling hard they crossed the River ofthe White Rocks and reached, by the end of that moon, the mountainoverlooking the Country of Stone Houses. Here the men stayed. Waits-by-the-Fire arranged everything. She thought the people of thetowns might hesitate to admit so many men strangers. Also she had thewomen put on worn moccasins with holes, and old food from the yearbefore in their food bags. "

"I should think, " began Dorcas Jane, "they would have wanted to put onthe best they had to make a good impression. "

"She was a wise woman, " said the Corn Woman; "she said that if they camefrom near, the people of the towns might take them for spies, but theywould not fear travelers from so far off that their moccasins hadholes in them. "

The Corn Woman had forgotten that she was telling a story older than theoaks they sat under. When she came to the exciting parts she said "we"and "us" as though it were something that had happened to them allyesterday. 

"It was a high white range that looked on the Country of Stone Houses, "she said, "with peaks that glittered, dropping down ridge by ridge towhere the trees left off at the edge of a wide, basket-colored valley. It hollowed like a meal basket and had a green pattern woven through itby a river. Shungakela went with the women to the foot of the mountain, and then, all at once, he would not let them go until Waits-by-the-Firepromised to come back to the foot of the mountain once in every moon totell him how things went with us. We thought it very childish of him, but afterward we were glad we had not made any objection. 

"It was mid-morning when the Seven walked between the fields, withlittle food in their bags and none whatever in their stomachs, all inrags except Waits-by-the-Fire, who had put on her Shaman's dress, andaround her neck, tied in a bag with feathers, the Medicine of the Sun. People stood up in the fields to stare, and we would have stared backagain, but we were afraid. Behind the stone house we saw the Hill of theSun and the priests moving up and down as Waits-by-the-Fire haddescribed it. 

"Below the hill, where the ground was made high, at one side of thesteps that went up to the Place of Giving, stood the house of the CornGoddess, which was served by women. There the Seven laid up theiroffering of poor food before the altar and stood on the steps of thegod-house until the head priestess noticed them. Wisps of incense smokefloated out of the carved doorways and the drone of the priestess likebees in a hollow log. All the people came out on their flat roofs towatch--Did I say that they had two and even three houses, one on top ofthe other, each one smaller than the others, and ladders that went upand down to them?--They stood on the roofs and gathered in the opensquare between the houses as still and as curious as antelopes, and atlast the priestess of the Corn came out and spoke to us. Talk went onbetween her and Waits-by-the-Fire, purring, spitting talk like waterstumbling among stones. Not one word did our women understand, but theysaw wonder grow among the Corn Women, respect and amazement. 

"Finally, we were taken into the god-house, where in the half dark, wecould make out the Goddess of the Corn, cut in stone, with green stoneson her forehead. There were long councils between Waits-by-the-Fire andthe Corn Woman and the priests that came running from the Temple of theSun. Outside the rumor and the wonder swelled around the god-house likea sudden flood. Faces bobbed up like rubbish in the flood into thebright blocks of light that fell through the doorway, and were shiftedand shunted by other faces peering in. After a long tune the note ofwonder outside changed to a deep, busy hum; the crowd separated and letthrough women bearing food in pots and baskets. Then we knew thatWaits-by-the-Fire had won. "

"But what?" insisted Dorcas; "what was it that she had told them?"

"That she had had a dream which was sent by the Corn Spirit and that sheand those with her were under a vow to serve the Corn for the space ofone growing year. And to prove that her dream was true the Goddess ofthe Corn had revealed to her the speech of the Stone House tribe andalso many hidden things. These were things which she remembered from hercaptivity which she told them. "

"What sort of things?"

"Why, that in such a year they had had a pestilence and that the fatherof the Corn Woman had died of eating over-ripe melons. The Corn Womenwere greatly impressed. But she carried it almost too far . .. Perhaps. .. And perhaps it was appointed from the beginning that that was theway the Corn was to come. It was while we were eating that we realizedhow wise she was to make us come fasting, for first the people pitiedus, and then they were pleased with themselves for making uscomfortable. But in the middle of it there was a great stir and a man inchief's dress came pushing through. He was the Cacique of the Sun and hewas vexed because he had not been called earlier. He was that kind ofa man. 

"He spoke sharply to the Chief Corn Woman to know why strangers werereceived within the town without his knowledge. 

"Waits-by-the-Fire answered quickly. 'We are guests of the Corn, OCacique, and in my dream I seem to have heard of your hospitality towomen of the Corn. ' You see there had been an old story when he wasyoung, how one of the Corn Maidens had gone to his house and had beenkept there against her will, which was a discredit to him. He was soastonished to hear the strange woman speak of it that he turned and wentout of the god-house without another word. The people took up theincident and whispered it from mouth to mouth to prove that the strangeShaman was a great prophet. So we were appointed a house to live in andwere permitted to serve the Corn. "

"But what did you do?" Dorcas insisted on knowing. 

"We dug and planted. All this was new to us. When there was no work inthe fields we learned the ways of cooking corn, and to make pots. Hunting-tribes do not make pots. How should we carry them from place toplace on our backs? We cooked in baskets with hot stones, and sometimeswhen the basket was old we plastered it with mud and set it on the fire. But the People of the Corn made pots of coiled clay and burned it hardin the open fires between the houses. Then there was the ceremony of theCorn to learn, the prayers and the dances. Oh, we had work enough! Andif ever anything was ever said or done to us which was not pleasant, Waits-by-the-Fire would say to the one who had offended, 'We are onlythe servants of the Corn, but it would be a pity if the same thinghappened to you that happened to the grandfather of your next-doorneighbor!'

"And what happened to him?"

"Oh, a plague of sores, a scolding wife, " or anything that she chancedto remember from the time she had been Given-to-the-Sun. _That_ stoppedthem. But most of them held us to be under the protection of the CornSpirit, and when our Shaman would disappear for two or three days--thatwas when she went to the mountain to visit Shungakela--_we_ said thatshe had gone to pray to her own gods, and they accepted that also. "

"And all this time no one recognized her?"

"She had painted her face for a Shaman, " said the Corn Woman slowly, "and besides it was nearly forty years. The woman who had been kind toher was dead and there was a new Priest of the Sun. Only the one who hadpainted her with the sign of the Sun was left, and he was doddering. "She seemed about to go on with her story, but the oldest dancing womaninterrupted her. 

"Those things helped, " said the dancing woman, "but it was her thoughtwhich hid her. She put on the thought of a Shaman as a man puts on thethought of a deer or a buffalo when he goes to look for them. That whichone fears, that it is which betrays one. She was a Shaman in her heartand as a Shaman she appeared to them. "

"She certainly had no fear, " said the Corn Woman, "though from the firstshe must have known--

"It was when the seed corn was gathered that we had the first hint oftrouble, " she went on. "When it was ripe the priests and Caciques wentinto the fields to select the seed for next year. Then it was laid up inthe god-houses for the priestess of the Corn to keep. That was in caseof an enemy or a famine when the people might be tempted to eat it. After it was once taken charge of by the priestess of the Corn theywould have died rather than give it up. Our women did not know how theyshould get the seed to bring away from the Stone House except to ask forit as the price of their year's labor. "

"But couldn't you have just taken some from the field?" inquired Dorcas. "Wouldn't it have grown just the same?"

"That we were not sure of; and we were afraid to take it without thegood-will of the Corn Goddess. Centcotli her name was. Waits-by-the-Firemade up her mind to ask for it on the first day of the Feast of the CornHarvest, which lasts four days, and is a time of present-giving andgood-willing. She would have got it, too, if it had been left to theCorn Women to decide. But the Cacique of the Sun, who was alwayswatching out for a chance to make himself important, insisted that itwas a grave matter and should be taken to Council. He had never forgiventhe Shaman, you see, for that old story about the Corn Maiden. 

"As soon as the townspeople found that the Caciques were consideringwhether it was proper to give seed corn to the strangers, they began toconsider it, too, turning it over in their minds together with a greatmany things that had nothing to do with it. There had been smut in thecorn that year; there was a little every year, but this season there wasmore of it, and a good many of the bean pods had not filled out. Iforgot, " said the Corn Woman, "to speak of the beans and squashes. Theywere the younger sisters of the corn; they grew with the corn and twinedabout it. Now, every man who was a handful or two short of his cropbegan to look at us doubtfully. Then they would crowd around the Caciqueof the Sun to argue the matter. They remembered how our Shaman had goneapart to pray to her own gods and they thought the Spirit of the Cornmight have been offended. And the Cacique would inquire of every one whohad a toothache or any such matter, in such a way as to make them thinkof it in connection with the Shaman. --In every village, " the Corn Womaninterrupted herself to say, "there is evil enough, if laid at the doorof one person, to get her burned for a witch!"

"Was she?" Dorcas Jane squirmed with anxiety. 

"She was standing on the steps at the foot of the Hill of the Sun, thelast we saw of her, " said the Corn Woman. "Of course, our women, notunderstanding the speech of the Stone Houses, did not know exactly whatwas going on, but they felt the changed looks of the people. Theythought, perhaps, they could steal away from the town unnoticed. Two ofthem hid in their clothing as much Seed as they could lay hands on andwent down toward the river. They were watched and followed. So they cameback to the house where Waits-by-the-Fire prayed daily with her hand onthe Medicine of the Sun. 

"So came the last day of the feast when the sacred seed would be sealedup in the god-house. 'Have no fear, ' said Waits-by-the-Fire, 'for mydream has been good. Make yourselves ready for the trail. Take food inyour food bags and your carriers empty on your backs. ' She put on herShaman's dress and about the middle of the day the Cacique of the Sunsent for them. He was on the platform in front of the god-house wherethe steps go up to the Hill of the Sun, and the elders of the town werebehind him. Priests of the Sun stood on the steps and the Corn Womencame out from the temple of the Corn. As Waits-by-the-Fire went up withthe Seven, the people closed in solidly behind them. The Cacique lookedat the carriers on their backs and frowned. 

"'Why do you come to the god-house with baskets, like laborers of thefields?' he demanded. 

"'For the price of our labor, O Cacique, ' said the Shaman. 'The gods arenot so poor that they accept labor for nothing. '

"'Now, it is come into my heart, ' said the Cacique sourly, 'that thegods are not always pleased to be served by strangers. There are signsthat this is so. '

"'It may be, ' said Waits-by-the-Fire, 'that the gods are not pleased. They have long memories. ' She looked at him very straight and somebodyin the crowd snickered. "

"But wasn't it awfully risky to keep making him mad like that?" askedDorcas. "They could have just done anything to her!"

"She was a wise woman; she knew what she had to do. The Cacique _was_angry. He began making a long speech at her, about how the smut had comein the corn and the bean crop was a failure, --but that was because therehad not been water enough, --and how there had been sickness. And whenWaits-by-the-Fire asked him if it were only in that year they hadmisfortune, the people thought she was trying to prove that she hadn'thad anything to do with it. She kept reminding them of things that hadhappened the year before, and the year before. The Cacique kept growingmore and more angry, admitting everything she said, until it showedplainly that the town had had about forty years of bad luck, which theCacique tried to prove was all because the gods had known in advancethat they were going to be foolish and let strangers in to serve theCorn. At first the people grew excited and came crowding against theedge of the platform, shouting, 'Kill her! Kill the witch!' as one andthen another of their past misfortunes were recalled to them. 

"But, as the Shaman kept on prodding the Cacique, as hunters stir up abear before killing him, they began to see that there was something morecoming, and they stood still, packed solidly in the square to listen. Onall the housetops roundabout the women and the children were as still asimages. A young priest from the steps of the Hill, who thought he mustback up the Cacique, threw up his arms and shouted, 'Give her to theSun!' and a kind of quiver went over the people like the shiver of stillwater when the wind smites it. It was only at the time of the New Fire, between harvest and planting, that they give to the Sun, or in greattimes of war or pestilence. Waits-by-the-Fire moved out to the edge ofthe platform. 

"'It is not, O People of the Sun, for what is given, that the gods growangry, but for what is withheld, ' she said, 'Is there nothing, priestsof the Sun, which was given to the Sun and let go again? Think, Opriests. Nothing?'

"The priests, huddled on the stairs, began to question among themselves, and Waits-by-the-Fire turned to the people. 'Nothing, O Offspring ofthe Sun?'

"Then she put off the Shaman's thought which had been a shield to her. 'Nothing, Toto?' she called to a man in the crowd by a name none knewhim by except those that had grown up with him. She wasGiven-to-the-Sun, and she stood by the carved stone corn of thegod-house and laughed at them, shuffling and shouldering like buffaloesin the stamping-ground, and not knowing what to think. Voices began tocall for the man she had spoken to, 'Toto, O Toto!'

"The crowd swarmed upon itself, parted and gave up the figure of theancient Priest of the Sun, for they remembered in his day how a girl whowas given to the Sun had been snatched away by the gods out of sight ofthe people. They pushed him forward, doddering and peering. They saw thewoman put back her Shaman's bonnet from her head, and the old priestclap his hand to his mouth like one suddenly astonished. 

"Over the Cacique's face came a cold glint like the coming of ice onwater. 'You, ' he said, 'you are Given-to-the-Sun?' And he made a gestureto the guard to close in on her. 

"'Given-to-the-Sun, ' she said. 'Take care how you touch that whichbelongs to the gods, O Cacique!'

"And though he still smiled, he took a step backward. 

"'So, ' he said, 'you are that woman and this is the meaning of thoseprophecies!'

"'I am that woman and that prophet, ' she said with her hand at herthroat and looked from priests to people. 'O People of the Sun, I haveheard you have a charm, ' she said, --'a Medicine of the Sun called theEye of the Sun, strong Medicine. '

"No one answered for a while, but they began to murmur among themselves, and at last one shouted that they had such a charm, but it was not forwitches or for runaway slave women. 

"You _had_ such a charm, ' she said, for she knew well enough that thesacred charm was kept in the god-house and never shown to the peopleexcept on very great occasions. She was sure that the priests had neverdared to tell the people that their Sacred Stone had disappeared withthe escaped captive. 

"Given-to-the-Sun took the Medicine bag from her neck and swung it inher fingers. _'Had!'_ she said mockingly. The people gave a growl;another time they would have been furious with fright and anger, butthey did not wish to miss a syllable of what was about to happen. Thepriests whispered angrily with the guard, but Given-to-the-Sun did notcare what the priests did so long as she had the people. She signed tothe Seven, and they came huddling to her like quail; she put thembehind her. 

"'Is it not true, Children of the Sun, that the favor of the Sun goeswith the Eye of the Sun and it will come back to you when the Stonecomes back?'

"They muttered and said that it was so. 

"'Then, will your priests show you the Eye of the Sun or shall I showyou?'

"There was a shout raised at that, and some called to the priests toshow the Stone, and others that the woman would bring trouble on themall with her offenses. But by this time they knew very well where theStone was, and the priests were too astonished to think of anything. Slowly the Shaman drew it out of the Medicine bag--"

The Corn Woman waited until one of the women handed her the sacredbundle from the neck of the Corn image. Out of it, after a littlerummaging, she produced a clear crystal of quartz about the size of apigeon's egg. It gave back the rays of the Sun in a dazzle that, to anyone who had never seen a diamond, would have seemed wonderfullybrilliant. Where it lay in the Corn Woman's hand it scattered littleflecks of reflected light in rainbow splashes. The Indian women made thesign of the Sun on their foreheads and Dorcas felt a prickle ofsolemnity along the back of her neck as she looked at it. Nobody spokeuntil it was back again in the Medicine bundle. 

"Given-to-the-Sun held it up to them, " the story went on, "and there wasa noise in the square like a noise of the stamping-ground at twilight. Some bellowed one thing and some another, and at last a priest of theSun moved sharply and spoke:--

"'The Eye of the Sun is not for the eyes of the vulgar. Will you letthis false Shaman impose on you, O Children of the Sun, with acommon pebble?'

"Given-to-the-Sun stooped and picked up a mealing-stone that was usedfor grinding the sacred meal in the temple of the Corn. 

"'If your Stone is in the temple and this is a common pebble, ' said she, 'it does not matter what I do with it. ' And she seemed about to crush iton the top of the stone balustrade at the edge of the platform. Thepeople groaned. They knew very well that this was their Sacred Stone andthat the priests had deceived them. Given-to-the-Sun stood resting onestone upon the other. 

"'The Sun has been angry with you, ' she said, 'but the Goddess of theCorn saves you. She has brought back the Stone and the Sacrifice. Do notshow yourselves ungrateful to the Corn by denying her servants theirwages. What! will you have all the gods against you? Priestess of theCorn, ' she called toward the temple, 'do you also mislead the people?'

"At that the Corn Women came hurrying, for they saw that the people wereboth frightened and angry; they brought armsful of corn and seeds forthe carriers, they took bracelets from their arms and put them for giftsin the baskets. The priests of the Sun did not say anything. One of thewomen's headbands slipped and the basket swung sideways. Given-to-the-Sun whipped off her belt and tucked it under the basket rimto make it ride more evenly. The woman felt something hard in the beltpressing her shoulder, but she knew better than to say anything. Insilence the crowd parted and let the Seven pass. They went swiftly withtheir eyes on the ground by the north gate to the mountain. The priestsof the Sun stood still on the steps of the Hill of the Sun and theireyes glittered. The Sacrifice of the Sun had come back to them. 

"When our women passed the gate, the crowd saw Given-to-the-Sun restorewhat was in her hand to the Medicine bag; she lifted her arms above herhead and began the prayer to the Sun. "

 * * * * *

"I see, " said Dorcas after a long pause; "she stayed to keep the Peopleof the Sun pacified while the women got away with the seed. That wassplendid. But, the Eye of the Sun, I thought you saw her put that in thebuckskin bag again?"

"She must have had ready another stone of shape and size like it, " saidthe Corn Woman. "She thought of everything. She was a wise woman, and solong as she was called Given-to-the-Sun the Eye of the Sun was hers togive. Shungakela was not surprised to find that his wife had stayed atthe Hill of the Sun; so I suppose she must have told him. He asked ifthere was a token, and the woman whose basket she had propped with hergirdle gave it to him with the hard lump that pressed her shoulder. Sothe Medicine of the Sun came back to us. 

"Our men had met the women at the foot of the mountain and they fled allthat day to a safe place the men had made for them. It was for that theyhad stayed, to prepare food for flight, and safe places for hiding incase they were followed. If the pursuit pressed too hard, the men wereto stay and fight while the women escaped with the corn. That was howGiven-to-the-Sun arranged it. 

"Next day as we climbed, we saw smoke rising from the Hill of the Sun, and Shungakela went apart on the mountain, saying, 'Let me alone, for Imake a fire to light the feet of my wife's spirit. .. ' They had beenmarried twenty years. 

"We found the tribe at Painted Rock, but we thought it safer to come oneast beyond the Staked Plains as Given-to-the-Sun had advised us. At RedRiver we stopped for a whole season to plant corn. But there was notrain enough there, and if we left off watching the fields for a day thebuffaloes came and cropped them. So for the sake of the corn we camestill north and made friends with the Tenasas. We bought help of themwith the half of our seed, and they brought us over the river, theMissi-Sippu, the Father of all Rivers. The Tenasas had boats, round likebaskets, covered with buffalo hide, and they floated us over, twoswimmers to every boat to keep us from drifting downstream. 

"Here we made a town and a god-house, to keep the corn contented. Everyyear when the seed is gathered seven ears are laid up in the god-housein memory of the Seven, and for the seed which must be kept for nextyear's crop there are seven watchers"--the Corn Woman included thedancers and herself in a gesture of pride. "We are the keepers of theSeed, " she said, "and no man of the tribe knows where it is hidden. Forno matter how hungry the people may become the seed corn must not beeaten. But with us there is never any hunger, for every year fromplanting time till the green corn is ready for picking, we keep all theceremonies of the corn, so that our cribs are filled to bursting. Look!"

The Corn Woman stood up and the dancers getting up with her shook therattles of their leggings with a sound very like the noise a radiatormakes when some one is hammering on the other end of it. And when Dorcasturned to look for the Indian cribs there was nothing there but thefamiliar wall cases and her father mending the steam heater. 

[Illustration: SIGN OF THE SUN AND THE FOUR QUARTERS]

[Illustration]

VII

A TELLING OF THE SALT TRAIL, OF TSE-TSE-YOTE AND THE DELIGHT-MAKERS;TOLD BY MOKE-ICHA

Oliver was so interested in his sister's account of how the corn cameinto the country, that that very evening he dragged out a tattered oldatlas which he had rescued from the Museum waste, and began to look forthe places named by the Corn Woman. They found the old Chihuahua Trailsagging south across the Rio Grande, which, on the atlas map, carriedits ancient name of River of the White Rocks. Then they found the RedRiver, but there was no trace of the Tenasas, unless it might be, asthey suspected from the sound, in the Country of the Tennessee. It wasall very disappointing. . "I suppose, " suggested Dorcas Jane, "they don'tput down the interesting places. It's only the ones that are too dull tobe remembered that have to be printed. "

Oliver, who did not believe this was quite the principle on whichatlases were constructed, had made a discovery. Close to the Rio Grande, and not far from the point where the Chihuahua Trail, crossed it, therewas a cluster of triangular dots, marked Cliff Dwellings. "There wascorn there, " he insisted. "You can see it in the wall cases, and CliffDwellings are the oldest old places in the United States. If they werehere when the Corn Woman passed, I don't see why she had to go to theStone Houses for seed. " And when they had talked it over they decided togo that very night and ask the Buffalo Chief about it. 

"There was always corn, as I remember it, " said the old bull, "growingtall about the tipis. But touching the People of the Cliffs--that wouldbe Moke-icha's story. "

The great yellow cat came slipping out from the over-weighted thicketsof wild plum, and settled herself on her boulder with a bound. Stretching forth one of her steel-tipped pads toward the south sheseemed to draw the purple distance as one draws a lady by her scarf. Thethin lilac-tinted haze parted on the gorge of the Rio Grande, betweenthe white ranges. The walls of the cañon were scored with deepperpendicular gashes as though the river had ripped its way through themwith its claws. Yellow pines balanced on the edge of the cliffs, andsmaller, tributary cañons, that opened into it, widened here and thereto let in tall, solitary trees, with patches of sycamore and wild cherryand linked pools for trout. 

"That was a country!" purred Moke-icha. "What was it you wished to knowabout it?"

"Ever so many things, " said Oliver promptly--"if there were peoplethere, and if they had corn--"

"Queres they were called, " said Moke-icha, "and they were already apeople, with corn of four colors for the four corners of the earth, andmany kinds of beans and squashes, when they came to Ty-uonyi. "

"Where were they when the Corn Woman passed? Who were the BlanketPeople, and what--"

"Softly, " said Moke-icha. "Though I slept in the kivas and am calledKabeyde, Chief of the Four-Footed, I did not know _all_ the tales of theQueres. They were a very ancient people. On the Salt Trail, where itpassed by Split Rock, the trail was bitten deep into the granite. Ithink they could not have been more than three or four hundred years inTy-uonyi when I knew them. They came from farther up the river wherethey had cities built into the rock. And before that? How should I know?They said they came from a hole in the ground, from Shipapu. They tradedto the south with salt which they brought from the Crawling Water forgreen stones and a kind of white wool which grew on bushes, from whichthey made their clothes. There were no wandering tribes about except theDiné and they were all devils. "

"Devils they may have been, " said the Navajo, "but they did not saytheir prayers to a yellow cat, O Kabeyde. "

"I speak but as the People of the Cliffs, " said Moke-icha soothingly. "If they called to Diné devils, doubtless they had reason; and if theymade prayers and images to me, it was not without a reason: not withoutgood reason. " Her tail bristled a little as it curled at the tip like asnake. Deep yellow glints swam at the backs of her half-shut eyes. 

"It was because of the Diné, who were not friendly to the Queres, thatthe towns were built as you see, with the solid outer wall and the doorsall opening on a court, at the foot of the cliff. It was hot and quietthere with always something friendly going on, children tumbling aboutamong the dogs and the turkeys, an old man rattling a gourd and singingthe evil away from his eyes, or the _plump, plump_ of the mealing-stonefrom the doorways. Now and then a maiden going by, with a tray of herbest cooking which she carried to her young man as a sign that she hadaccepted him, would throw me a morsel, and at evenings the priests wouldcome out of the kivas and strike with a clapper of deer's shoulder on aflint gong to call the people to the dancing-places. "

The children turned to look once more at the narrow rift of Ty-uonyi asit opened from the cañon of the Rio Grande between two basalt columns toallow the sparkling Rito to pass where barely two men could walkabreast. Back from the stream the pale amber cliffs swept in smooth lapsand folds like ribbons. Crowded against its sheer northern face theirregularly terraced heaps of the communal houses looked little as antheaps at the foot of a garden wall. Tiers and tiers of the T-shapedopenings of the cave dwellings spotted the smooth cliff, but along thesingle two-mile street, except for an occasional obscure doorway, ranthe blank, mud-plastered wall of the kivas. 

Where the floor of the cañon widened, the water of the Rito was led outin tiny dikes and ditches to water the garden patches. A bowshot on theopposite side rose the high south wall, wind and rain washed into tentsand pinnacles, spotted with pale scrub and blood-red flowers of nopal. Trails spidered up its broken steep, and were lost in the cloud-drift ordipped out of sight over the edge of the timbered mesa. 

"We would go over the trail to hunt, " said Moke-icha. "There were nobuffaloes, but blacktail and mule deer that fattened on the bunch grass, and bands of pronghorn flashing their white rumps. Quail ran in drovesand rose among the mesas like young thunder. 

"That was my cave, " said the Puma, nodding toward a hole high up like aspeck on the five-hundred-foot cliff, close up under the greatceremonial Cave which was painted with the sign of the Morning and theEvening Star, and the round, bright House of the Sun Father. "But atfirst I slept in the kiva with Tse-tse-yote. Speaking of devils--therewas no one who had the making of a livelier devil in him than my youngmaster. Slim as an arrow, he would come up from his morning dip in theRito, glittering like the dark stone of which knives are made, and hishair in the sun gave back the light like a raven. And there was no man'sway of walking or standing, nor any cry of bird or beast, that he couldnot slip into as easily as a snake slips into a shadow. He would nevermock when he was asked, but let him alone, and some evening, when thepeople smoked and rested, he would come stepping across the court in thelikeness of some young man whose maiden had just smiled on him. Or ifsome hunter prided himself too openly on a buck he had killed, the firstthing he knew there would be Tse-tse-yote walking like an ancientspavined wether prodded by a blunt arrow, until the whole court roaredwith laughter. 

"Still, Kokomo should have known better than to try to make him one ofthe Koshare, for though laughter followed my master as ripples follow askipping stone, he laughed little himself. 

"Who were the Koshare? They were the Delight-Makers; one of their secretsocieties. They daubed themselves with mud and white paint to makelaughter by jokes and tumbling. They had their kiva between us and theGourd People, but Tse-tse-yote, who had set his heart on being electedto the Warrior Band, the Uakanyi, made no secret of thinking small ofthe Koshare. 

"There was no war at that time, but the Uakanyi went down with theSalt-Gatherers to Crawling Water, once in every year between thecorn-planting and the first hoeing, and as escort on the trading trips. They would go south till they could see the blue wooded slope below thewhite-veiled mountain, and would make smoke for a trade signal, threesmokes close together and one farther off, till the Men of the Southcame to deal with them. But it was the Salt-Gathering that madeTse-tse-yote prefer the Warrior Band to the Koshare, for all thatcountry through which the trail lay was disputed by the Diné. It is truethere was a treaty, but there was also a saying at Ty-uonyi, 'a sievefor water and a treaty for the Diné. '"

[Illustration: Tse-tse-yote and Moke-icha]

The Navajo broke in angrily, "The Tellings were to be of the trails, OKabeyde, and not of the virtues of my ancestors!" The children looked athim, round-eyed. 

"Are you the Diné?" they exclaimed both at once. It seemed to bring theCliff People so much nearer. 

"So we were named, though we were called devils by those who feared us, and Blanket People by the Plainsmen. We were a tree whose roots were inthe desert and whose branches were over all the north, and there is noTelling of the Queres, Cochiti, or Ty-uonyi, O Kebeyde, "--he turned tothe puma, --"which I cannot match with a better of those same Diné. "

"There were Diné in this Telling, " purred Moke-icha, "and one puma. There was also Pitahaya, the chief, who was so old that he spent most ofthe time singing the evil out of his eyes. There was Kokomo, who wishedto be chief in his stead, and there was Willow-in-the-Wind, the turkeygirl, who had no one belonging to her. She had a wind-blown way ofwalking, and her long hair, which she washed almost every day in theRito, streamed behind her like the tips of young willows. Finally, therewas Tse-tse-yote. But one must pick up the trail before one settles tothe Telling, " said Moke-icha. 

"Tse-tse-yote took me, a nine days' cub, from the lair in Shut Cañon andbrought me up in his mother's house, the fifth one on the right from thegate that was called, because of a great hump of arrow-stone which wasbuilt into it, Rock-Overhanging. When he was old enough to leave hismother and sleep in the kiva of his clan, he took me with him, where Ihave no doubt, we made a great deal of trouble. Nights when the mooncalled me, I would creep out of Tse-tse's arms to the top of the ladder. The kivas opened downward from a hole in the roof in memory of Shipapu. Half-awake, Tse-tse would come groping to find me until he trod on oneof the others by mistake, who would dream that the Diné were after himand wake the kiva with his howls. Or somebody would pinch my tail andTse-tse would hit right and left with his pillows--"

"Pillows?" said Oliver. 

"Mats of reed or deerskin. They would slap at one another, or snatch atany convenient ankle or hair, until Kokomo, the master of the kiva, would have to come and cuff them apart. Always he made believe thatTse-tse or I had started it, and one night he tried to throw me out bythe skin of my neck, and I turned in his hand--How was I to know thatthe skin of man is so tender?--and his smell was the smell of a man whonurses grudges. 

"After that, even Tse-tse-yote saw that I was too old for the kiva, sohe made me a cave for myself, high up under the House of the Sun Father, and afterward he widened it so that he could sit there tying prayerplumes and feathering his arrows. By day I hunted with Tse-tse-yote onthe mesa, or lay up in a corner of the terrace above the court of theGourd Clan, and by night--to say the truth, by night I did very much asit pleased me. There was a broken place in the wall-plaster by the gateof the Rock-Overhanging, by which I could go up and down, and if I wascaught walking on the terrace, nobody minded me. I was Kabeyde, and thehunters thought I brought them luck. "

Thus having picked up the trail to her satisfaction, Moke-icha tuckedher paws under her comfortably and settled to her story. 

"When Tse-tse-yote took me to sleep with him in the kiva of his clan, Kokomo, who was head of the kiva, objected. So Tse-tse-yote spent thethree nights following in a corner of the terrace with me curled up forwarmth beside him. Tse-tse's father heard of it and carried the matterto Council. Tse-tse had taken me with his own hands from the lair, knowing very well what my mother would have done to him had she comeback and found him there; and Tse-tse's father was afraid, if they tookaway the first fruits of his son's courage, the courage would go withit. The Council agreed with him. Kokomo was furious at having themanagement of his kiva taken out of his hands, and Tse-tse knew it. Later, when even Tse-tse's father agreed that I was too old for thekiva, Tse-tse taught me to curl my tail under my legs and slink on mybelly when I saw Kokomo. Then he would scold me for being afraid of thekind man, and the other boys would giggle, for they knew very well thatTse-tse had to beat me over the head with a firebrand to teach methat trick. 

"It was a day or two after I had learned it, that we metWillow-in-the-Wind feeding her turkey flock by the Rito as we came fromhunting, and she scolded Tse-tse for making fun of Kokomo. 

"'It is plain, ' she said, 'that you are trying to get yourself electedto the Delight-Makers. '

"'You know very well it is no such thing, ' he answered her roughly, forit was not permitted a young man to make a choice of the society hewould belong to. He had to wait until he was elected by his elders. Theturkey girl paddled her toes in the Rito. 

"'There is only one way, ' she said, 'that a man can be kept from makingfun of the Koshare, and that is by electing him a member. Now, _I_thought you would have preferred the Uakanyi, '--just as if she did notknow that there was little else he thought of. 

"Tse-tse pulled up the dry grass and tossed it into the water. 'In theold days, ' he said, 'I have heard that Those Above sent theDelight-Makers to make the people laugh so that the way should not seemlong, and the Earth be fruitful. But now the jests of the Koshare arescorpions, each one with a sting in its tail for the enemies of theDelight-Makers. I had sooner strike mine with a knife or an arrow. '

"'Enemies, yes, ' said Willow-in-the-Wind, 'but you cannot use a knife onthose who sit with you in Council. You know very well that Kokomo wishesto be chief in place of Pitahaya. '

"Tse-tse looked right and left to see who listened. 'Kokomo is a strongman in Ty-uonyi, ' he said; 'it was he who made the treaty with the Diné. And Pitahaya is blind. '

"'Aye, ' said the turkey girl; 'when you are a Delight-Maker you can makea fine jest of it. '

"She had been brought up a foundling in the house of the old chief andwas fond of him. Tse-tse, who had heard and said more than became ayoung man, was both angry and frightened; therefore he boasted. 

"'Kokomo shall not make me a Koshare, ' he said; 'it will not be thefirst time I have carried the Council against him. '

"At that time I did not know so much of the Diné as that they were men. But the day after Willow-in-the-Wind told Tse-tse that Kokomo meant tohave him elected to the Koshare if only to keep him from making a mockof Kokomo, we went up over the south wall hunting. 

"It was all flat country from there to the roots of the mountains; greatpines stood wide apart, with here and there a dwarf cedar steeping inthe strong sun. We hunted all the morning and lay up under a dark oakwatching the young winds stalk one another among the lupins. Liftingmyself to catch the upper scent, I winded a man that was not ofTy-uonyi. A moment later we saw him with a buck on his shoulders, working his way cautiously toward the head of Dripping Spring Cañon. 'Diné!' said Tse-tse; 'fighting man. ' And he signed to me that we muststalk him. 

"For an hour we slunk and crawled through the black rock that brokethrough the mesa like a twisty root of the mountain. At the head ofDripping Spring we smelled wood smoke. We crept along the cañon rim andsaw our man at the bottom of it. He had hung up his buck at the camp andwas cutting strips from it for his supper. 

"'Look well, Kabeyde, ' said my master; 'smell and remember. This man ismy enemy. ' I did not like the smell in any case. The Queres smell of theearth in which they dig and house, but the Diné smelled of himself andthe smoke of sagebrush. Tse-tse's hand was on the back of my neck. 'Wait, ' he said; 'one Diné has not two blankets. ' We could see themlying in a little heap not far from the camp. Presently in the duskanother man came up the cañon from the direction of the river andjoined him. 

"We cast back and forth between Dripping Spring and the mouth of theTy-uonyi most of the night, but no more Diné showed themselves. Atsunrise Willow-in-the-Wind met us coming up the Rito. 

"'Feed farther up, ' Tse-tse told her; 'the Diné are abroad. '

"Her face changed, but she did not squeal as the other women did whenthey heard it. Therefore I respected her. That was the way it was withme. Every face I searched, to see if there was fear in it, and if therewas none I myself was a little afraid; but where there was fear the backof my neck bristled. I know that the hair rose on it when we came totell our story to the Council. That was when Kokomo was called; he camerubbing the sleep out of his eyes, pretending that Tse-tse had made atale out of nothing. 

"'We have a treaty with the Diné, ' he said. 'Besides, I was outrehearsing with the Koshare last night toward Shut Cañon; if there hadbeen Diné _I_ should have seen them. '

"It was then that I was aware of Tse-tse's hand creeping along myshoulders to hide the bristling. 

"'He is afraid, ' said Tse-tse to me in the cave; 'you saw it. Yet he isnot afraid of the Diné. Sometimes I think he is afraid of me. That iswhy he wished me to join the Koshare, for then he will be my Head, andwithout his leave I can do nothing. '

"This was a true saying. Only a few days after that, I found one oftheir little wooden images, painted and feathered like a Delight-Maker, in my cave. It was an invitation. It smelled of Kokomo and I scratcheddirt on it. Then came Tse-tse, and as he turned the little Koshare overin his hand, I saw that there were many things had come into his headwhich would never come into mine. Presently I heard him laugh as he didwhen he had hit upon some new trick for splitting the people's sides, like the bubble of a wicker bottle held under water. He took my chin inhis hand. 'Without doubt, ' he said, 'this is Kokomo's; he would be verypleased if you returned it to him. ' I understood it as an order. 

"I carried the little Delight-Maker to Kokomo that night in the innercourt, when the evening meal was over and the old men smoked while theyounger sat on the housetops and moaned together melodiously. Tse-tselooked up from a game of cherry stones. 'Hey, Kokomo, have you beeninviting Kabeyde to join the Koshare? A good shot!' he said, and beforeKokomo could answer it, he began putting me through my tricks. "

"Tricks?" cried the children. 

"Jumping over a stick, you know, and showing what I would do if I metthe Diné. " The great cat flattened herself along the ground to spring, put back her ears, and showed her teeth with a snarly whine, almost toowicked to be pretended. "I was very good at that, " said Moke-icha. 

"'The Delight-Maker was for you, Tse-tse, ' said the turkey girl nextmorning. 'Kokomo cannot prove that you gave it to Kabeyde, but he willnever forgive you. '

"True enough, at the next festival the Koshare set the whole of Ty-uonyishouting with a sort of play that showed Tse-tse scared by rabbits inthe brush, and thinking the Diné were after them. Tse-tse was furiousand the turkey girl was so angry on his account that she scolded _him_, which is the way with women. 

"You see, " explained Moke-icha to the children, "if he wanted to be madea member of the Warrior Band, it wouldn't help him any to be proved abad scout, and a bringer of false alarms. And if he could be elected tothe Uakanyi that spring, he would probably be allowed to go on the saltexpedition between corn-planting and the first hoeing. But after I hadcarried back the little Delight-Maker to Kokomo, there were no signs ofthe four-colored arrow, which was the invitation to the Uakanyi, andyoung men whom Tse-tse had mimicked too often went about pretending todiscover Diné wherever a rabbit ran or the leaves rustled. 

"Tse-tse behaved very badly. He was sharp with the turkey girl becauseshe had warned him, and when we hunted on the mesa he would forget mealtogether, running like a man afraid of himself until I was too windedto keep up with him. I am not built for running, " said Moke-icha, "mypart was to pick up the trail of the game, and then to lie up whileTse-tse drove it past and spring for the throat and shoulder. But when Ifound myself neglected I went back to Willow-in-the-Wind who wovewreaths for my neck, which tickled my chin, and made Tse-tse furious. 

"The day that the names of those who would go on the Salt Trail weregiven out--Tse-tse's was not among them--was two or three before thefeast of the corn-planting and the last of the winter rains. Tse-tse-yote was off on one of his wild runnings, but I lay in the backof the cave and heard the myriad-footed Rain on the mesa. Betweenshowers there was a soft foot on the ladder outside, andWillow-in-the-Wind pushed a tray of her best cooking into the door ofthe cave and ran away without looking. That was the fashion of alove-giving. I was much pleased with it. "

"Oh!--" Dorcas Jane began to say and broke off. "Tell us what it was!"she finished. 

Moke-icha considered. 

"Breast of turkey roasted, and rabbit stew with pieces of squash andchia, and beans cooked in fat, --very good eating; and of course thin, folded cakes of maize; though I do not care much for corn cakes unlessthey are well greased. But because it was a love-gift I ate all of itand was licking the basket-tray when Tse-tse came back. He knew thefashion of her weaving, --every woman's baskets had her own mark, --and ashe took it from me his face changed as though something inside him hadturned to water. Without a word he went down the hill to the chief'shouse and I after him. 

"'Moke-icha liked your cooking so well, ' he said to the turkey girl, 'that she was eating the basket also. I have brought it back to you. 'There he stood shifting from one foot to another and Willow-in-the-Windturned taut as a bowstring. 

"'Oh, ' she said, 'Moke-icha has eaten it! I am very glad to hear it. 'And with that she marched into an inner room and did not come out againall that evening, and Tse-tse went hunting next day without me. 

"The next night, which was the third before the feast of planting, beinglonely, I went out for a walk on the mesa. It was a clear night of windand moving shadow; I went on a little way and smelled man. Two men Ismelled, Diné and Queresan, and the Queresan was Kokomo. They weretogether in the shadow of a juniper where no man could have seen them. Where I stood no man could have heard them. 

"'It is settled, then, ' said Kokomo. 'You send the old man to Shipapu, for which he has long been ready, and take the girl for your trouble. '

"'Good, ' said the Diné. 'But will not the Ko-share know if an extra mangoes in with them?'

"'We go in three bands, and we have taken in so many new members that noone knows exactly. '

"'It is a risk, ' said the Diné. 

"And as he moved into the wind I knew the smell of him, and it was theman we had seen at Dripping Spring; not the hunter, but the one who hadjoined him. 

"'Not so much risk as the chance of not finding the right house in thedark, ' said Kokomo; 'and the girl has no one belonging to her. Who shallsay that she did not go of her own accord?'

"'At any rate, ' the Diné laughed, 'I know she must be as beautiful asyou say she is, since you are willing to run the risk of my seeing her. '

"They moved off, and the wind walking on the pine needles covered whatthey said, but I remembered what I had heard because they smelledof mischief. 

"Two nights later I remembered it again when the Delight-Makers came outof the dark in three bands and split the people's sides with laughter. They were disguised in black-and-white paint and daubings of mud andfeathers, but there was a Diné among them. By the smell I knew him. Hewas a tall man who tumbled well and kept close to Kokomo. But a Diné isan enemy. Tse-tse-yote had told me. Therefore I kept close at his heelsas they worked around toward the house of Pitahaya, and my neckbristled. I could see that the Diné had noticed me. He grew a littlefrightened, I think, and whipped at me with the whip of feathers whichthe Koshare carried to tickle the tribesmen. I laid back my ears--I amKabeyde, and it is not for the Diné to flick whips at me. All at oncethere rose a shouting for Tse-tse, who came running and beat me over thehead with his bow-case. 

"'They will think I set you on to threaten the Koshare because theymocked me, ' he said. 'Have you not done me mischief enough already?'

"That was when we were back in the cave, where he penned me tillmorning. There was no way I could tell him that there was a Diné amongthe Koshare. "

"But I thought--" began Oliver, he looked over to where Arrumpa stooddrawing young boughs of maple through his mouth like a boy strippingcurrants. "Couldn't you just have told him?"

"In the old days, " said Moke-icha, "men spoke with beasts as brothers. The Queres had come too far on the Man Trail. I had no words, but Iremembered the trick he had taught me, about what to do when I met aDiné. I laid back my ears and snarled at him. 

"'What!' he said; 'will you make a Diné of _me_?' I saw him frown, andsuddenly he slapped his thigh as a man does when thought overtakes him. Being but a lad he would not have dared say what he thought, but he tookto spending the night on top of the kiva. I would look out of my caveand see him there curled up in a corner, or pacing to and fro with thedew on his blanket and his face turned to the souls of the prayer plumesdrifting in a wide band across the middle heaven. 

"I would have been glad to keep him company, but as neither Tse-tse norWillow-in-the-Wind paid any attention to me in those days, I decidedthat I might as well go with the men and see for myself what lay at theother end of the Salt Trail. 

"I gave them a day's start, so that I might not be turned back; but itwas not necessary, since no man looked back or turned around on thatjourney, and no one spoke except those who had been over the trail atleast two times. They ate little, --fine meal of parched corn mixed withwater, --and what was left in the cup was put into the earth for a thankoffering. No one drank except as the leader said they could, and atnight they made prayers and songs. 

"The trail leaves the mesa at the Place of the Gap, a dry gully snakingits way between puma-colored hills and boulders big as kivas. LastingWater is at the end of the second day's journey; rainwater that slipsdown into a black basin with rock overhanging, cool as an olla. Therocks in that place when struck give out a pleasant sound. Beyond theGap there is white sand in waves like water, wild hills and raw, redcañons. Around a split rock the trail dips suddenly to Sacred Water, shallow and white-bordered like a great dead eye. "

"I know that place, " said the Navajo, "and I think this must be true, for there is a trail there which bites deep into the granite. "

"It was deep and polished even in my day, " said Moke-icha, "but that didnot interest me. There was no kill there larger than rabbits, and when Ihad seen the men cast prayer plumes on the Sacred Water and begin toscrape up the salt for their packs, I went back to Ty-uonyi. It was notuntil I got back to Lasting Water that I picked up the trail of theDiné. I followed it half a day before it occurred to me that they weregoing to Ty-uonyi. One of the smells--there were three of them--was theDiné who had come in with the Koshare. I remembered the broken plasteron the wall and Tse-tse asleep on the housetops. _Then_ I hurried. 

"It was blue midnight and the scent fresh on the grass as I came up theRito. I heard a dog bark behind the first kiva, and, as I came oppositeRock-Overhanging, the sound of feet running. I smelled Diné going up thewall and slipped back in my hurry, but as I came over the roof of thekiva a tumult broke out in the direction of Pitahaya's house. There wasa scream and a scuffle. I saw Tse-tse running and sent him the puma cryat which does asleep with their fawns tremble. Down in the long passagebetween Pitahaya's court and the gate of Rock-Overhanging, Tse-tseanswered with the hunting-whistle. 

"There was a fight going on in the passage. I could feel the cooldraught from the open gate, --they must have opened it from the insideafter scaling the wall by the broken plaster, --and smelled rather thansaw that one man held the passage against Tse-tse. He was armed with astone hammer, which is no sort of weapon for a narrow passage. Tse-tsehad caught bow and quiver from the arms that hung always at the innerentrance of the passage, but made no attempt to draw. He was crouchedagainst the wall, knife in hand, watching for an opening, when he heardme padding up behind him in the darkness. 

"'Good! Kabeyde, ' he cried softly; 'go for him. '

"I sprang straight for the opening I could see behind the Diné, and felthim go down as I cleared the entrance. Tse-tse panted behindme, --'Follow, follow!' I could hear the men my cry had waked, pouringout of the kivas, and knew that the Diné we had knocked over would betaken care of. We picked up the trail of those who had escaped, straightacross the Rito and over the south wall, but it was an hour before Irealized that they had taken Willow-in-the-Wind with them. Old Pitahayawas dead without doubt, and the man who had taken Willow-in-the-Windwas, by the smell, the same that had come in with Kokomo andthe Koshare. 

"We were hot on their trail, and by afternoon of the next day I wascertain that they were making for Lasting Water. So I took Tse-tse overthe rim of the Gap by a short cut which I had discovered, which woulddrop us back into the trail before they had done drinking. Tse-tse, whotrusted me to keep the scent, was watching ahead for a sight of thequarry. Thus he saw the Diné before I winded them. I don't know whetherthey were just a hunting-party, or friends of those we followed. Wedropped behind a boulder and Tse-tse counted while I lifted every scent. 

"'Five, ' he said, 'and the Finisher of the Paths of Our Lives knows howmany more between us and Lasting Water!'

"We did not know yet whether they had seen us, but as we began to moveagain cautiously, a fox barked in the scrub that was not a fox. Off toour left another answered him. So now we were no longer hunters, but hunted. 

"Tse-tse slipped his tunic down to his middle and, unbinding his queue, wound his long hair about his head to make himself look as much like aDiné as possible. I could see thought rippling in him as he worked, likewind on water. We began to snake between the cactus and the black rocktoward the place where the fox had last barked. "

"But _toward_ them---" Oliver began. 

"They were between us and Lasting Water, "--Moke-icha looked about thelistening circle and the Indians nodded, agreeing. "When a fox barkedagain, Tse-tse answered with the impudent folly of a young kit talkingback to his betters. Evidently the man on our left was fooled by it, forhe sheered off, but within a bowshot they began to close on us again. 

"We had come to a thicket of mesquite from which a man might slipunnoticed to the head of the gully, provided no one watched thatparticular spot too steadily. There we lay among the thorns and theshadows were long in the low sun. Close on our right a twig snapped andI began to gather myself for the spring. The ground sloped a littlebefore us and gave the advantage. The hand of Tse-tse-yote came alongthe back of my neck and rested there. 'If a puma lay up here during thesun, ' he whispered, 'this is the hour he would go forth to his hunting. He would go stretching himself after sleep and having no fear of man, for where Kabeyde lies up, who expects to find man also. ' His hand cameunder my chin as his custom was in giving orders. This was how Iunderstood it; this I did--"

The great cat bounded lightly to the ground, took two or three stretchysteps, shaking the sleep from her flanks, yawned prodigiously, andtrotted off toward a thicket of wild plums into which she slipped like abeam of yellow light into water. A moment later she reappeared on theopposite side, bounded back and settled herself on the boulder. Aroundthe circle ran the short "Huh! Huh!" of Indian approval. The Navajoshifted his blanket. 

"A Diné could have done no more for a friend, " he admitted. 

"I see, " said Oliver. "When the Diné saw you coming out of the mesquitethey would have been perfectly sure there was no man there. But anyway, they might have taken a shot at you. "

"And the twang of the bowstring and the thrashing about of the kill inthe thicket would have told Tse-tse exactly where _they_ were, " said theNavajo. "The Diné when they hunt man do not turn aside for a puma. "

"The hardest part of it all, " said Moke-icha, "was to keep from showingI winded him. I heard the Diné move off, fox-calling to one another, andat last I smelled Tse-tse working down the gully. He paid no attentionto me whatever; his eyes were fixed on the Diné who stood by the springwith his back to him looking down on the turkey girl who was huddledagainst the rocks with her hands tied behind her. The Diné looked downwith his arms folded, evil-smiling. She looked up and I saw her spit athim. The man took her by the shoulder, laughing still, and spun her upstanding. Half a bowshot away I heard Tse-tse-yote. 'Down! Down!' heshouted. The girl dropped like a quail. The Diné, whirling on his heel, met the arrow with his throat, and pitched choking. I came as fast as Icould between the boulders--I am not built for running--Tse-tse hadunbound the girl's hands and she leaned against him. 

"Breathing myself before drinking, I caught a new scent up the Gap wherethe wind came from, but before I had placed it there came a littlescrape on the rocks under the roof of Lasting Water, small, like therasp of a snake coiling. I had forgot there were three Diné at Ty-uonyi;the third had been under the rock drinking. He came crawling now withhis knife in his teeth toward Tse-tse. Me he had not seen until he cameround the singing rock, face to face with me. .. 

"When it was over, " said Moke-icha, "I climbed up the black roof ofLasting Water to lick a knife cut in my shoulder. Tse-tse talked to thegirl, of all things, about the love-gift she had put in the cave for me. 'Moke-icha had eaten it before I found her, ' he insisted, which wasunnecessary. I lay looking at the Diné I had killed and licking my woundtill I heard, around the bend of the Gap, the travel song of the Queres. 

"It was the Salt Pack coming back, every man with his load on hisshoulders. They put their hands in their mouths when they saw Tse-tse. There was talk; Willow-in-the-Wind told them something. Tse-tse turnedthe man he had shot face upward. There was black-and-white paint on hisbody; the stripes of the Koshare do not come off easily. I saw Tse-tselook from the man to Kokomo and the face of the Koshare turned grayish. I had lived with man, and man-thoughts came to me. I had tasted blood ofmy master's enemies; also Kokomo was afraid, and that is an offense tome. I dropped from where I lay . .. I had come to my full weight . .. Ithink his back was broken. 

"It is the Way Things Are, " said Moke-icha. "Kokomo had let in the Dinéto kill Pitahaya to make himself chief, and he would have killed Tse-tsefor finding out about it. That I saw and smelled in him. But I did notwait this time to be beaten with my master's bow-case. I went back toShut Cañon, for now that I had killed one of them, it was not good forme to live with the Queres. Nevertheless, in the rocks above Ty-uonyiyou can still see the image they made of me. "

VIII

YOUNG-MAN-WHO-NEVER-TURNS-BACK: A TELLING OF THE TALLEGEWI, BY ONE OFTHEM

It could only have been for a few moments at the end of Moke-icha'sstory, before the cliff picture split like a thin film before thedancing circles of the watchmen's lanterns, and curled into the shadowsbetween the cases. A thousand echoes broke out in the empty halls andmuffled the voices as the rings of light withdrew down the long galleryin glimmering reflections. When they passed to the floor below a veryremarkable change had come over the landscape. 

The Buffalo Chief and Moke-icha had disappeared. A little way ahead thetrail plunged down the leafy tunnel of an ancient wood, along which thechildren saw the great elk trotting leisurely with his cows behind him, flattening his antlers over his back out of the way of the low-branchingmaples. The switching of the brush against the elk's dun sides startledthe little black bear, who was still riffling his bee tree. The childrenwatched him rise inquiringly to his haunches before he scrambled downthe trail out of sight. 

"Lots of those fellows about in my day, " said the Mound-Builder. "Weused to go for them in the fall when they grew fat on the dropping nutsand acorns. Elk, too. I remember a ten-pronged buck that I shot onewinter on the Elk's-Eye River. .. "

"The Muskingum!" exclaimed an Iroquois, who had listened in silence tothe puma's story. "Did you call it that too? Elk's-Eye! Clear brown andsmooth-flowing. That's the Scioto Trail, isn't it?" he asked of theMound-Builder. 

"You could call it that. There was a cut-off at Beaver Dam to FlintRidge and the crossing of the Muskingum, and another that led to themouth of the Kanawha where it meets the River of White-Flashing. "

"He means the Ohio, " explained the Iroquois to the children. "At floodthe whole surface of the river would run to white riffles like the flashof a water-bird's wings. But the French called it La Belle Rivière. I'man Onondaga myself, " he added, "and in my time the Five Nations held allthe territory, after we had driven out the Talle-gewi, between the Lakesand the O-hey-yo. " He stretched the word out, giving it a littledifferent turn. "Indians' names talk little, " he laughed, "but theysay much. "

"Like the trails, " agreed the Mound-Builder, who was one of theTallegewi himself, "every word is the expression of a need. We had atrade route over this one for copper which we fetched from the Land ofthe Sky-Blue Water and exchanged for sea-shells out of the south. At themouth of the Scioto it connected with the Kaskaskia Trace to theMissi-Sippu, where we went once a year to shoot buffaloes onthe plains. "

"When the Five Nations possessed the country, the buffaloes came to us, "said the Onondaga. 

"Then the Long Knives came on the sea in the East and there was neitherbuffaloes nor Mengwe, " answered the Mound-Builder, who did not likethese interruptions. He went on describing the Kaskaskia Trail. "It ledalong the highlands around the upper waters of the Miami and the drownedlands of the Wabash. It was a wonderful trip in the month of the MoonHalting, when there was a sound of dropping nuts and the woods were allone red and yellow rain. But in summer. .. I should know, " said theMound-Builder; "I carried a pipe as far as Little Miami once. .. "

He broke off as though the recollection was not altogether a happy oneand began to walk away from the wood, along the trail, which broadenedquickly to a graded way, and led up the slope of a high green mound. 

The children followed him without a word. They understood that they hadcome to the place in the Story of the Trails, which is known in theschoolbooks as "History. " From the top of the mound they could seestrange shapes of earthworks stretching between them and the shore ofErie. Lakeward the sand and the standing grass was the pale color of themoon that floated above it in the midday sky. Between them the blue ofthe lake melted into the blue horizon; the turf over the mounds wasthick and wilted. 

"I suppose I must remember it like this, " said the Tallega, "becausethis is the way I saw it when I came back, an old man, after the fall ofCahokia. But when this mound was built there were towns here, busy andcrowded. The forest came close up on one side, and along the lake front, field touched field for a day's journey. My town was the middle one ofthree of the Eagle Clan. Our Town House stood here, on the top of thismound, and on that other, the tallest, stood the god-house, with theSacred Fire, and the four old men watchers to keep it burning. "

"I thought, " said Oliver, trying to remember what he had read about it, "that the mounds were for burials. People dig into them, you know. "

"They might think that, " agreed the Tallega, "if all they know comesfrom what they find by digging. They were for every purpose thatbuildings are used for, but we always thought it a good omen if we couldstart a Town Mound with the bones of some one we had loved andrespected. First, we laid a circle of stones and an altar with a burntoffering, then the bones of the chief, or some of our heroes who werekilled in battle. Then the women brought earth in baskets. And if achief had served us well, we sometimes buried him on top and raised themound higher over him, and the mound would be known by his name untilanother chief arose who surpassed him. 

"Then there were earthworks for forts and signal stations. You'll findthose on the high places overlooking the principal trails; there werealways heaps of wood piled up for smoke signals. The circles were formeeting-places and for games. "

"What sort of games?" demanded Oliver. 

"Ball-play and races; all that sort of thing. There was a game we playedwith racquets between goals. Village played against village. The peoplewould sit on the earthworks and clap and shout when the game pleasedthem, and gambled everything they had on their home-town players. 

"I suppose, " he added, looking around on the green tumuli, "I rememberit like this, because when I lived here I was so full of what was goingon that I had no time for noticing how it looked to me. "

"What did go on?" both the children wished immediately to know. 

"Something different every time the moon changed. Ice-fishing, corn-husking. We did everything together; that was what made it sointeresting. The men let us go to the fur traps to carry home the pelts, and we hung up the birch-bark buckets for our mothers at thesugar-boiling. Maple sugar, you know. Then we would persuade them toladle out a little of the boiling sap into plates that we patted out ofthe snow, which could always be found lingering in the hollows, atsugar-makings. When it was still waxy and warm, we rolled up the cooledsyrup and ate it out of hand. 

"In summer whole families would go to the bottom lands paw-pawgathering. Winter nights there was story-telling in the huts. We had akind of corn, very small, that burst out white like a flower when it wasparched. .. "

"Pop-corn!" cried both the children at once. It seemed strange thatanything they liked so much should have belonged to the Mound-Builders. 

"Why, that was what _we_ called it!" he agreed, smiling. "Our mothersused to stir it in the pot with pounded hickory nuts and bears' grease. Good eating! And the trading trips! Some of our men used to go as far asLittle River for chert which they liked better for arrow-points than ourown flints, being less brittle and more easily worked. That was a canoetrip, down the Scioto, down the O-hey-yo, up the Little Tenasa as far asLittle River. There was adventure enough to please everybody. 

"That bird-shaped mound, " he pointed, "was built the time we won theEagle-Dancing against all the other villages. "

The Mound-Builder drew out from under his feather robe a gorget of pearlshell, beautifully engraved with the figure of a young man dancing in aneagle-beaked mask, with eagles' wings fastened to his shoulders. 

"Most of the effigy mounds, " he said, taking the gorget from his neck tolet the children examine it, "were built that way to celebrate a treatyor a victory. Sometimes, " he added, after a pause, looking off acrossthe wide flat mounds between the two taller ones, "they were built likethese, to celebrate a defeat. It was there we buried the Tallegewi whofell in our first battle with the Lenni-Lenape. "

"Were they Mound-Builders, too?" the children asked respectfully, forthough the man's voice was sad, it was not as though he spoke ofan enemy. 

"People of the North, " he said, "hunting-people, good foes and goodfighters. But afterward, they joined with the Mengwe and drove us fromthe country. _That_ was a Mingo, "--he pointed to the Iroquois who hadcalled himself an Onondaga, disappearing down the forest tunnel. Theysaw him a moment, with arrow laid to bow, the sunlight making tawnysplotches on his dark body, as on the trunk of a pine tree, and thenthey lost him. 

"We were planters and builders, " said the Tallega, "and they werefighters, so they took our lands from us. But look, now, how timechanges all. Of the Lenni-Lenape and the Mengwe there is only a name, and the mounds are still standing. "

"You said, " Oliver hinted, "that you carried a pipe once. Wasthat--anything particular?"

"It might be peace or war, " said the Mound-Builder. "In my case it wasan order for Council, from which war came, bloody and terrible. APipe-Bearer's life was always safe where he was recognized, though whenthere is war one is very likely to let fly an arrow at anything movingin the trails. That reminds me. .. " The Tallega put back his featheredrobe carefully as he leaned upon his elbow, and the children snuggledinto a little depression at the top of the mound where the fire-hole hadbeen, to listen. 

"There was a boy in our town, " he began, "who was the captain of all ourplays from the time we first stole melons and roasting-ears from thetown gardens. He got us into no end of trouble, but no matter what cameof it, we always stood up for him before the elders. There was nothing_they_ could say which seemed half so important to us as praise or blamefrom Ongyatasse. I don't know why, unless it was because he couldout-run and out-wrestle the best of us; and yet he was never pleasedwith himself unless the rest of us were satisfied to have it that way. 

"Ongyatasse was what his mother called him. It means something verypretty about the colored light of evening, but the name that he earnedfor himself, when he was old enough to be Name-Seeking, wasYoung-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Back. 

"He was the arrow laid to the bow, and he could no more take himselfback from the adventure he had begun than the shaft can come back to thebowstring. 

"Before we were old enough to go up to the god-house and hear the sacredTellings, he had half the boys in our village bound to him in anunbreakable vow never to turn back from anything we had started. It gotus into a great many difficulties, some of which were ridiculous, but ithad its advantages. The time we chased a young elk we had raised, acrossthe squash and bean vines of Three Towns, we escaped punishment on theground of our vow. Any Tallega parent would think a long time before heexpected his son to break a promise. "

Oliver kept to the main point of interest. "Did you get the elk?"

"_Of course_. You see we were never allowed to carry a man's huntingoutfit until we had run down some big game, and brought it in alive toprove ourselves proper sportsmen. So partly for that and partly becauseOngyatasse always knew the right words to say to everybody, we wereforgiven the damage to the gardens. 

"That was the year the Lenni-Lenape came to the Grand Council, which washeld here at Sandusky, asking permission to cross our territory towardthe Sea on the East. They came out of Shinaki, the Fir-Land, as far asNamae-Sippu, and stood crowded between the lakes north of the river. Forthe last year or two, hunting-parties of theirs had been warned backfrom trespass, but this was the first time we youngsters had seenanything of them. 

"They were fine-looking fellows, fierce, and tall appearing, with theirhair cropped up about their ears, and a long hanging scalp-lock tiedwith eagle feathers. At the same time they seemed savage to us, for theywore no clothing but twisty skins about their middles, ankle-cutmoccasins, and the Peace Mark on their foreheads. 

"Because of the Mark they bore no weapons but the short hunting-bow andwolfskin quivers, with the tails hanging down, and painted breastbands. They were chiefs, by their way of walking, and one of them had broughthis son with him. He was about Ongyatasse's age, as handsome as a youngfir. Probably he had a name in his own tongue, but we called him WhiteQuiver. Few of us had won ours yet, and his was man's size, of whitedeerskin and colored quill-work. 

"Our mothers, to keep us out of the way of the Big Eating which theymade ready for the visiting chiefs, had given us some strips of venison. We were toasting them at a fire we had made close to a creek, to stayour appetites. My father, who was Keeper of the Smoke for thatoccasion, --I was immensely proud of him, --saw the Lenape boy watching usout of the tail of his eye, and motioned to me with his hand that Ishould make him welcome. My father spoke with his hand so that WhiteQuiver should understand--" The Mound-Builder made with his own thumband forefinger the round sign of the Sun Father, and then the upturnedpalm to signify that all things should be as between brothers. "I wasperfectly willing to do as my father said, for, except Ongyatasse, I hadnever seen any one who pleased me so much as the young stranger. Buteither because he thought the invitation should have come from himselfas the leader of the band, or because he was a little jealous of ourinterest in White Quiver, Ongyatasse tossed me a word over his shoulder, 'We play with no crop-heads. '

"That was not a true word, for the Lenni-Lenape do not crop the headuntil they go on the war-path, and White Quiver's hair lay along hisshoulders, well oiled, with bright bits of shell tied in it, glitteringas he walked. Also it is the rule of the Tellings that one must feed thestranger. But me, I was never a Name-Seeker. I was happy to stand fourthfrom Ongyatasse in the order of our running. For the rest, my brothersused to say that I was the tail and Ongyatasse wagged me. 

"Whether he had heard the words or not, the young Lenape saw me stutterin my invitation. There might have been a quiver in his face, --at myfather's gesture he had turned toward me, --but there was none in hiswalking. He came straight on toward our fire and _through_ it. Threestrides beyond it he drank at the creek as though that had been his onlyobject, and back through the fire to his father. I could see red markson his ankles where the fire had bitten him, but he never so much aslooked at them, nor at us any more than if we had been trail-grass. Hestood at his father's side and the drums were beginning. Around thegreat mound came the Grand Council with their feather robes and the tallheaddresses, up the graded way to the Town House, as though all the gayweeds in Big Meadow were walking. It was the great spectacle of theyear, but it was spoiled for all our young band by the sight of a slimyouth shaking off our fire, as if it had been dew, from hisreddened ankles. 

"You see, " said the Mound-Builder, "it was much worse for us because weadmired him immensely, and Ongyatasse, who liked nothing better thanbeing kind to people, couldn't help seeing that he could have made amuch better point for himself by doing the honors of the village to thischief's son, instead of their both going around with their chins in theair pretending not to see one another. 

"The Lenni-Lenape won the permission they had come to ask for, to passthrough the territory of the Tallegewi, under conditions that were madeby Well-Praised, our war-chief; a fat man, a wonderful orator, who nevertook a straight course where he could find a cunning one. What thoseconditions were you shall hear presently. At the time, we boys werescarcely interested. That very summer we began to meet small parties ofstrangers drifting through the woods, as silent and as much at home inthem as foxes. But the year had come around to the Moon of Sap Beginningbefore we met White Quiver again. 

"A warm spell had rotted the ice on the rivers, followed by two or threedays of sharp cold and a tracking snow. We had been out with Ongyatasseto look at our traps, and then the skin-smooth surface of the riverbeguiled us. 

"We came racing home close under the high west bank where the ice wasthickest, but as we neared Bent Bar, Young-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Backturned toward the trail that cut down to the ford between the points ofHanging Wood. The ice must have rotted more than we guessed, for halfwayacross, Ongyatasse dropped through it like a pebble into a pot-hole. Next to him was Tiakens, grandson of Well-Praised, and between me andTiakens a new boy from Painted Turtle. I heard the splash and shout ofTiakens following Ongyatasse, --of course, he said afterward that hewould have gone to the bottom with him rather than turn back, but Idoubt if he could have stopped himself, --and the next thing I knew thePainted Turtle boy was hitting me in the nose for stopping him, andKills Quickly, who had not seen what was happening, had crashed into usfrom behind. We lay all sprawled in a heap while the others hugged thebanks, afraid to add their weight to the creaking ice, and Ongyatassewas beating about in the rotten sludge, trying to find a place firmenough to climb out on. 

"We had seen both boys disappear for an instant as the ice gave underthem, but even when we saw them come to the surface, with Ongyatasseholding Tiakens by the hair, we hardly grasped what had happened. Theedge of the ice-cake had taken Tiakens under the chin and he wasunconscious. If Ongyatasse had let go of him he would have been carriedunder the ice by the current, and that would have been the last any onewould have seen of him until the spring thaw. But as fast as Ongyatassetried to drag their double weight onto the ice, it broke, and before therest of us had thought of anything to do the cold would have crampedhim. I saw Ongyatasse stuffing Tiakens's hair into his mouth so as toleave both his hands free, and then there was a running gasp ofastonishment from the rest of the band, as a slim figure shot out ofDark Woods, skimming and circling like a swallow. We had heard of thesnowshoes of the Lenni-Lenape, but this was the first time we had seenthem. For a moment we were so taken up with the wonder of his dartingpace, that it was not until we saw him reaching his long shoeing-pole toOngyatasse across the ice, that we realized what he was doing. He hadcircled about until he had found ice that held, and kicking off hissnowshoes, he stretched himself flat on it. I knew enough to catch himby the ankles--even then I couldn't help wondering if the scar was stillthere, for we knew instantly who he was--and somebody caught my feet, spreading our weight as much as possible. Over the bridge we made, Ongyatasse and Tiakens, who had come to himself by this time, crawledout on firm ice. In a very few minutes we had stripped them of their wetclothing and were rubbing the cramp out of their legs. 

"Ongyatasse, dripping as he was, pushed us aside and went over to WhiteQuiver, who was stooping over, fastening his snowshoes. It seemed togive him a great deal of trouble, but at last he raised his head. 

"'This day I take my life at your hands, ' said Ongyatasse. 

"'Does Young-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Back take so much from a Crop-Head?'said the Lenni-Lenape in good Tallegewi, which shows how much they knewof us already and how they began to hate us. 

"But when he was touched, Ongyatasse had no equal for highness. 

"'Along with my life I would take friendship too, if it were offered, 'he said, and smiled, shivering as he was, in a way we knew so well whohad never resisted it. We could see the smile working on White Quiverlike a spell. Ongyatasse put an arm over the Lenape's shoulders. 

"'Where the life is, the heart is also, ' he said, 'and if the feet ofOngyatasse do not turn back from the trail they have taken, neither doeshis heart. ' From his neck he slipped off his amulet of white deer's hornwhich brought him his luck in hunting, and threw it around theother's neck. 

"'Ongyatasse, you have given away your luck!' cried Tiakens, whose headwas a little light with the blow the ice-cake had given him. 

"'Both the luck and the life of Young-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Back are safein the hands of a Lenni-Lenape, ' said White Quiver, as high as one ofhis own fir trees, but he loosed a little smile at the corner of hismouth as he turned to Tiakens, chattering like a squirrel. 'Unless youfind a fire soon, Young-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Back will have need ofanother friend, ' he said; and picking up his shoeing-pole, he was off inthe wood again like a weasel darting to cover. We heard the swish of theboughs, heavy with new snow, and then silence. 

"But if we had not been able to forget him after the first meeting, youcan guess how often we talked of him in the little time that was leftus. It was not long. Tiakens nearly died of the chill he got, and theelders were stirred up at last to break up our band before it led tomore serious folly. Ongyatasse was hurried off with a hunting-party toMaumee, and I was sent to my mother's brother at Flint Ridge to learnstone-working. 

"Not that I objected, " said the Tallega. "I have the arrow-maker'shand. " He showed the children his thumb set close to the wrist, the longfingers and the deep-cupped palm with the callus running down themiddle. "All my family were clever craftsmen, " said the Tallega. "Youcould tell my uncle's points anywhere you found them by the fine, evenflaking, and my mother was the best feather-worker in Three Towns, "--heran his hands under the folds of his mantle and held it out for thechildren to admire the pattern. "Uncle gave me this banner stone as thewage of my summer's work with him, and I thought myself overpaid atthe time. "

"But what did you do?" asked both children at once. 

"Everything, from knocking out the crude flakes with a stone hammer toshaping points with a fire-hardened tip of deer's horn. The ridge wasmiles long and free to any one who chose to work it, but most peoplepreferred to buy the finished points and blades. There was a good trade, too, in turtle-backs. " The Tallega poked about in the loose earth at thetop of the mound and brought up a round, flattish flint about the sizeof a man's hand, that showed disk-shaped flakings arranged like themarking of a turtle-shell. "They were kept workable by being buried inthe earth, and made into knives or razors or whatever was needed, " heexplained. 

"That summer we had a tremendous trade in broad arrow-points, such asare used for war or big game. We sold to all the towns along the northfrom Maumee to the headwaters of the Susquehanna, and we sold to theLenni-Lenape. They would appear suddenly on the trails with bundles offurs or copper, of which they had a great quantity, and when they weresatisfied with what was offered for it, they would melt into the woodsagain like quail. My uncle used to ask me a great many questions aboutthem which I remembered afterward. But at the time--you see there was agirl, the daughter of my uncle's partner. She was all dusky red like thetall lilies at Big Meadow, and when she ran in the village races withher long hair streaming, they called her Flying Star. 

"She used to bring our food to us when we opened up a new working, awolf's cry from the old, --sizzling hot deer meat and piles of boiledcorn on bark platters, and meal cakes dipped in maple syrup. I stayed ontill the time of tall weeds as my father had ordered, and then for awhile longer for the new working, which interested me tremendously. First we brought hickory wood and built a fire on the exposed surface ofthe ridge. Then we splintered the hot stone by throwing water on it, anddug out the splinters. In two or three days we had worked clean throughthe ledge of flint to the limestone underneath. This we also burnt withfire, after we had protected the fresh flint by plastering it with clay. When we had cleared a good piece of the ledge, we could hammer it offwith the stone sledges and break it up small for working. It was as goodsport to me as moose-hunting or battle. 

"We had worked a man's length under the ledge, and one day I looked upwith the sun in my eyes, as it reddened toward the west, and sawOngyatasse standing under a hickory tree. He was dressed for running, and around his mouth and on both his cheeks was the white Peace Mark. Imade the proper sign to him as to one carrying orders. 

"'You are to come with me, ' he said. 'We carry a pipe to Miami. '"

[Illustration]

IX

HOW THE LENNI-LENAPE CAME FROM SHINAKI AND THE TALLEGEWI FOUGHT THEM:THE SECOND PART OF THE MOUND-BUILDER'S STORY

"Two things I thought as I looked at Never-Turns-Back, black against thesun. First, that it could be no very great errand that he ran upon, orthey would never have trusted it to a youth without honors; and next, that affairs at Three Towns must be serious, indeed, if they could spareno older man for pipe-carrying. A third came to me in the night as Iconsidered how little agreement there was between these two, which wasthat there must be more behind this sending than a plain callto Council. 

"Ongyatasse told me all he knew as we lay up the next night at PigeonRoost. There had not been time earlier, for he had hurried off to carryhis pipe to the village of Flint Ridge as soon as he had called me, andwe had padded out on the Scioto Cut-off at daybreak. 

"What he said went back to the conditions that were made by Well-Praisedfor the passing of the Lenni-Lenape through our territory. They were togo in small parties, not more than twenty fighting men to any one ofthem. They were to change none of our landmarks, enter none of our townswithout permission from the Town Council, and to keep between the lakeand the great bend of the river, which the Lenni-Lenape calledAllegheny, but was known to us as the River of the Tallegewi. 

"Thus they had begun to come, few at first, like the trickle of meltingice in the moon of the Sun Returning, and at the last, like grasshoppersin the standing corn. They fished out our rivers and swept up the gamelike fire in the forest. Three Towns sent scouts toward Fish River whoreported that the Lenape swarmed in the Dark Wood, that they came onfrom Shinaki thick as their own firs. Then the Three Towns took counciland sent a pipe to the Eagle villages, to the Wolverines and the PaintedTurtles. These three kept the country of the Tallegewi on the north fromMaumee to the headwaters of the Allegheny, and Well-Praised was theirwar leader. 

"Still, " said the Mound-Builder, "except that he was the swiftestrunner, I couldn't understand why they had chosen an untried youth forpipe-carrying. "

He felt in a pouch of kit fox with the tail attached, which hung fromthe front of his girdle like the sporran of a Scotch Highlander. Out ofit he drew a roll of birch bark painted with juice of poke-berries. TheTallega spread it on the grass, weighting one end with the turtle-back, as he read, with the children looking over his shoulder. 

[Illustration: Well-Praised, war-chief of the Eagle Clan to the PaintedTurtles;--Greeting. ]

[Illustration: Come to the Council House at Three Towns. ]

[Illustration: On the fifth day of the Moon Halting. ]

[Illustration: We meet as Brothers. ]

"An easy scroll to read, " said the Tallega, as the released edges of thebirch-bark roll clipped together. "But there was more to it than that. There was an arrow play; also a question that had to be answered in acertain way. Ongyatasse did not tell me what they were, but I learned atthe first village where we stopped. 

"This is the custom of pipe-carrying. When we approached a settlement wewould show ourselves to the women working in the fields or to childrenplaying, anybody who would go and carry word to the Head Man that thePipe was coming. It was in order to be easily recognized that Ongyatassewore the Peace Mark. "

The Mound-Builder felt in his pouch for a lump of chalky white clay withwhich he drew a wide mark around his mouth, and two cheek-marks like aparenthesis. It would have been plain as far as one could see him. 

"That was so the villages would know that one came with Peace words inhis mouth, and make up their minds quickly whether they wanted to speakwith him. Sometimes when there was quarreling between the clans theywould not receive a messenger. But even in war-times a man's life wassafe as long as he wore the White Mark. "

"Ours is a white flag, " said Oliver. 

The Mound-Builder nodded. 

"All civilized peoples have much the same customs, " he agreed, "but theLenni-Lenape were savages. 

"We lay that night at Pigeon Roost in the Scioto Bottoms with wildpigeons above us thick as blackberries on the vines. They woke us goingout at dawn like thunder, and at mid-morning they still darkened thesun. We cut into the Kaskaskia Trail by a hunting-trace my uncle hadtold us of, and by the middle of the second day we had made the firstEagle village. When we were sure we had been seen, we sat down andwaited until the women came bringing food. Then the Head Man came infull dress and smoked with us. "

Out of his pouch the Tallega drew the eagle-shaped ceremonial pipe ofred pipestone, and when he had fitted it to the feathered stem, blew asalutatory whiff of smoke to the Great Spirit. 

"Thus we did, and later in the Council House there were ceremonies andexchange of messages. It was there, when all seemed finished, that I sawthe arrow play and heard the question. 

"Ongyatasse drew an arrow from his quiver and scraped it. There wasdried blood on the point, which makes an arrow untrue to its aim, but itwas no business for a youth to be cleaning his arrows before the eldersof the Town House; therefore, I took notice that this was the meat ofhis message. Ongyatasse scraped and the Head Man watched him. 

"'There are many horned heads in the forest this season, ' he said atlast. 

"'Very many, ' said Ongyatasse; 'they come into the fields and eat up theharvest. '

"'In that case, ' said the Head Man, 'what should a man do?'

"'What can he do but let fly at them with a broad arrow?' saidOngyatasse, putting up his own arrow, as a man puts up his work when itis finished. 

"But as the arrow was not clean, and as the Lenni-Lenape had shot allthe deer, if I had not known that Well-Praised had devised both questionand answer, it would have seemed all foolishness. There had been noGeneral Council since the one at which the treaty of passage was madewith the Lenni-Lenape; therefore I knew that the War-Chief had plannedthis sending of dark messages in advance, messages which noYoung-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Back had any right to understand. 

"'But why the Painted Scroll?' I said to Ongyatasse; for if, as Isupposed, the real message was in the question and answer, I could notsee why there should still be a Council called. 

"'The scroll, ' said my friend, 'is for those who are meant to be fooledby it. '

"'But who should be fooled?'

"'Whoever should stop us on the trail. '

"'My thoughts do not move so fast as my feet, O my friend, ' said I. 'Whowould stop a pipe-carrier of the Tallegewi?" "'What if it should be theHorned Heads?' said Ongyatasse. 

"That was a name we had given the Lenni-Lenape on account of thefeathers they tied to the top of their hair, straight up like hornssprouting. Of course, they could have had no possible excuse forstopping us, being at peace, but I began to put this together withthings Ongyatasse had told me, particularly the reason why no older manthan he could be spared from Three Towns. He said the men wererebuilding the stockade and getting in the harvest. 

"The middle one of Three Towns was walled, a circling wall of earth halfman high, and on top of that, a stockade of planted posts and wattles. It was the custom in war-times to bring the women and the corn into thewalled towns from the open villages. But there had been peace so long inTallega that our stockade was in great need of rebuilding, and so werethe corn bins. Well-Praised was expecting trouble with the Lenni-Lenape, I concluded; but I did not take it very seriously. The Moon of StoppedWaters was still young in the sky, and the fifth day of the Moon Haltingseemed very far away to me. 

"We were eleven days in all carrying the Pipe to the Miami villages, andthough they fed us well at the towns where we stopped, we were as thinas snipe at the end of it. It was our first important running, you see, and we wished to make a record. We followed the main trails whichfollowed the watersheds. Between these, we plunged down close-leaved, sweating tunnels of underbrush, through tormenting clouds of flies. Inthe bottoms the slither of our moccasins in the black mud would wakeclumps of water snakes, big as a man's head, that knotted themselvestogether in the sun. There is a certain herb which snakes do not lovewhich we rubbed on our ankles, but we could hear them rustle and hiss aswe ran, and the hot air was all a-click and a-glitter with insects'wings; . .. Also there were trumpet flowers, dusky-throated, that made methink of my girl at Flint Ridge. .. Then we would come out on long ridgeswhere oak and hickory shouldered one another like the round-backedbillows of the lake after the storm. We made our record. And for allthat we were not so pressed nor so overcome with the dignity of ourerrand that we could not spare one afternoon to climb up to theWabashiki Beacon. It lies on the watershed between the headwaters of theMaumee and the Wabash, a cone-shaped mound and a circling wall withinwhich there was always wood piled for the beacon light, the Great Gleam, the Wabashiki, which could be seen the country round for a two days'journey. The Light-Keeper was very pleased with our company and told usold tales half the night long, about how the Beacon had been built andhow it was taken by turns by the Round Heads and the Painted Turtles. Heasked us also if we had seen anything of a party of Lenni-Lenape whichhe had noted the day before, crossing the bottoms about an hour after hehad sighted us. He thought they must have gone around by Crow Creek, avoiding the village, and that we should probably come up with them thenext morning, which proved to be the case. 

"They rose upon us suddenly as we dropped down to the east fork of theMaumee, and asked us rudely where we were going. They had no right, ofcourse, but they were our elders, to whom it is necessary to berespectful, and they were rather terrifying, with their great bows, tallas they were, stark naked except for a strip of deerskin, and theirfeathers on end like the quills of an angry porcupine. We had no weaponsourselves, except short hunting-bows, --one does not travel with peace onhis mouth and a war weapon at his back, --so we answered truly, andOngyatasse read the scroll to them, which I thought unnecessary. 

"'Now, I think, ' said my friend, when the Lenape had left us with somequestion about a hunting-party, which they had evidently invented toexcuse their rudeness, 'that it was for such as these that the scrollwas written. ' But we could not understand why Well-Praised should havegone to all that trouble to let the Lenni-Lenape know that he had calleda Council. 

"When we had smoked our last pipe, we were still two or three days fromThree Towns, and we decided to try for a cut-off by a hunting-trailwhich Ongyatasse had been over once, years ago, with his father. Thesehunting-traces go everywhere through the Tallegewi Country. You can tellthem by the way they fork from the main trails and, after a day or two, thin into nothing. We traveled well into the night from the place thatOngyatasse remembered, so as to steer by the stars, and awoke to thepleasant pricking of adventure. But we had gone half the morning beforewe began to be sure that we were followed. 

"Jays that squawked and fell silent as we passed, called the alarm againa few minutes later. A porcupine which we saw, asleep upon a log, wokeup and came running from behind us. We thought of the Lenni-Lenape. Where a bare surface of rock across our path made it possible to turnout without leaving a track, we stole back a few paces and waited. Presently we made out, through the thick leaves, a youth, about our agewe supposed, for his head was not cropped and he was about the height ofOngyatasse. When we had satisfied ourselves that he was alone, we tookpleasure in puzzling him. As soon as he missed our tracks in the trail, he knew that he was discovered and played quarry to our fox verycraftily. For an hour or two we stalked one another between the buckeyeboles, and then I stepped on a rotten log which crumbled and threw menoisily. The Lenape let fly an arrow in our direction. We were nearing acrest of a ridge where the underbrush thinned out, and as soon as we hada glimpse of his naked legs slipping from tree to tree, Ongyatasse madea dash for him. We raced like deer through the still woods, Ongyatassegaining on the flying figure, and I about four laps behind him. A lowbranch swished blindingly across my eyes for a moment, and when I couldlook again, the woods were suddenly still and empty. 

"I dropped instantly, for I did not know what this might mean, andcreeping cautiously to the spot where I had last seen them, I saw theearth opening in a sharp, deep ravine, at the bottom of which layOngyatasse with one leg crumpled under him. I guessed that the Lenapemust have led him to the edge and then slipped aside just in time to letthe force of Ongyatasse's running carry him over. Without waiting toplan, I began to climb down the steep side of the ravine. About halfwaydown I was startled by a rustling below, and, creeping along the bottomof the bluff, I saw the Lenni-Lenape with his knife between his teeth, within an arm's length of my friend. I cried out, and in a foolisheffort to save him, I must have let go of the ledge to which I clung. The next thing I knew I was lying half-stunned, with a great many painsin different parts of me, at the bottom of the ravine, almost withintouch of Ongyatasse and a young Lenape with an amulet of white deer'shorn about his neck and, across his back, what had once been a whitequiver. He was pouring water from a birch-bark cup upon my friend, andas soon as he saw that my eyes were opened he came and offered me adrink. There did not seem to be anything to say, so we said nothing, butpresently, when I could sit up, he washed the cut on the back of myhead, and then he showed me that Ongyatasse's knee was out of place, andsaid that we ought to pull it back before he came to himself. 

"I crawled over--I had saved myself by falling squarely on top of WhiteQuiver so that nothing worse happened to me than sore ribs and a fingerbroken--and took my friend around the body while our enemy pulled theknee, and Ongyatasse groaned aloud and came back. Then White Quiver tiedup my finger in a splint of bark, and we endured our pains andsaid nothing. 

"We were both prisoners of the Lenape. So we considered ourselves; wewaited to see what he would do about it. Toward evening he went off foran hour and returned with a deer which he dressed very skillfully andgave us to eat. Then, of the wet hide, he made a bandage forOngyatasse's knee, which shrunk as it dried and kept down the swelling. 

"'Now I shall owe you my name as well as my life, ' said Ongyatasse, forif his knee had not been properly attended, that would have been the endof his running. 

"'Then your new name would be Well-Friended, ' said the Lenape, and hemade a very good story of how I had come tumbling down on both of them. We laughed, but Ongyatasse had another question. 

"'There was peace on my mouth and peace between Lenni-Lenape andTallegewi. Why should you chase us?'

"'The Tallegewi send a Pipe to the Three Clans. Will you swear that themessage that went with it had nothing to do with the Lenni-Lenape?'

"'What should two boys know of a call to Council?' said Ongyatasse, andshowed him the birch-bark scroll, to which White Quiver paid noattention. 

"'There is peace between us, and a treaty, the terms of which were madeby the Tallegewi, all of which we have kept. We have entered no townwithout invitation. When one of our young men stole a maiden of yours wereturned her to her village. ' He went on telling many things, new to us, of the highness of the Lenni-Lenape. 'All this was agreed at the ThreeTowns by Cool Waters, ' said he. 'Now comes a new order. We may not enterthe towns at all. The treaty was for camping privileges in any one placefor the space of one moon. Now, if we are three days in one place, weare told that we must move on. The Lenni-Lenape are not Two-Talkers. Ifwe wear peace on our mouths we wear it in our hearts also. '

"'There is peace between your people and mine, and among the Tallegewi, peace. '

"'So, ' said White Quiver. 'Then why do they rebuild their stockades andfetch arrow-stone from far quarries? And why do they call a Council inthe Moon of the Harvest?'

"I remembered the good trade my uncle, the arrow-maker, had had thatsummer, and was amazed at his knowledge of it, so I answered as I hadbeen taught. 'If I were a Lenape, ' said I, 'and thought that theCouncils of the Tallegewi threatened my people, I would know what thoseCouncils were if I made myself a worm in the roof-tree to overhear it. '

"'Aye, ' he said, 'but you are only a Tallega. '

"He was like that with us, proud and humble by turns. Though he was anaked savage, traveling through our land on sufferance, he could make uscrawl in our hearts for the Tallegewi. He suspected us of much evil, most of which was true as it turned out; yet all the time we lay at thebottom of the ravine, for the most part helpless, he killed every dayfor us, and gathered dry grass to make a bed for Ongyatasse. 

"We talked no more of the Council or of our errand, but as youths will, we talked of highness, and of big game in Shinaki, and of the ways ofthe Tallegewi, of which for the most part he was scornful. 

"Corn he allowed us as a great advantage, but of our towns he doubtedwhether they did not make us fat and Two-Talkers. 

"'Town is a trade-maker, ' he said; 'men who trade much for things, willalso trade for honor. '

"'The Lenni-Lenape carry their honor in their hands, ' said Ongyatasse, 'but the Tallegewi carry theirs in their forehead. '

"He meant, " said the Mound-Builder, turning to the children, "that theLenni-Lenape fought for what they held most dear, and the Tallegewischemed and plotted for it. That was as we were taught. With us, thehand is not lifted until the head has spoken. But as it turned out, between Tallegewi and Lenape, the fighters had the best of it. "

He sighed, making the salutation to the dead as he looked off, acrossthe burial-grounds, to the crumbling heap of the god-house. 

"But I don't understand, " said Dorcas; "were Ongyatasse and White Quiverfriends or enemies?"

"They were two foes who loved one another, and though their tribes fellinto long and bloody war, between these two there was highness and, atthe end, most wonderful kindness. The first time that we got Ongyatasseto his feet and he found that his knee, though feeble, was as good asever, he said to White Quiver, leaning on his shoulder, --

"'Concerning the call to Council, there was more to it than was writtenon the scroll, the meaning of which was hidden from me who carried it. '

"'Which is no news to me, ' said the Lenni-Lenape; 'also, ' he said, 'themessage was arranged beforehand, for it required no answer. '

"I asked him how he knew that, and he mocked at me. 

"'Any time these five days you could have gone forward with the answerhad it been important for you to get back to Cool Waters!'

"That was true. I could have left Ongyatasse and gone on alone, butnothing that had happened so far had made us think that we must get backquickly. White Quiver asked us one day what reason Well-Praised hadgiven for requiring that the Lenni-Lenape should pass through thecountry with not more than twenty fighting men in the party. To save thegame, we told him, which seemed to us reasonable; though I think fromthat hour we began to feel that the Tallegewi, with all their walledtowns and monuments, had been put somehow in the wrong by the wildtribes of Shinaki. 

"We stayed on in the ravine, waiting on Ongyatasse's knee, until we sawthe new rim of the Halting Moon curled up like a feather. The leaves ofthe buckeye turned clear yellow and the first flock of wild geese wentover. We waited one more day for White Quiver to show us a short cut tothe Maumee Trail, and just when we had given him up, we were aware of astrange Lenape in warpaint moving among the shadows. He stood off fromus with his arms folded and his face was as bleak as a winter-bitten wood. 

"'Wash the lie from your mouth, ' he said, 'and follow. '

"Without a word he turned and began to move from us through the smokylight with which the wood was filling. His head was cropped forwar--that was why we did not know him--and along the shoulder he turnedtoward us was the long scrape of a spear-point. That was why wefollowed, saying nothing. Toward daylight the lame knee began to givetrouble. White Quiver came back and put his shoulder under Ongyatasse's, so we moved forward, wordlessly. Birds awoke in the woods, and hoarfrostlay white on the crisped grasses. 

"On a headland from which the lake glinted white as a blade of flint onthe horizon, we waited the sunrise. Smoke arose, from Wabashiki, fromthe direction of the Maumee settlements, from the lake shore towns; tallplumes of smoke shook and threatened. Curtly, while we ate, White Quivertold us what had happened; how the Tallegewi, in violation of thetreaty, had fallen suddenly on scattered bands of the Lenni-Lenape andall but exterminated them. The Tallegewi said that it was because theyhad discovered that the Lenni-Lenape had plotted to fall upon our towns, as soon as the corn was harvested, and take them. But White Quiverthought that the whole thing was a plan of Well-Praised from thebeginning. He had been afraid to refuse passage to the Lenape, onaccount of their great numbers, and had arranged to have them broken upin small parties so that they could be dealt with separately. "

"And which was it?" Oliver wished to know. 

"It was a thousand years ago, " said the Mound-Builder. "Who remembers?But we were ashamed, my friend and I, for we understood now that thesecret meaning of our message about the Horned Heads had been that theTallegewi should fall upon the Lenape wherever they found them. Youremember that it was part of the question and answer that they 'cameinto the fields and ate up the harvest. '

"There might have been a plot, but, on the other hand, we knew that thepainted scroll had been a blind to make the Lenni-Lenape think that theTallegewi would do nothing until they had taken counsel. But we hadcarried a war message with peace upon our mouths and we were ashamedbefore White Quiver. We had talked much highness with him, and besides, we loved him. As it turned out we were not wrong in thinking he lovedus. As we stood making out the points of direction for the trail, Ongyatasse's knee gave under him, and as White Quiver put out his armwithout thinking, a tremor passed over them. They stood so leaning eachon each for a moment. 'Your trail lies thus . .. And thus . .. ' said theLenape, 'but I do not know what you will find at the end of it. ' Then heloosed his arm from my friend's shoulder, took a step back, and theforest closed about him. 

"We were two days more on the trail, though we did not go directly toCool Waters. Some men of the Painted Turtles that we met, told us thefight had passed from the neighborhood of the towns and gathered at BentBar Crossing. Our fathers were both there, which we made an excuse forjoining them. At several places we saw evidences of fighting. All thebands of Lenni-Lenape that were not too far in our territory had comehurrying back toward Fish River, and other bands, as the rumor offighting spread, came down out of Shinaki like buzzards to a carcass. From Cool Waters to Namae-sippu, the Dark Wood was full of war-cries andgroaning. At Fish River the Tallegewi fell in hundreds . .. There is amound there . .. At Bent Bar the Lenni-Lenape held the ford, keeping apassage open for flying bands that were pressed up from the south by thePainted Turtles. Ongyatasse went about getting together his old bandfrom the Three Towns, fretting because we were not allowed to take thefront of the battle. 

"Three days the fight raged about the crossing. The Lenni-Lenape werethe better bowmen; their long arrows carried heavier points. Some that Ifound in the breasts of my friends, I had made, and it made my own hearthot within me. The third day, men from the farther lake towns came upthe river in their canoes, and the Lenape, afraid of being cut off fromtheir friends in the Dark Wood, broke across the river. As soon as theybegan to go, our young men, who feared the fight would be over withoutthem, could not be held back. Ongyatasse at our head, we plunged intothe river after them. 

"Even in flight the Lenni-Lenape were most glorious fighters. They divedamong the canoes to hack holes in the bottoms, and rising from under thesides they pulled the paddlers bodily into the river. We were mad withour first fight, we youngsters, for we let them lead us up over the bankand straight into ambush. We were the Young-Men-Who-Never-Turned-Back. 

"That was a true name for many of us, " said the Mound-Builder. "Iremember Ongyatasse's shrill eagle cry above the '_G'we! G'we_!' of theLenni-Lenape, and the next thing I knew I was struggling in the river, bleeding freely from a knife wound, and somebody was pulling me into acanoe and safety. "

"And Ongyatasse--?" The children looked at the low mound between theCouncil Place and the God-House. 

The Mound-Builder nodded. 

"We put our spears together to make a tent over him before the earth waspiled, " he said, "and it was good to be able to do even so much as thatfor him. For we thought at first we should never find him. He was not onthe river, nor in our side of the Dark Wood, and the elders would notpermit us to go across in search of him. But at daylight the gatherersof the dead saw something moving from under the mist that hid theopposite bank of the river. We waited, arrow on bowstring, not knowingif it were one of our own coming back to us or a Lenape asking forparley. But as it drew near we saw it was a cropped head, and he towed adead Tallega by the hair. Ripples that spread out from his quiet waketook the sun, and the measured dip of the swimmer's arm was no louderthan the whig of the cooter that paddled in the shallows. 

"It had been a true word that Ongyatasse had given his life and his luckto White Quiver; the Lenape had done his best to give them back again. As he came ashore with the stiffened form, we saw him take the whitedeer amulet from his own neck and fasten it around the neck ofOngyatasse. Then, disdaining even to make the Peace sign for his ownsafe returning, he plunged into the river again, swimming steadilywithout haste until the fog hid him. "

The Mound-Builder stood up, wrapping his feather mantle about him andbegan to move down the slope of the Town Mound, the children following. There were ever so many things they wished to hear about, which theyhoped he might be going to tell them, but halfway down he turned andpointed. Over south and east a thin blue film of smoke rose up straightfrom the dark forest. 

"That's for you, I think. Your friend, the Onondaga, is signaling you;he knows the end of the story. "

Taking hands, the children ran straight in the direction of the smokesignal, along the trail which opened before them. 

[Illustration]

X

THE MAKING OF A SHAMAN: A TELLING OF THE IROQUOIS TRAIL, BY THE ONONDAGA

Down the Mound-Builder's graded way the children ran looking for theOnondaga. Like all the trail in the Museum Country it covered a vasttract of country in a very little while, so that it was no time at allbefore they came out among high, pine-covered swells, that broke alongthe watercourses into knuckly granite headlands. From one of these, steady puffs of smoke arose, and a moment later they could make out thefigure of an Indian turning his head from side to side as he searchedthe surrounding country with the look of eagles. They knew him at once, by the Medicine bundle at his belt and the slanting Iroquois feather, for their friend the Onondaga. 

"I was looking for you by the lake shore trail, " he explained as Oliverand Dorcas Jane climbed up to him. "You must have come by theMusking-ham-Mahoning; it drops into the Trade Trail of the Iroquoisyonder, "--he pointed south and east, --"the Great Trail, from theMohican-ittuck to the House of Thunder. " He meant the Hudson River andthe Falls of Niagara. "Even at our village, which was at the head of thelake here, we could hear the Young Thunders, shouting from behind thefalls, " he told them. 

A crooked lake lay below them like a splinter of broken glass betweenthe headlands. From the far end of it the children could see smokerising. "We used to signal our village from here when we went on thewar-trail, " said the Onondaga; "we would cut our mark on a tree as wewent out, and as we came back we added the war count. I was looking foran old score of mine to-day. "

"Had it anything to do with the Mound-Builders?" Dorcas wished to know. "He said you knew the end of that story. "

The Onondaga shook his head. 

"That was a hundred years before my time, and is a Telling of theLenni-Lenape. In the Red Score it is written, the Red Score of theLenni-Lenape. When my home was in the village there, the Five Nationsheld all the country between the lakes and the Mohican-ittuck. But therewere many small friendly tribes along the borders, Algonquian mostly. "

He squatted on his heels beside the fire and felt in his belt for thepipe and tobacco pouch without which no Telling proceeds properly. 

"In my youth, " said the Onondaga, "I was very unhappy because I had noVision. When my time came I walked in the forest and ate nothing, butthe Mystery would not speak to me. Nine days I walked fasting, and thenmy father came to find me under a pine tree, with my eyes sunk in myhead and my ribs like a basket. But because I was ashamed I told him myMystery was something that could not be talked about, and so I toldthe Shaman. 

"My father was pleased because he thought it meant that I was to be avery great Shaman myself, and the other boys envied me. But in my heartI was uneasy. I did not know what to make of my life because the Holderof the Heavens had not revealed himself to me. To one of my friends hehad appeared as an eagle, which meant that he was to be a warrior, keenand victorious; and to another as a fox, so that he studied cunning; butwithout any vision I did not know what to make of myself. My heart wasslack as a wetted bowstring. My father reproached me. 

"'The old women had smoke in their eyes, ' he said; 'they told me I had ason, now I see it is a woman child. '

"My mother was kinder. 'Tell me, ' she said, 'what evil dream unknots thecords of your heart?'

"So at last I told her. 

"My mother was a wise woman. 'To a dog or a child, ' she said, 'onespeaks the first word on the lips, but before a great Shaman oneconsiders carefully. What is a year of your life to the Holder of theHeavens? Go into the forest and wait until his message is ripe for you. 'She was a wise woman. 

"So I put aside my bow and quiver, and with them all desire of meat andall thought of killing. With my tomahawk I cut a mark in that chestnutyonder and buried my weapon at the foot of it. I had my knife, my pipe, and my fire-stick. Also I felt happy and important because my mother hadmade me believe that the Holder of the Heavens thought well of me. I wasgiving him a year in which to tell me what to do with my life. 

"I turned east, for, I said, from the east light comes. It was an oldtrail even in those days. It follows the watershed from the lake toOneida, and clears the Mohawk Valley northward. It was the Moon ofTender Leaves when I set out, and by the time nuts began to ripen I hadcome to the lowest hills of the Adirondacks. 

"Sometimes I met hunting-parties or women gathering berries, and boughtcorn and beans from them, but for the most part I lived on seeds androots and wild apples. 

"By the time I had been a month or two without killing, the smell ofmeat left me. Rabbits ran into my hands, and the mink, stealing alongthe edge of the marsh to look for frogs, did not start from me. Deercame at night to feed on the lily buds on the lake borders. They wouldcome stealing among the alders and swim far out to soak their coats. When they had made themselves mosquito-proof, they would come back tothe lily beds and I would swim among them stilly, steering by the redreflection of my camp-fire in their eyes. When my thought that was notthe thought of killing touched them, they would snort a little andreturn to the munching of lilies, and the trout would rise in bubblyrings under my arms as I floated. But though I was a brother to all theEarth, the Holder of the Heavens would not speak to me. 

"Sometimes, when I had floated half the night between the hollow sky ofstars and its hollow reflection, the Vision seemed to gather on thesurface of the water. It would take shape and turn to the flash of aloon's wet wing in the dawning, Or I would sit still in the woods untilmy thought was as a tree, and the squirrels would take me for a tree andrun over me. Then there would come a strange stir, and the creeping ofmy flesh along my spine until the Forest seemed about to speak . .. Andsuddenly a twig would snap or a jay squawk, and I would be I again, andthe tree a tree. .. . 

"It was the first quarter of the Moon of Falling Leaves, " said theOnondaga filling his pipe again and taking a fresh start on his story. "There was a feel in the air that comes before the snow, but I was veryhappy in my camp by a singing creek far up on the Adirondacks, and keptputting off moving the camp from day to day. And one evening when I camein from gathering acorns, I discovered that I had had a visitor. Mush ofacorn meal which I had left in my pot had been eaten. That is right, ofcourse, if the visitor is hungry; but this one had wiped out his trackswith a leafy bough, which looked like trickery. 

"It came into my mind that it might have been one of the Gahonga, thespirits that dwell in rocks and rivers and make the season fruitful. "

"Oh!" cried Dorcas, "Indian fairies! Did you have those?"

"There are spirits in all things, " said the Onondaga gravely. "There areOdowas, who live in the underworld and keep back the evil airs thatbring sickness. You can see the bare places under the pines where theyhave their dancing-places. And there are the Gandaiyah who loose wildthings from the traps and bring dew on the strawberry blossoms. But allthese are friendly to man. So I cooked another pot of food and lay downin my blanket. I sleep as light as a wild thing myself. In the middle ofthe night I was wakened by the sound of eating. Presently I heardsomething scrape the bottom of the pot, and though I was afraid, I couldnot bear to have man or spirit go from my camp hungry. So I spoke tothe sound. 

"'There is food hanging in the tree, ' I said. I had hung it up to keepthe ants from it. But as soon as I finished speaking I heard the Thingcreeping away. In the morning I found it had left the track of one smalltorn moccasin and a strange misshapen lump. It came up from anddisappeared into the creek, so I was sure it must have been a Gahonga. But that evening as I sat by my fire I was aware of it behind me. No, Iheard nothing; I felt the thought of that creature touching my thought. Without looking round I said, 'What is mine is yours, brother. ' Then Ilaid dry wood on the fire, and getting up I walked away without lookingback. But when I was out of the circle of light I looked and I saw theThing come out of the brush and warm its hands. 

"Then I knew that it was human, so I dropped my blanket over it frombehind and it lay without moving. I thought I had killed it, but when Ilifted the blanket I saw that it was a girl, and she was all but deadwith fright. She lay looking at me like a deer that I had shot, waitingfor me to plunge in the knife. It is a shame to any man to have a girllook at him as that one looked at me. I made the sign of friendship andset food before her, and water in a cup of bark. Then I saw what hadmade the clumsy track; it was her foot which she had cut on the rocksand bound up with strips of bark. Also she was sick with fright andstarvation. 

"For two days she lay on my bed and ate what I gave her and looked at meas a trapped thing looks at the owner of the trap. I tried her with allthe dialects I knew, and even with a few words I had picked up from asummer camp of Wabaniki. I had met them a week or two before atOwenunga, at the foot of the mountains. 

"She put her hand over her mouth and looked sideways to find a way outof the trap. 

"I was sorry for her, but she was a great nuisance. I was so busygetting food for her that I had no time to listen for the Holder of theHeavens, and besides, there was a thickening of the air, what we callthe Breath of the Great Moose, which comes before a storm. If we did notwish to be snowed in, we had to get down out of the mountain, and onaccount of her injured foot we had to go slowly. 

"I had it in mind to take her to the camp of the Wabaniki at Owenunga, but when she found out where we were going she tried to run away. Afterthat I carried her, for the cut in her foot opened and bled. 

"She lay in my arms like a hurt fawn, but what could I do? There was atent of cloud all across the Adirondack, and besides, it is not properfor a young girl to be alone in the woods with a strange man, " said theOnondaga, but he smiled to himself as he said it. 

"It was supper-time when we came to Crooked Water. There was a smell ofcooking, and the people gathering between the huts. 

"There was peace between the Five Nations and the Wabaniki, so I walkedboldly into the circle of summer huts and put the girl down, while Imade the stranger's sign for food and lodging. But while my hand wasstill in the air, there was a shout and a murmur and the women begansnatching their children back. I could see them huddling together likebuffalo cows when their calves are tender, and the men pushing to thefront with caught-up weapons in their hands. 

"I held up my own to show that they were weaponless. 

"'I want nothing but food and shelter for this poor girl, ' I said. I hadlet her go in order to make the sign language, for I had but a few wordsof their tongue. She crouched at my feet covering her face with her longhair. The people stood off without answering, and somebody raised a cryfor Waba-mooin. It was tossed about from mouth to mouth until it reachedthe principal hut, and presently a man came swaggering out in the dressof a Medicine Man. He was older than I, but he was also fat, and for allhis Shaman's dress I was not frightened. I knew by the way the girlstopped crying that she both knew and feared him. 

"The moment Waba-mooin saw her he turned black as a thunderhead. Hescattered words as a man scatters seeds with his hand. I was too far tohear him, but the people broke out with a shower of sticks and stones. At that the girl sprang up and spread her arms between me and thepeople, crying something in her own tongue, but a stone struck her onthe point of the shoulder. She would have dropped, but I caught her, Iheld her in my arms and looked across at the angry villagers andWaba-mooin. Suddenly power came upon me. .. . 

"It is something all Indian, " said the Onon-daga, --"something White Mendo not understand. It is Magic Medicine, the power of the Shaman, thepower of my thought meeting the evil thought of the Wabaniki and turningit back as a buffalo shield turns arrows. I gathered up the girl andwalked away from that place slowly as becomes a Shaman. No more stonesstruck me; the arrow of Waba-mooin went past me and stuck in an oak. Mypower was upon me. 

"I must have walked half the night, hearing the drums at Crooked Waterscaring away evil influences. I would feel the girl warm and soft in myarms as a fawn, and then after a time she would seem to be a part of me. The trail found itself under my feet; I was not in the least wearied. The girl was asleep when I laid her down, but toward morning she woke, and the moment I looked in her eyes, I knew that whatever they hadstoned her for at Owenunga, her eyes were friendly. 

"'_M'toulin_, ' she said, which is the word in her language for Shaman, 'what will you do with me?'

"There was nothing I could do but take her to my mother as quickly aspossible. There was a wilderness of hills to cross before we struck thetrail through Mohawk Valley. That afternoon the snow began to fall ingreat dry flakes, thickening steadily. The girl walked when she could, but most of the time I carried her. I had the power of a Shaman, thoughthe Holder of the Heavens had not yet spoken to me. 

"We pushed to the top of the range before resting, and all night wecould hear the click and crash of deer and moose going down before thesnow. All the next day there was one old bull moose kept just ahead ofus. We knew he was old because of his size and his being alone. Two orthree times we passed other bulls with two or three cows and theircalves of that season yarding among the young spruce, but the old bullkept on steadily down the mountain. His years had made him weather-wise. The third day the wind shifted the snow, and we saw him on the roundcrown of a hill below us, tracking. "

The Onondaga let his pipe go out while he explained the winter habits ofmoose. 

"When the snow is too deep for yarding, " he said, "they look for thelower hills that have been burnt over, so that the growth is young andtender. When the snow is soft, after a thaw, they will track steadilyback and forth until the hill is laced with paths. They will work aslong as the thaw lasts, pushing the soft snow with their shoulders torelease the young pine and the birches. Then, when the snow crusts, theycan browse all along the paths for weeks, tunneling far under. 

"We saw our bull the last afternoon as we came down from the cloud cap, and then the white blast cut us off and we had only his trail to follow. When we came to the hill we could still hear him thrashing about in histrails, so I drew down the boughs of a hemlock and made us a shelter anda fire. For two days more the storm held, with cold wind and drivensnow. About the middle of the second day I heard a heavy breathing aboveour hut, and presently the head of the moose came through the hemlockthatch, and his eyes were the eyes of a brother. So I knew my thoughtwas still good, and I made room for him in the warmth of the hut. Hemoved out once or twice to feed, and I crept after him to gather grassseeds and whatever could be found that the girl could eat. We had hadnothing much since leaving the camp at Crooked Water. 

"And by and by with the hunger and anxiety about Nukéwis, which was thename she said she should be called by, my thought was not good any more. I would look at the throat of the moose as he crowded under the hemlockand think how easily I could slit it with my knife and how good moosemeat toasted on the coals would taste. I was glad when the storm clearedand left the world all white and trackless. I went out and prayed to theHolder of the Heavens that he would strengthen me in the keeping of myvow and also that he would not let the girl die. 

"While I prayed a rabbit that had been huddling under the brush and thesnow, came hopping into my trail; it hopped twice and died with thecold. I took it for a sign; but when I had cooked it and was feeding itto the girl she said:--

"'Why do you not eat, M'toulin, ' for we had taught one another a fewwords of our own speech. 

"'I am not hungry, ' I told her. 

"'While I eat I can see that your throat is working with hunger, ' sheinsisted. And it was true I could have snatched the meat from her like awolf, but because of my vow I would not. 

"'M'toulin, there is a knife at your belt; why have you not killed themoose to make meat for us?'

"'Eight moons I have done no killing, seeking the Vision and the Voice, 'I told her. 'It is more than my life to me. '

"When I had finished, she reached over with the last piece of rabbit andlaid it on the fire. It was a sacrifice. As we watched the flame lick itup, all thought of killing went out of my head like the smoke ofsacrifice, and my thought was good again. 

"When the meat she had eaten had made her strong, Nukéwis sat up andcrossed her hands on her bosom. 

"'M'toulin, ' she said, 'the evil that has come on you belongs to me. Iwill go away with it. I am a witch and bring evil on those who arekind to me. '

"'Who says you are a witch?'

"'All my village, and especially Waba-mooin. I brought sickness on thevillage, and on you hunger and the breaking of your vow. '

"'I have seen Waba-mooin, ' I said. 'I do not think too much of hisopinions. '

"'He is the Shaman of my village, ' said Nukéwis. 'My father was Shamanbefore him, a much greater Shaman than Waba-mooin will ever be. Hewanted my father's Medicine bundle which hung over the door to protectme; my father left it to me when he died. But afterward there was asickness in the village, and Waba-mooin said it was because the powerfulMedicine bundle was left in the hands of an ignorant girl. He said forthe good of the village it ought to be taken away from me. But _I_thought it was because so many people came to my house with their sick, because of my Medicine bundle, and Waba-mooin missed their gifts. Hesaid that if I was not willing to part with my father's bundle, that hewould marry me, but when I would not, then he said that I was a witch!'

"'Where is the bundle now?' I asked her. 

"'I hid it near our winter camp before we came into the mountains. Butthere was sickness in the mountains and Waba-mooin said that it also wasmy fault. So they drove me out with sticks and stones. That is why theywould not take me back. '

"'Then, ' I said, 'when Waba-mooin goes back to the winter camp, he willfind the Medicine bundle. '

"'He will never find it, ' she said, 'but he will be the only Shaman inthe village and will have all the gifts. But listen, M'toulin, by nowthe people are back in their winter home. It is more than two days fromhere. If you go without me, they will give you food and shelter, butwith me you will have only hard words and stones. Therefore, I leaveyou, M'toulin. ' She stood up, made a sign of farewell. 

"'You must show me the way to your village first, ' I insisted. 

"I saw that she meant what she said, and because I was too weak to runafter her, I pretended. I thought that would hold her. 

"We should have set out that moment, but a strange lightness came in myhead. I do not know just what happened. I think the storm must havebegun again early in the afternoon. There was a great roaring as of windand the girl bending over me, wavering and growing thin like smoke. Twice I saw the great head of the moose thrust among the hemlock boughs, and heard Nukéwis urging and calling me. She lifted my hands and claspedthem round the antlers of the moose; I could feel his warm breath. .. . Hethrew up his head, drawing me from my bed, wonderfully light upon myfeet. We seemed to move through the storm. I could feel the hairyshoulder of the moose and across his antlers Nukéwis calling me. I feltmyself carried along like a thin bubble of life in the storm that poureddown from the Adirondack like Niagara. At last I slipped into darkness. 

"I do not know how long this lasted, but presently I was aware of alight that began to grow and spread around me. It came from the face ofthe moose, and when I looked up out of my darkness it changed to theface of a great kind man. He had on the headdress of a chief priest, thetall headdress of eagle plumes and antlers. I had hold of one of them, and his arm was around and under me. But I knew very well who held me. 

"'You have appeared to me at last, ' I said to him. 

"'I have appeared, my son. ' His voice was kind as the sound of summerwaters. 

"'I looked for you long, O Taryenya-wagon!'

"'You looked for me among your little brothers of the wild, ' he said, 'and for you the Vision was among men, my son. '

"'How, among men?'

"'What you did for that poor girl when you put your good thought betweenher and harm. That you must do for men. '

"'I am to be a Shaman, then?' I thought of my father. 

"'According to a man's power, ' said the Holder of the Heavens, --'as mypower comes upon him. .. . '"

The Onondaga puffed silently for a while on his pipe. 

Dorcas Jane fidgeted. "But I don't understand, " she said at last; "justwhat was it that happened?"

"It was my Mystery, " said the Onondaga; "my Vision that came to me outof the fasting and the sacrifice. You see, there had been very littlefood since leaving Crooked Water, and Nukéwis--"

"You gave it all to her. " Dorcas nodded. "But still I don't understand?"

"The moose had begun to travel down the mountain and like a good brotherhe came back for me. Nukéwis lifted me up and bound me to his antlers, holding me from the other side, but I was too weak to notice. 

"We must have traveled that way for hours through the storm until wereached the tall woods below the limit of the snow. When I came tomyself, I was lying on a bed of fern in a bright morning and Nukéwis wascooking quail which she had snared with a slip noose made of her hair. Iate--I could eat now that I had had my Vision--and grew strong. All theupper mountain was white like a tent of deerskin, but where we werethere was only thin ice on the edges of the streams. 

"We stayed there for one moon. I wished to get my strength back, andbesides, we wished to get married, Nukéwis and I. "

"But how could you, without any party?" Dorcas wished to know. She hadnever seen anybody get married, but she knew it was always spoken of asa Wedding Party. 

"We had the party four months later when we got back to my own village, "explained the Onondaga. "For that time I built a hut, and when I had ledher across the door, as our custom was, I scattered seeds uponher--seeds of the pine tree. Then we sat in our places on either sidethe fire, and she made me cake of acorn meal, and we made a vow as weate it that we would love one another always. 

"We were very happy. I hunted and fished, and the old moose fed in ourmeadow. Nukéwis used to gather armfuls of grass for him. When we wentback to my wife's village he trotted along in the trail behind us like adog. Nukéwis wished to go back after her father's Medicine bag, andbeing a woman she did not wish to go to my mother without her dower. There were many handsome skins and baskets in her father's hut which hadbeen given to him when he was Medicine Man. She felt sure Waba-mooinwould not have touched them. And as for me, I was young enough to wantWaba-mooin to see that I was also a Shaman. 

"We stole into Nukéwis's hut in the dark, and when it was morning alight snow was over the ground to cover our tracks, and there was oursmoke going up and the great moose standing at our door chewing his cudand over the door the Medicine bag of Nukéwis's father. How theneighbors were astonished! They ran for Waba-mooin, and when I saw himcoming in all his Shaman's finery, I put on the old Medicine Man's shirtand his pipe and went out to smoke with him as one Shaman with another. "

The Onondaga laughed to himself, remembering. "It was funny to see himtry to go through with it, but there was nothing else for him to do. Iought to have punished him a little for what he did to Nukéwis, but myheart was too full of happiness and my Mystery. And perhaps it waspunishment enough to have me staying there in the village with all thefolk bringing me presents and neglecting Waba-mooin. I think he was gladwhen we set out for my own village in the Moon of the Sap Running. 

"I knew my mother would be waiting for me, and besides, I wished my sonto be born an Onondaga. "

"And what became of the old moose?"

"Somewhere on the trail home we lost him. Perhaps he heard his own tribecalling. .. And perhaps. .. He was the Holder of the Heavens to me, andfrom that time neither I nor my wife ate any moose meat. That is how itis when the Holder of the Heavens shows Himself to his children. Butwhen I came by the tree where I had cut the first score of my search forHim, I cut a picture of the great moose, with my wife and I on eitherside of him. "

The Onondaga pointed with his feathered pipe to a wide-boled chestnut arod or two down the slope. "It was that I was looking for to-day, " hesaid. "If you look you will find it. "

And continuing to point with the long feathered stem of his pipe, thechildren rose quietly hand in hand and went to look. 

[Illustration]

XI

THE PEARLS OF COFACHIQUE: HOW LUCAS DE AYLLON CAME TO LOOK FOR THEM ANDWHAT THE CACICA FAR-LOOKING DID TO HIM; TOLD BY THE PELICAN

One morning toward the end of February the children were sitting on thelast bench at the far end of the Bird Gallery, which is the nicest sortof place to sit on a raw, slushy day. You can look out from it on oneside over the flamingo colony of the Bahamas, and on the other straightinto the heart of the Cuthbert Rookery in Florida. Just opposite is thegreen and silver coral islet of Cay Verde, with the Man-of-War Birdsnesting among the flat leaves of the sea-grape. 

If you sit there long enough and nobody comes by to interrupt, you cantaste the salt of the spindrift over the banks of Cay Verde, and watchthe palmetto leaves begin to wave like swords in the sea wind. That iswhat happened to Oliver and Dorcas Jane. The water stirred and shimmeredand the long flock of flamingoes settled down, each to its own mudhummock on the crowded summer beaches. All at once Oliver thought ofsomething. 

"I wonder, " he said, "if there are trails on the water and through theair?"

"Why, of course, " said the Man-of-War Bird; "how else would we find ourislet among so many? North along the banks till we sight the heads ofNassau, then east of Stirrup Cay, keeping the scent of the land flowersto windward, to the Great Bahama, and west by north to where blue waterruns between the Biscayne Keys to the mouth of the Miami. That is how wereach the mainland in season, and back again to Cay Verde. "

"It sounds like a long way, " said Oliver. 

"That's nothing, " said the tallest Flamingo. "We go often as far east asthe Windward Islands, and west to the Isthmus. But the ships go farther. We have never been to the place where the ships come from. "

It was plain that the Flamingo was thinking of a ship as another andmore mysterious bird. The Man-of-War Bird seemed to know better. Thechildren could see, when he stretched out his seven-foot spread of wing, that he was a great traveler. 

"What _I_ should like to know, " he said, "is how the ships find theirway. With us we simply rise higher and higher, above the fogs, until wesee the islands scattered like green nests and the banks and shoalswhich from that height make always the same pattern in the water, brownstreaks of weed, gray shallows, and deep water blue. But the ships, though they never seem to leave the surface of the water, can make ashorter course than we in any kind of weather. "

Oliver was considering how he could explain a ship's compass to thebirds, but only the tail end of his thinking slipped out. "They callsome of them men-of-war, too, " he chuckled. 

"You must have thought it funny the first time you saw one, " said DorcasJane. 

"Not me, but my ancestors, " said the Man-of-War Bird; "_they_ saw theGreat Admiral when he first sailed in these waters. They saw the threetall galleons looming out of a purple mist on the eve of discovery, their topsails rosy with the sunset fire. The Admiral kept pacing, pacing; watching, on the one hand, lest his men surprise him with amutiny, and on the other, glancing overside for a green bough or afloating log, anything that would be a sign of land. We saw him come inpride and wonder, and we saw him go in chains. "

Like all the Museum people, the Man-of-War Bird said "we" when he spokeof his ancestors. 

"There were others, " said the Flamingo. "I remember an old man lookingfor a fountain. "

"Ponce de Leon, " supplied Dorcas Jane, proud that she could pronounceit. 

"There is no harm in a fountain, " said a Brown Pelican that had comesailing into Cuthbert Rookery with her wings sloped downward like aparachute. "It was the gold-seekers who filled the islands with thethunder of their guns and the smoke of burning huts. "

The children turned toward the Pelican among the mangrove trees, crowdedwith nests of egret and heron and rosy hornbill. 

The shallow water of the lagoon ran into gold-tipped ripples. In everyone the low sun laid a tiny flake of azure. Over the far shore there wasa continual flick and flash of wings, like a whirlwind playing with aheap of waste paper. Crooked flights of flamingoes made a movingreflection on the water like a scarlet snake, but among the queermangrove stems, that did not seem to know whether they were roots orbranches, there was a lovely morning stillness. It was just the placeand hour for a story, and while the Brown Pelican opened her well-filledmaw to her two hungry nestlings, the Snowy Egret went on withthe subject. 

"They were a gallant and cruel and heroic and stupid lot, the Spanishgold-seekers, " she said. "They thought nothing of danger and hunger, butthey could not find their way without a guide any further than theireyes could see, and they behaved very badly toward the poor Indians. "

"We saw them all, " said the Flamingo, --"Cortez and Balboa and Pizarro. We saw Panfilo Narvaez put in at Tampa Bay, full of zeal and goldhunger, and a year later we saw him at Appalache, beating his stirrupirons into nails to make boats to carry him back to Havana. We aloneknow why he never reached there. "

The Pelican by this time had got rid of her load of fish and settledherself for conversation. "Whatever happened to them, " she said, "theycame back, --Spanish, Portuguese, and English, --back they came. Iremember how Lucas de Ayllon came to look for the pearls ofCofachique--"

"Pearls!" said the children both at once. 

"Very good ones, " said the Pelican, nodding her pouched beak; "as largeas hazel nuts and with a luster like a wet beach at evening. The bestwere along the Savannah River where some of my people had had a rookerysince any of them could remember. Ayllon discovered the pearls when hecame up from Hispaniola looking for slaves, but it was an evil day forhim when he came again to fill his pockets with them, for by that timethe lady of Cofachique was looking for Ayllon. "

"For Soto, you mean, " said the Snowy Egret, --

"Hernando de Soto, the Adelantado of Florida, and that is _my_ story. "

"It is all one story, " insisted the Pelican. "Ayllon began it. His shipput in at the Savannah at the time of the pearling, when the best of ouryoung men were there, and among them Young Pine, son of Far-Looking, theChief Woman. 

"The Indians had heard of ships by this time, but they still believedthe Spaniards were Children of the Sun, and trusted them. They had notyet learned what a Spaniard will do for gold. They did not even knowwhat gold was, for there was none of it at Cofachique. The Cacique camedown to the sea to greet the ships, with fifty of his best fighting menbehind him, and when the Spaniard invited them aboard for a feast, helet Young Pine go with them. He was as straight as a pine, the youngCacique, keen and strong-breasted, and about his neck he wore a twist ofpearls of three strands, white as sea foam. Ayllon's eyes glistened ashe looked at them, and he gave word that the boy was not to bemishandled. For as soon as he had made the visiting Indians drunk withwine, which they had never tasted before and drank only for politeness, the Spaniard hoisted sail for Hispaniola. 

"Young Pine stood on the deck and heard his father calling to him fromthe shore, and saw his friends shot as they jumped overboard, or weredragged below in chains, and did not know what to do at such treachery. The wine foamed in his head and he hung sick against the rail untilAyllon came sidling and fidgeting to find out where the pearls camefrom. He fingered the strand on Young Pine's neck, making signs offriendship. 

"The ship was making way fast, and the shore of Cofachique was darkagainst the sun. Ayllon had sent his men to the other side of the shipwhile he talked with Young Pine, for he did not care to have them learnabout the pearls. 

"Young Pine lifted the strand from his neck, for by Ayllon's orders hewas not yet in chains. While the Spaniard looked it over greedily, theboy saw his opportunity. He gave a shout to the sea-birds that wheeledand darted about the galleon, the shout the fishers give when they throwoffal to the gulls, and as the wings gathered and thickened to hide himfrom the guns, he dived straight away over the ship's side into thedarkling water. 

"All night he swam, steering by the death-fires which the pearlers hadbuilt along the beaches, and just as the dawn came up behind him to turnthe white-topped breakers into green fire, the land swell caught him. Four days later a search party looking for those who had jumpedoverboard, found his body tumbled among the weeds along the outer shoalsand carried it to his mother, the Cacica, at Talimeco. 

[Illustration: "She could see the thoughts of a man while they werestill in his heart"]

"She was a wonderful woman, the Chief Woman of Cofachique, andterrible, " said the Pelican. "It was not for nothing she was calledFar-Looking. She could see the thoughts of a man while they were stillin his heart, and the doings of men who were far distant. When shewished to know what nobody could tell her, she would go into theSilence; she would sit as still as a brooding pelican; her limbs wouldstiffen and her eyes would stare--

"That is what she did the moment she saw that the twist of pearls wasgone from her son's neck. She went silent with her hand on his deadbreast and looked across the seas into the cruel heart of the Spaniardand saw what would happen. 'He will come back, ' she said; 'he will comeback to get what I shall give him for _this_. '

"She meant the body of Young Pine, who was her only son, " said thePelican, tucking her own gawky young under her breast, "and that issomething a mother never forgets. She spent the rest of her timeplanning what she would do to Lucas de Ayllon when he came back. 

"There was a lookout built in the palmetto scrub below the pearlingplace, and every day canoes scouted far to seaward, with runners readyin case ships were sighted. Talimeco was inland about a hundred miles upthe river and the Cacica herself seldom left it. 

"And after four or five years Ayllon, with the three-plied rope ofpearls under his doublet, came back. 

"The Cacica was ready for him. She was really the Chief Woman ofCofachique, --the Cacique was only her husband, --and she was obeyed as noordinary woman, " said the Brown Pelican. 

"She was not an ordinary woman, " said the Snowy Egret, fluffing herwhite spray of plumes. "If she so much as looked at you and her glancecaught your eye, then you had to do what she said, whether you liked itor not. But most of her people liked obeying her, for she was as wise asshe was terrible. That was why she did not kill Lucas de Ayllon at thepearling place as the Cacique wished her to do. 'If we kill him, ' saidthe Chief Woman, 'others will come to avenge him. We must send him homewith such a report that no others of his kind will visit this coastagain. ' She had everything arranged for that. "

The Egret settled to her nest again and the Pelican went on with thestory. 

"In the spring of the year Ayllon came loafing up the Florida coast withtwo brigantines and a crew of rascally adventurers, looking for slavesand gold. At least Ayllon said he was looking for slaves, though most ofthose he had carried away the first time had either jumped overboard orrefused their food and died. But he had not been willing to tell anybodyabout the pearls, and he had to have some sort of excuse for returningto a place where he couldn't be expected to be welcomed. 

"And that was the first surprise he had when he put to shore on thebluff where the city of Savannah now stands, with four small boats, every man armed with a gun or a crossbow. 

"The Indians, who were fishing between the shoals, received theSpaniards kindly; sold them fish and fresh fruit for glass beads, andshowed themselves quite willing to guide them in their search for slavesand gold. Only there was no gold: nothing but a little copper andstinging swarms of flies, gray clouds of midges and black ooze thatsucked the Spaniards to their thighs, and the clatter of scrub palmettoleaves on their iron shirts like the sound of wooden swords, as theIndians wound them in and out of trails that began in swamps and arrivednowhere. Never once did they come any nearer to the towns than a fewpoor fisher huts, and never a pearl showed in any Indian's necklace orearring. The Chief Woman had arranged for that!

"All this time she sat at Talimeco in her house on the temple mound--"

"Mounds!" interrupted the children both at once. "Were theyMound-Builders?"

"They built mounds, " said the Pelican, "for the Cacique's house and theGod-House, and for burial, with graded ways and embankments. The one atTalimeco was as tall as three men on horseback, as the Spaniardsdiscovered later--Soto's men, not Ayllon's. _They_ never came withinsound of the towns nor in sight of the league-long fields of corn northe groves of mulberry trees. They lay with their goods spread out alongthe beach without any particular order and without any fear of the fewpoor Indians they saw. 

"That was the way the Chief Woman had arranged it. All the men who camedown to the ships were poorly dressed and the women wrinkled, though shewas the richest Cacica in the country, and had four bearers with featherfans to accompany her. All this time she sat in the Silences and senther thoughts among the Spaniards so that they bickered among themselves, for they were so greedy for gold that no half-dozen of them would trustanother half-dozen out of their sight. They would lie loafing about thebeaches and all of a sudden anger would run among them like thin fire inthe savannahs, which runs up the sap wood of the pines, winding, andtaking flight from the top like a bird. Then they would stab one anotherin their rages, or roast an Indian because he would not tell them wheregold was. For they could not get it out of their heads that there wasgold. They were looking for another Peru. 

"Toward the last, Ayllon had to sleep in his ship at night so jealoushis captains were of him. He had a touch of the swamp fever which takesthe heart out of a man, and finally he was obliged to show them thethree-plied rope of pearls to hold them. To just a few of his captainshe showed it, but the Indian boy he had taken to be his servant saw themfingering it in the ship's cabin and sent word to the Chief Woman. "

The sun rose high on the lagoon as the Pelican paused in her story, andbeyond the rookery the children could see blue water and a line of surf, with the high-pooped Spanish ships rising and falling. Beyond that werethe low shore and the dark wood of pines and the shining leaves of thepalmettoes like a lake spattered with the light--split by their needlepoints. They could see the dark bodies of the Indian runners workingtheir way through it to Talimeco. The Pelican went on with the story. 

"'Now it is time, ' said the Cacica, and the Cacique's Own--that was aband of picked fighting men--took down their great shields of woven canefrom the god-house and left Talimeco by night. And from every seacoasttown of Cofachique went bowmen and spearsmen. They would be sitting bytheir hearth-fires at evening, and in the morning they would be gone. Atthe same time there went a delegation from Talimeco to Lucas de Ayllonto say that the time of one of the Indian feasts was near, and to invitehim and his men to take part in it. The Spaniards were delighted, fornow they thought they should see some women, and maybe learn about gold. But though scores of Indians went down, with venison and maize cakes inbaskets, no women went at all, and if the Spaniards had not been threefourths drunk, that would have warned them. 

"When Indians mean fighting they leave the women behind, " explained thePelican, and the children nodded. 

"The Spaniards sat about the fires where the venison was roasting, andtalked openly of pearls. They had a cask of wine out from the ship, andsome of their men made great laughter trying to dance with the young menof Cofachique. But one of the tame Indians that Ayllon had brought fromHispaniola with him, went privately to his master. 'I know this dance, 'he said; 'it is a dance of death. ' But Ayllon dared do nothing excepthave a small cannon on the ship shot off, as he said, for thecelebration, but really to scare the Indians. "

"And they were scared?"

"When they have danced the dance of death and vengeance there is nothingcan scare Indians, " said the Brown Pelican, and the whole rookeryagreed with her. 

"At a signal, " she went on, "when the Spaniards were lolling afterdinner with their iron shirts half off, and the guns stacked on thesand, the Indians fell upon them with terrible slaughter. Ayllon gotaway to his ships with a few of his men, but there were not boats enoughfor all of them, and they could not swim in their armor. Some of themtried it, but the Indians swam after them, stabbing and pulling themunder. That night Ayllon saw from his ships the great fires the Indiansmade to celebrate their victory, and the moment the day popped suddenlyout of the sea, as it does at that latitude, he set sail and put theships about for Hispaniola, without stopping to look for survivors. 

"But even there, I think, the Cacica's thought followed him. A stormcame up out of the Gulf, black with thunder and flashing green fire. Theships were undermanned, for the sailors, too, had been ashore feasting. One of the brigantines--but not the one which carried Ayllon--staggeredawhile in the huge seas and went under. "

"And the pearls, the young chief's necklace, what became of that?" askedDorcas. 

"It went back to Talimeco with the old chief's body and was buried withhim. You see, that had been the signal. Ayllon had the necklace with himin the slack of his doublet. He thought it would be a good time afterthe feast to show it to the Cacique and inquire where pearls could befound. He had no idea that it had belonged to the Cacique's son; allIndians looked very much alike to him. But when the Cacique saw YoungPine's necklace in the Spaniard's hand, he raised the enemy shout thatwas the signal for his men, who lay in the scrub, to begin the battle. Ayllon struck down the Cacique with his own sword as the nearest athand. But the Cacique had the pearls, and after the fighting began therewas no time for the Spaniard to think of getting them back again. So thepearls went back to Talimeco, with axes and Spanish arms, to be laid upin the god-house for a trophy. It was there, ten years later, thatHernando de Soto found them. As for Ayllon, his pride and his heart werebroken. He died of that and the fever he had brought back fromCofachique, but you may be sure he never told exactly what happened tohim on that unlucky voyage. Nobody had any ear in those days for voyagesthat failed; they were all for gold and the high adventure. "

"What I want to know, " said Dorcas, "is what became of the Cacica, andwhether she saw Mr. De Soto coming and why, if she could look people inthe eye and make them do what she wanted, she didn't just see Mr. DeAyllon herself and tell him to go home again. "

"It was only to her own people she could do that, " said the Pelican. "She could send her dream to them too, if it pleased her, but she neverdared to put her powers to the test with the strangers. If she had triedand failed, then the Indians would have been certain of the one thingthey were never quite sure of, that the Spaniards were the Children ofthe Sun. As for the horses, they never did get it out of their mindsthat they might be eaten by them. I think the Cacica felt in her heartthat the strangers were only men, but it was too important to her to befeared by her own people to take any chances of showing herself afraidof the Spaniards. That was why she never saw Ayllon, and when it was atlast necessary that Soto should be met, she left that part of thebusiness to the young Princess. "

"That, " said the Snowy Egret, "should be my story! The egrets weresacred at Cofachique, " she explained to the children; "only the chieffamily wore our plumes. Our rookery was in the middle swamp a day inlandfrom Talimeco, safe and secret. But we used to go past the town everyday fishing in the river. That is how we knew the whole story of whathappened there and at Tuscaloosa. "

Dorcas remembered her geography. "Tuscaloosa is in Alabama, " she said;"that's a long way from Savannah. "

"Not too long for the Far-Looking. She and the Black Warrior--that'swhat Tuscaloosa means--were of one spirit. In the ten or twelve yearsafter the Cacique, her husband, was killed, she put the fear ofCofachique on all the surrounding tribes, as far as Tuscaloosa River. 

"There was an open trail between the two chief cities of Cofachique andMobila, which was called the Tribute Road because of the tribes thattraveled it, bringing tribute to one or another of the two Great Ones. But not any more after the Princess who was called the Pearl ofCofachique walked in it. "

"Oh, Princesses!" sighed Dorcas Jane, "if we could just see one!"

The Snowy Egret considered. "If the Pelicans would dance for you--"

"Have the Pelicans a _dance_?"

"Of all the dances that the Indians have, " said the Egret, "the firstand the best they learned from the Wing People. Some they learned fromthe Cranes by the water-courses, and some from the bucks prancing beforethe does on the high ridges; old, old dances of the great elk and thewapiti. In the new of the year everything dances in some fashion, and bydancing everything is made one, sky and sea, and bird and dancing leaf. Old time is present, and all old feelings are as the times and feelingsthat will be. These are the things men learned in the days of theUnforgotten, dancing to make the world work well together by times andseasons. But the Pelicans can always dance a little; anywhere in theirrookeries you might see them bowing and balancing. Watch, now, in theclear foreshore. "

True enough, on the bare, ripple-packed sand that glimmered like theinside of a shell, several of the great birds were making absurd dipsand courtesies toward one another; they spread their wings like flowingdraperies and began to sway with movements of strange dignity. The highsun filmed with silver fog, and along the heated air there crept aneerie feel of noon. 

"When half a dozen of them begin to circle together, " said the SnowyEgret, "turn round and look toward the wood. "

At the right moment the children turned, and between the gray and sombershadows of the cypress they saw her come. All in white she was--whitecloth of the middle bark of mulberries, soft as linen, with a cloak oforiole feathers black and yellow, edged with sables. On her head was theroyal circlet of egret plumes nodding above the yellow circlet of theSun. When she walked, it made them think of the young wind stirring inthe corn. Around her neck she wore, in the fashion of Cofachique, threestrands of pearls reaching to the waist, in which she rested herleft arm. 

"That was how the Spaniards saw her for the first time, and found her solovely that they forgot to ask her name; they called her 'The Lady ofCofachique, ' and swore there was not a lovelier lady in Europe nor onemore a princess. 

"Which might easily be true, " said the Egret, "for she was brought up tobe Cacica in Far-Looking's place, after the death of her sonYoung Pine. "

The Princess smiled on the children as she came down the cypress trail. One of her women, who moved unobtrusively beside her, arranged cushionsof woven cane, and another held a fan of painted skin and feather workbetween her and the sun. A tame egret ruffled her white plumes at thePrincess's shoulder. 

"I was telling them about the pearls of Cofachique, " said the Egret whohad first spoken to the children, "and of how Hernando de Soto came tolook for them. "

"Came and looked, " said the Princess. One of her women brought a casketcarved from a solid lump of cypress, on her knee. Around the sides ofthe casket and on the two ends ran a decoration of woodpeckers' headsand the mingled sign of the sun and the four quarters which the CornWoman had drawn for Dorcas on the dust of the dancing-floor. 

The Princess lifted the lid and ran her fine dark fingers through a heapof gleaming pearls. "There were many mule loads such as these in thegod-house at Talimeco, " she said; "we filled the caskets of our deadCaciques with them. What is gold that he should have left all these forthe mere rumor of it?"

She was sad for a moment and then stern. "Nevertheless, I think my aunt, the Cacica, should have met him. She would have seen that he was a manand would have used men's reasons with him. She made Medicine againsthim as though he were a god, and in the end his medicine was strongerthan ours. "

"If you could tell us about it--" invited Dorcas Jane. 

[Illustration]

XII

HOW THE IRON SHIRTS CAME TO TUSCALOOSA: A TELLING OF THE TRIBUTE ROAD BYTHE LADY OF COFACHIQUE

"There was a bloom on the sea like the bloom on a wild grape when theAdelantado left his winter quarters at Anaica Apalache, " said thePrincess. "He sent Maldonado, his captain, to cruise along the Gulfcoast with the ships, and struck north toward Cofachique. That was inMarch, 1540, and already his men and horses were fewer because ofsickness and skirmishes with the Indians. They had for guide Juan Ortiz, one of Narvaez's men who had been held captive by the Indians theseeight years, and a lad Perico who remembered a trading trip toCofachique. And what he could not remember he invented. He made Sotobelieve there was gold there. Perhaps he was thinking of copper, andperhaps, since the Spaniards had made him their servant, he found itpleasanter to be in an important position. 

"They set out by the old sea trail toward Alta-paha, when the buds atthe ends of the magnolia boughs were turning creamy, and the sandhillcrane could be heard whooping from the lagoons miles inland. First wentthe captains with the Indian guides in chains, for they had a way ofdisappearing in the scrub if not watched carefully, and then the footsoldiers, each with his sixty days' ration on his back. Last of all camea great drove of pigs and dogs of Spain, fierce mastiffs who madenothing of tearing an Indian in pieces, and had to be kept in leash byPedro Moron, who was as keen as a dog himself. He could smell Indians inhiding and wood smoke three leagues away. Many a time when theexpedition was all but lost, he would smell his way to a village. 

"They went north by east looking for gold, and equal to any adventure. At Achese the Indians, who had never heard of white men, were sofrightened that they ran away into the woods and would not come outagain. Think what it meant to them to see strange bearded men, clad iniron shirts, astride of fierce, unknown animals, --for the Indians couldnot help but think that the horses would eat them. They had never heardof iron either. Nevertheless, the Spaniards got some corn there, fromthe high cribs of cane set up on platforms beside the huts. 

"Everywhere Soto told the Caciques that he and his men were the Childrenof the Sun, seeking the highest chief and the richest province, andasked for guides and carriers, which usually he got. You may be sure theIndians were glad to be rid of them so cheaply. 

"The expedition moved toward Ocute, with the bloom of the wild vinesperfuming all the air, and clouds of white butterflies beginning totwinkle in the savannahs. "

"But, " said Dorcas, who had listened very attentively, "I thoughtSavannah was a place. "

"Ever so many places, " said the Princess; "flat miles on miles of slimpines melting into grayness, sunlight sifting through their plumy tops, with gray birds wheeling in flocks, or troops of red-headedwoodpeckers, and underfoot nothing but needles and gray sand. Far aheadon every side the pines draw together, but where one walks they are wideapart, so that one seems always about to approach a forest and neverfinds it. These are the savannahs. 

"Between them along the water-courses are swamps; slow, black water andwide-rooted, gull-gray cypress, flat-topped and all adrip with moss. Andeverywhere a feeling of snakes--wicked water-snakes with yellow rimsaround their eyes. 

"They crossed great rivers, Ockmulgee, Oconee, Ogechee, making a bridgeof men and paddling their way across with the help of saddle cruppersand horses' tails. If the waters were too deep for that, they madepiraguas--dug-out canoes, you know--and rafts of cane. By the time theyhad reached Ocute the Spaniards were so hungry they were glad to eatdogs which the Indians gave them, for there was such a scarcity of meaton all that journey that the sick men would sometimes say, 'If only Ihad a piece of meat I think I would not die!'"

"But where was all the game?" Oliver insisted on knowing. 

"Six hundred men with three hundred horses and a lot of Indian carriers, coming through the woods, make a great deal of noise, " said thePrincess. "The Spaniards never dared to hunt far from the trail for fearof getting lost. There were always lurking Indians ready to drive anarrow through a piece of Milan armor as if it were pasteboard, and intothe body of a horse over the feather of the shaft, so that the Spaniardswondered, seeing the little hole it made, how the horse had died. 

"Day after day the expedition would wind in and out of the trail, bunching up like quail in the open places, and dropping back in singlefile in the canebrake, with the tail of the company so far from the headthat when there was a skirmish with the Indians at either end, it wouldoften be over before the other end could catch up. In this fashion theycame to Cofaque, which is the last province before Cofachique. "

"Oh, " said Dorcas, "and did the Chief Woman see them coming? The one whowas Far-Looking!"

"She saw too much, " said the Egret, tucking her eggs more warmly underher breast. "She saw other comings and all the evil that the White Menwould bring and do. "

"Whatever she saw she did her best to prevent, " said the Princess. "Three things she tried. Two of them failed. There are two trails intothe heart of Cofachique, one from the west from Tuscaloosa, and theother from Cofaque, a very secret trail through swamp and palmettoscrub, full of false clues and blind leads. 

"Far-Looking sat in the god-house at Talimeco, and sent her thoughtalong the trail to turn the strangers back; but what is the thought ofone woman against six hundred men! It reached nobody but the lad Perico, and shook him with a midnight terror, so that he screamed and threwhimself about. The Spaniards came running with book and bell, for thepriest thought the boy was plagued by a devil. But the soldiers thoughtit was all a pretense to save himself from being punished for notknowing the trail to Cofachique. 

"Nobody really knew it, because the Cofachiquans, who were at war withCofaque, had hidden it as a fox covers the trail to her lair. But afterbeating about among the sloughs and swamps like a rabbit in a net, andbeing reduced to a ration of eighteen grains of corn, the Spaniards cameto the river about a day's journey above the place where Lucas deAyllon's men had died. They caught a few stray Indians, who allowedthemselves to be burnt rather than show the way to their towns, --for sothe Cacica had ordered them, --and at last the expedition came to avillage where there was corn. "

"But I shouldn't think the Indians would give it to them, " said Dorcas. 

"Indians never refuse food, if they have it, even to their enemies, "said the Princess. 

The children could see that this part of the story was not pleasantremembering for the Lady of Cofachique. She pushed the pearls away asthough they wearied her, and her women came crowding at her shoulderwith soft, commiserating noises like doves. They were beautiful andyoung like her, and wore the white dress of Cofachique, a skirt ofmulberry fiber and an upper garment that went over the left shoulder andleft the right arm bare except for the looped bracelets of shell andpearl. Their long hair lay sleek across their bosoms and, to show thatthey were privileged to wait upon the Chief Woman, they had each asingle egret's plume in the painted bandeau about her forehead. 

"Far-Looking was both aunt and chief to me, " said the Princess; "it wasnot for me to question what she did. Our country had been long at warwith Cofaque, at cost of men and corn. And Soto, as he came through thatcountry, picked up their War Leader Patofa, and the best of theirfighting men, for they had persuaded him that only by force would he getanything from the Cacica of Cofachique. The truth was that it was onlyby trusting to the magic of the white men that Patofa could get to us. The Adelantado allowed him to pillage such towns as they found before hethought better of it and sent Patofa and his men back to Cofaque, but bythat time the thing had happened which made the Cacica's second planimpossible. Our fighting men had seen what the Spaniards could do, and Ihad seen what they could be. "

Proudly as she said it, the children could see, by the way the Princessfrowned to herself and drummed with her fingers on the cypress wood, that the old puzzle of the strangers who were neither gods nor menworked still in her mind. 

"The Cacica's first plan, " she went on, "which had been to lose them inthe swamps and savannahs, had failed. Her second was to receive themkindly and then serve them as she had served Ayllon. 

"They made their camp at last across the river from Talimeco, and I withmy women went out to meet them as a great Cacique should be met, in acanoe with an awning, with fan-bearers and flutes and drums. I saw thatI pleased him, " said the Princess. "I gave him the pearls from my neck, and had from him a ring from his finger set with a red stone. He was ahandsome and a gallant gentleman, knowing what was proper towardPrincesses. "

"And all this time you were planning to kill him?" said Dorcas, shocked. 

The Princess shook her head. 

"Not I, but the Cacica. She told me nothing. Talimeco was a White Town;how should I know that she planned killing in it. She sat in the Placeof the Silences working her mischief and trusted me to keep theSpaniards charmed and unsuspicious. How should I know what she meant? Iam chief woman of Cofachique, but I am not far-looking. 

"I showed the Adelantado the god-house with its dead Caciques allstuffed with pearls, and the warrior-house where the arms of Ayllon werelaid up for a trophy. It would have been well for him to be contentedwith these things. I have heard him say they would have been a fortunein his own country, but he was bitten with the love of gold and mad withit as if a water moccasin had set its fangs in him. I had no gold, and Icould not help him to get Far-Looking into his power. 

"That was his plan always, to make the chief person of every city hishostage for the safety of his men. I would have helped him if I could, "the Princess admitted, "for I thought him glorious, but the truth was, Idid not know. 

"There was a lad, Islay, brought up with me in the house of my aunt, theCacica, who went back and forth to her with messages to the Place of theSilences, and him I drove by my anger to lead the Spaniards that way. But as he went he feared her anger coming to meet him more than hefeared mine that waited him at home. One day while the Spanish soldierswho were with him admired the arrows which he showed them in his quiver, so beautifully made, he plunged the sharpest of them into his throat. Hewas a poor thing, " said the Princess proudly, "since he loved neither menor my aunt enough to serve one of us against the other. We succeededonly in serving Soto, for now there was no one to carry word for theCacica to the men who were to fall upon the Spaniards and destroy themas they had destroyed Ayllon. 

"Perhaps, " said the Princess, "if she had told me her plan and herreason for it, things would have turned out differently. At any rate, she need not have become, as she did finally, my worst enemy, and diedfighting me. At that time she was as mother and chief to me, and I couldnever have wished her so much bitterness as she must have felt sittingunvisited in the Place of the Silences, while I took the Adelantadopearling, and the fighting men, who should have fallen upon him at herword, danced for his entertainment. 

"She had to come out at last to find what had happened to Islay, forwhose death she blamed me, and back she went without a word to me, likea hot spider to spin a stronger web. This time she appealed toTuscaloosa. They were of one mind in many things, and between them theykept all the small tribes in tribute. 

"It was about the time of the year when they should be coming with italong the Tribute Road, and the Cacica sent them word that if they couldmake the Spaniards believe that there was gold in their hills, she wouldremit the tribute for one year. There was not much for them to do, forthere were hatchets and knives in the tribute, made of copper, in whichSoto thought he discovered gold. It may be so: once he had suspected it, I could not keep him any longer at Talimeco. The day that he set outthere went another expedition secretly from the Cacica to Tuscaloosa. 'These men, ' said the message, 'must be fought by men. ' And Tuscaloosasmiled as he heard it, for it was the first time that the Cacica hadadmitted there was anything that could not be done by a woman. But atthat she had done her cleverest thing, because, though they werefriends, the Black Warrior wanted nothing so much as an opportunity toprove that he was the better warrior. 

"It was lovely summer weather, " said the Princess, "as the Spaniardspassed through the length of Cofachique; the mulberry trees weredripping with ripe fruit, the young corn was growing tall, and theIndians were friendly. They passed over the Blue Ridge where it breakssouth into woody hills. Glossy leaves of the live-oak made the forestspaces vague with shadows; bright birds like flame hopped in and out andhid in the hanging moss, whistling clearly; groves of pecans and walnutsalong the river hung ropy with long streamers of the purple muscadines. 

"You have heard, " said the Lady of Cofachique, hesitating for the firsttime in her story, and yet looking so much the Princess that thechildren would never have dared think anything displeasing to her, "thatI went a part of the way with the Adelantado on the Tribute Road?" Herlovely face cleared a little as they shook their heads. 

"It is not true, " she said, "that I went for any reason but my own wishto learn as much as possible of the wisdom of the white men and to keepmy own people safe in the towns they passed through. I had my own womenabout me, and my own warriors ran in the woods on either side, andshowed themselves to me in the places where the expedition halted, unsuspected by Soto. It was as much as any Spaniard could do to tell onehalf-naked Indian from another. 

"The pearls, too, "--she touched the casket with her foot, --"the finestthat Soto had selected from the god-house, I kept by me. I never meantto let them go, though there were some of them I gave to a soldier . .. There were slaves, too, of Soto's who found the free life of Cofachiquemore to their liking than the fruitless search for gold. .. . "

"She means, " said the Snowy Egret, seeing that the Princess did notintend to say any more on that point, "that she gave them for bribes toone of Soto's men, a great bag full, though there came a day when heneeded the bag more than the pearls and he left them scattered on thefloor of the forest. It was about the slaves who went with her when shegave Soto the slip in the deep woods, that she quarreled afterward withthe old Cacica. "

"At the western border of Cofachique, which is the beginning ofTuscaloosa's land, " went on the Princess, "I came away with my women andmy pearls; we walked in the thick woods and we were gone. Where can awhite man look that an Indian cannot hide from him? It is true that Iknew by this time that the Cacica had sent to Tuscaloosa, but what wasthat to me? The Adelantado had left of his own free will, and I was notthen Chief Woman of Cofachique. At the first of the Tuscaloosa towns theBlack Warrior awaited them. He sat on the piazza of his house on theprincipal mound. He sat as still as the Cacica in the Place of Silences, a great turban stiff with pearls upon his head, and over him thestandard of Tuscaloosa like a great round fan on a slender stem, of finefeather-work laid on deerskin. While the Spaniards wheeled and racedtheir horses in front of him, trying to make an impression, Soto couldnot get so much as the flick of an eyelash out of the Black Warrior. Gentleman of Spain as he was and the King's own representative, he hadto dismount at last and conduct himself humbly. 

"The Adelantado asked for obedience to his King, which Tuscaloosa saidhe was more used to getting than giving. When Soto wished for food andcarriers, Tuscaloosa gave him part, and, dissembling, said the rest wereat his capital of Mobila. Against the advice of his men Soto consentedto go there with him. 

"It was a strong city set with a stockade of tree-trunks driven into theground, where they rooted and sent up great trees in which wild pigeonsroosted. It was they that had seen the runners of Cofachique come inwith the message from Far-Looking. All the wood knew, and the Indiansknew, but not the Spaniards. Some of them suspected. They saw that thebrush had been cut from the ground outside the stockade, as iffor battle. 

"One of them took a turn through the town and met not an old man nor anychildren. There were dancing women, but no others. This is the custom ofthe Indians when they are about to fight, --they hide their families. 

"Soto was weary of the ground, " said the Princess. "This we were told bythe carriers who escaped and came back to Cofachique. He wished to siton a cushion and sleep in a bed again. He came riding into the town withthe Cacique on a horse as a token of honor, though Tuscaloosa was sotall that they had trouble finding a horse that could keep his feet fromthe ground, and it must have been as pleasant for him as riding a lionor a tiger. But he was a great chief, and if the Spaniards were notafraid to ride neither would he seem to be. So they came to theprincipal house, which was on a mound. All the houses were of twostories, of which the upper was open on the sides, and used forsleeping. Soto sat with Tuscaloosa in the piazza and feasted; dancinggirls came out in the town square with flute-players, and danced forthe guard. 

"But one of Soto's men, more wary than the rest, walked about, and sawthat the towers of the wall were full of fighting men. He saw Indianshiding arrows behind palm branches. 

"Back he went to the house where Soto was, to warn him, but already thetrouble had begun. Tuscaloosa, making an excuse, had withdrawn into thehouse, and when Soto wished to speak to him sent back a haughty answer. Soto would have soothed him, but one of Soto's men, made angry with theinsolence of the Indian who had brought the Cacique's answer, seized theman by his cloak, and when the Indian stepped quickly out of it, answered as quickly with his sword. Suddenly, out of the dark houses, came a shower of arrows. "

"It was the plan of the Cacica of Cofachique, " explained the Egret. "Themen of Mobila had meant to fall on the Spaniards while they were eating, but because of the Spanish gentleman's bad temper, the battle begantoo soon. "

"It was the only plan of hers that did not utterly fail, " said thePrincess, "for with all her far-looking she could not see into theAdelantado's heart. Soto and his guard ran out of the town, every onewith, an arrow sticking in him, to join themselves to the rest of theexpedition which had just come up. Like wasps out of a nest the Indianspoured after them. They caught the Indian carriers, who were just easingtheir loads under the walls. With every pack and basket that theSpaniards had, they carried them back into the town, and the gates ofthe stockade were swung to after them. "

"All night, " said the Egret, "the birds were scared from their roost bythe noise of the battle. Several of the horses were caught inside thestockade; these the Indians killed quickly. The sound of their dyingneighs was heard at all the rookeries along the river. "

"The wild tribes heard of it, and brought us word, " said the Princess. "Soto attacked and pretended to withdraw. Out came the Indians afterhim. The Spaniards wheeled again and did terrible slaughter. They cameat the stockade with axes; they fired the towers. The houses were all ofdry cane and fine mats of cane for walls; they flashed up in smoke andflame. Many of the Indians threw themselves into the flames rather thanbe taken. At the last there were left three men and the dancing women. The women came into the open by the light of the burning town, withtheir hands crossed before them. They stood close and hid the men withtheir skirts, until the Spaniards came up, and then parted. So the lastmen of Mobila took their last shots and died fighting. "

"Is that the end?" said Oliver, seeing the Princess gather up her pearlsand the Egret preparing to tuck her bill under her wing. He did not feelvery cheerful over it. 

"It was the end of Mobila and the true end of the expedition, " said thePrincess. Rising she beckoned to her women. She had lost all interest ina story which had no more to do with Cofachique. 

"Both sides lost, " said the Egret, "and that was the sad part of it. Allthe Indians were killed; even the young son of Tuscaloosa was found witha spear sticking in him. Of the Spaniards but eighteen died, though fewescaped unwounded. But they lost everything they had, food, medicines, tools, everything but the sword in hand and the clothes they stood in. And while they lay on the bare ground recovering from their wounds cameJuan Ortiz, who had been sent seaward for that purpose, with word thatMaldonado lay with the ships off the bay of Mobila, --that's Mobile, youknow, --not six days distant, to carry them back to Havana. 

"And how could Soto go back defeated? No gold, no pearls, no conquests, not so much as a map, even, --only rags and wounds and a sore heart. Inspite of everything he was both brave and gallant, and he knew his dutyto the King of Spain. He could not go back with so poor a report of thecountry to which he had been sent to establish the fame and might of HisMajesty. Forbidding Juan Ortiz to tell the men about the ships, withonly two days' food and no baggage, he turned away from the coast, fromhis home and his wife and safe living, toward the Mississippi. He had nohope in his heart, I think, but plenty of courage. And if you like, "said the Egret, "another day we will tell you how he died there. "

"Oh, no, please, " said Dorcas, "it is so very sad; and, besides, " sheadded, remembering the picture of Soto's body being lowered at nightinto the dark water, "it is in the School History. "

"In any case, " said the Egret, "he was a brave and gallant gentleman, kind to his men and no more cruel to the Indians than they were to oneanother. There was only one of the gentlemen of Spain who never had_any_ unkindness to his discredit. That was Cabeza de Vaca; he was oneof Narvaez's men, and the one from whom Soto first heard ofFlorida, --but that is also a sad story. "

Neither of the children said anything. The Princess and her women lostthemselves in the shadowy wood. The gleam here and there of their whitedresses was like the wing of tall white birds. The sun sailing towardnoon had burnt the color out of the sky into the deep water which couldbe seen cradling fresh and blue beyond the islets. One by one thepelicans swung seaward, beating their broad wings all in time like thestroke of rowers, going to fish in the clean tides outside ofthe lagoons. 

The nests of the flamingoes lay open to the sun except where here andthere dozed a brooding mother. 

"Don't you know any not-sad stories?" asked Dorcas, as the Egret showedsigns again of tucking her head under her wing. 

"Not about the Iron Shirts, " said the Egret. "Spanish or Portuguese orEnglish; it was always an unhappy ending for the Indians. "

"Oh, " said Dorcas, disappointed; and then she reflected, "If they hadn'tcome, though, I don't suppose we would be here either. "

"I'll tell you, " said the Man-of-War Bird, who was a great traveler, "they didn't all land on this coast. Some of them landed in Mexico andmarched north into your country. I've heard things from gulls at Panuco. You don't know what the land birds might be able to tell you. "

[Illustration]

XIII

HOW THE IRON SHIRTS CAME LOOKING FOR THE SEVEN CITIES OF CIBOLA; TOLD BYTHE ROAD-RUNNER

From Cay Verde in the Bahamas to the desert of New Mexico, by the Museumtrail, is around a corner and past two windows that look out upon thewest. As the children stood waiting for the Road-Runner to notice them, they found the view not very different from the one they had just left. Unending, level sands ran into waves, and strange shapes of rocks loomedthrough the desert blueness like steep-shored islands. It was vast andterrifying like the sea, and yet a very pleasant furred and featheredlife appeared to be going on there between the round-headed cactus, withits cruel fishhook thorns, and the warning, blood-red blossoms thatdripped from the ocatilla. Little frisk-tailed things ran up and downthe spiney shrubs, and a woodpecker, who had made his nest in its pithystalk, peered at them from a tall _sahuaro_. 

The Road-Runner tilted his long rudder-like tail, flattened his crestedhead until it reminded them of a wicked snake, and suddenly made up hismind to be friendly. 

"Come inside and get your head in the shade, " he invited. "There's noharm in the desert sun so long as you keep something between it and yourhead. I've known Indians to get along for days with only the shade oftheir arrows. "

The children snuggled under the feathery shadow of the mesquite besidehim. 

"We're looking for the trail of the Iron Shirts, " said Oliver. "AlvarNuñez Cabeza de Vaca, " added Dorcas Jane, who always remembered names. The Road-Runner ducked once or twice by way of refreshing his memory. 

"There was a black man with him, and they went about as Medicine Men tothe Indians who believed in them, and at the same time treated them verybadly. But that was nearly four hundred years ago, and they never cameinto this part of the country, only into Texas. And they hadn't any ironshirts either, scarcely anything to put either on their backs or intotheir stomachs. "

"Nevertheless, " quavered a voice almost under Oliver's elbow, "theybrought the iron shirts, and the long-tailed elk whose hooves are alwaysstumbling among our burrows. "

The children had to look close to make out the speckled fluff offeathers hunched at the door of its _hogan_. 

"Meet my friend Thla-po-po-ke-a, " said the Road-Runner, who had pickedup his manners from miners and cowboys as well as from Spanishexplorers. 

The Burrowing Owl bobbed in her own hurried fashion. "Often and often, "she insisted with a whispering _whoo-oo_ running through all thesentences, "I've heard the soldiers say that it was Cabeza de Vaca putit into the head of the King of Spain to send Francisco Coronado to lookfor the Seven Cities. In my position one hears the best of everything, "went on Po-po-ke-a. "That is because all the important things happennext to the ground. Men are born and die on the ground, they spreadtheir maps, they dream dreams. "

The children could see how this would be in a country where there wasnever a house or a tree and scarcely anything that grew more thanknee-high to a man. The long sand-swells, and the shimmer of heat-wavesin the air looked even more like the sea now that they were level withit. Off to the right what seemed a vast sheet of water spread out likequicksilver on the plain; it moved with a crawling motion, and a coyotethat trotted across their line of vision seemed to swim in it, his headjust showing above the slight billows. 

"It's only mirage, " said the Road-Runner; "even Indians are fooled by itif they are strange to the country. But it is quite true about theground being the place to hear things. All day the Iron Shirts wouldride in a kind of doze of sun and weariness. But when they sat at meals, loosening their armor buckles, then there would be news. We used to runwith it from one camp to another--I can run faster than a horse canwalk--until the whole mesa would hear of it. "

"But the night is the time for true talking, " insisted Po-po-ke-a. "Itwas then we heard that when Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain he made onereport of his wanderings to the public, and a secret report to the King. Also that the Captain-General asked to be sent on that expeditionbecause he had married a young wife who needed much gold. "

"At that time we had not heard of gold, " said the Road-Runner; "theSpaniards talked so much of it we thought it must be something good toeat, but it turned out to be only yellow stones. But it was not allCabeza de Vaca's doing. There was another story by an Indian, Tejo, whotold the Governor of Mexico that he remembered going with his father totrade in the Seven Cities, which were as large as the City of Mexico, with whole streets of silver workers, and blue turquoises overthe doors. "

"If there is a story about it--" began Oliver, looking from one to theother invitingly, and catching them looking at each other in thesame fashion. 

"Brother, there is a tail to you, " said the Burrowing Owl quickly, whichseemed to the children an unnecessary remark, since the Road-Runner'slong, trim tail was the most conspicuous thing about him. It tipped andtilted and waggled almost like a dog's, and answered every purpose ofconversation. 

Now he ducked forward on both legs in an absurd way he had. "To you, mysister--" which is the polite method of story asking in that part ofthe country. 

"My word bag is as empty as my stomach, " said Po-po-ke-a, who had eatennothing since the night before and would not eat until night again. "_Sons eso_--to your story. "

"_Sons eso, tse-ná_, " said the Road-Runner, and began. 

"First, " he said, "to Hawikuh, a city of the Zuñis, came Estevan, theblack man who had been with Cabeza de Vaca, with a rattle in his handand very black behavior. Him the Indians killed, and the priest who waswith him they frightened away. Then came Coronado, with an army fromMexico, riding up the west coast and turning east from the River of theBrand, the one that is now called Colorado, which is no name at all, forall the rivers hereabout run red after rain. They were a good company ofmen and captains, and many of those long-tailed elk, --which are calledhorses, sister, " said the Road-Runner aside to Po-po-ke-a, --"and theIndians were not pleased to see them. "

"That was because there had been a long-tailed star seen overTo-ya-lanne, the sacred mountain, some years before, one of the kindthat is called Trouble-Bringer. They thought of it when they looked atthe long tails of the new-fashioned elk, " said Po-po-ke-a, who had notliked being set right about the horses. 

"In any case, " went on the Road-Runner, "there was trouble. Hawikuh wasone of these little crowded pueblos, looking as if it had been crumpledtogether and thrown away, and though there were turquoises over thedoors, they were poor ones, and there was no gold. And as Hawikuh, sothey found all the cities of Cibola, and the cities of the Queres, eastto the River of White Rocks. "

Dorcas Jane nudged Oliver to remind him of the Corn Woman andTse-tse-yote. All the stories of that country, like the trails, seemedto run into one another. 

"Terrible things happened around Tiguex and at Cicuye, which is nowPecos, " said the Road-Runner, "for the Spaniards were furious at findingno gold, and the poor Indians could never make up their minds whetherthese were gods to be worshiped, or a strange people coming to conquerthem, who must be fought. They were not sure whether the iron shirtswere to be dreaded as magic, or coveted as something they could usethemselves. As for the horses, they both feared and hated them. Butthere was one man who made up his mind very quickly. 

"He was neither Queres nor Zuñi, but a plainsman, a captive of theirwars. He was taller than our men, leaner and sharp-looking. His god wasthe Morning Star. He made sacrifices to it. The Spaniards called him theTurk, saying he looked like one. We did not know what that meant, for wehad only heard of turkeys which the Queres raised for their feathers, and he was not in the least like one of these. But he knew that theSpaniards were men, and was almost a match for them. He had theInknowing Thought. "

The Road-Runner cocked his head on one side and observed the children, to see if they knew what this meant. 

"Is it anything like far-looking?" asked Dorcas. 

"It is something none of my people ever had, " said the Road-Runner. "TheIndian who was called the Turk could look in a bowl of water in the sun, or in the water of the Stone Pond, and he could see things that happenedat a distance, or in times past. He proved to the Spaniards that hecould do this, but their priests said it was the Devil and would havenothing to do with it, which was a great pity. He could have saved thema great deal. "

"_Hoo, hoo_!" said the Burrowing Owl; "he could not even save himself;and none of the things he told to the Spaniards were true. "

"He was not thinking for himself, " said the Road-Runner, "but for hispeople. The longer he was away from them the more he thought, and histhoughts were good, even though he did not tell the truth to the IronShirts. They, at least, did not deserve it. For when the people of Zuñiand Cicuye and Tiguex would not tell them where the sacred gold was hid, there were terrible things done. That winter when the days were cold, the food was low and the soldiers fretful. Many an Indian kept thesecret with his life. "

"Did the Indians really know where the gold was?" The children knewthat, according to the geographies, there are both gold and silver inNew Mexico. 

"Some of them did, but gold was sacred to them. They called it the stoneof the Sun, which they worshiped, and the places where it was found wereholy and secret. They let themselves be burned rather than tell. Besides, they thought that if the Spaniards were convinced there was nogold, they would go away the sooner. One thing they were sure of: godsor men, it would be better for the people of the pueblos if they wentaway. Day and night the _tombes_ would be sounding in the kivas, andprayer plumes planted in all the sacred places. Then it was that theTurk went to the Caciques sitting in council. 

"'If the strangers should hear that there is gold in my country, thereis nothing would keep them from going there. '

"'That is so, ' said the Caciques. 

"'And if they went to my country, ' said the Turk, 'who but I could guidethem?'

"'And how long, ' said the Caciques, 'do you think a guide would liveafter they discovered that he had lied?' For they knew very well therewas no gold in the Turk's country. 

"'I should at least have seen my own land, ' said the Turk, 'and here Iam a slave to you. '

"The Caciques considered. Said they, 'It is nothing to us where and howyou die. '

"So the Turk caused himself to be taken prisoner by the Spaniards, andtalked among them, until it was finally brought to the Captain-General'sears that in the Turk's country of Quivira, the people ate off plates ofgold, and the Chief of that country took his afternoon nap under a treehung with golden bells that rung him to sleep. Also that there was ariver there, two leagues wide, and that the boats carried twenty rowersto a side with the Chief under the awning. " "That at least was true, "said the Burrowing Owl; "there were towns on the Missi-sippu where theChiefs sat in balconies on high mounds and the women fanned them withgreat fans. "

"Not in Quivira, which the Turk claimed for his own country. But it allworked together, for when the Spaniards learned that the one thing wastrue, they were the more ready to believe the other. It was always easyto get them to believe any tale which had gold in it. They were so eagerto set out for Quivira that they could scarcely be persuaded to takefood enough, saying they would have all the more room on their horsesfor the gold. 

"They forded the Rio Grande near Tiguex, traveled east to Cicuye on thePecos River, and turned south looking for the Turk's country, which isnot in that direction. "

"But why--" began Oliver. 

"Look!" said the Road-Runner. 

The children saw the plains of Texas stretching under the heat haze, stark sand in wind-blown dunes, tall stakes of _sahuaro_ marching wideapart, hot, trackless sand in which a horse's foot sinks to the fetlock, and here and there raw gashes in the earth for rivers that did not run, except now and then in fierce and ungovernable floods. Northward theplains passed out of sight in trackless, grass-covered prairies, day'sjourney upon day's journey. 

"It was the Caciques' idea that the Turk was to lose the strangersthere, or to weaken them beyond resistance by thirst and hunger andhostile tribes. But the buffalo had come south that winter for the earlygrass. They were so thick they looked like trees walking, to theSpaniards as they lay on the ground and saw the sky between their hugebodies and the flat plain. And the wandering bands of Querechos that theExpedition met proved friendly. They were the same who had known Cabezade Vaca, and they had a high opinion of white men. They gave theSpaniards food and proved to them that it was much farther to the citiesof the Missisippu than the Turk had said. 

"By that time Coronado had himself begun to suspect that he should neverfind the golden bells of Quivira, but with the King and Doña Beatrisbehind him, there was nothing for him to do but go forward. He sent thearmy back to Tiguex, and, with thirty men and all the best horses, turned north in as straight a track as the land permitted, to the Turk'scountry. And all that journey he kept the Turk in chains. 

"Even though he had not succeeded in getting rid of the Iron Shirts, theTurk was not so disappointed as he might have been. The Caciques did notknow it, but killing the strangers or losing them had been only a partof his plan. 

"All that winter at Tiguex the Turk had seen the horses die, or growsick and well again; some of them had had colts, and he had come to theconclusion that they were simply animals like elk or deer, onlymore useful. 

"The Turk was a Pawnee, one of those roving bands that build grasshouses and follow the buffalo for food. They ran the herds into a_piskune_ below a bluff, over which they rushed and were killed. Sometimes the hunters themselves were caught in the rush and trampled. It came into the Turk's mind, as he watched the Spaniards going to hunton horseback, that the Morning Star, to whom he made sacrifices for hisreturn from captivity, had sent him into Zuñi to learn about horses, andtake them back to his people. Whatever happened to the Iron Shirts onthat journey, he had not meant to lose the horses. Even though suspectedand in chains he might still do a great service to his people. 

"When the Querechos were driving buffalo, some of the horses were caughtup in the 'surround, ' carried away with the rush of the stampeding herd, and never recovered. Others that broke away in a terrible hailstormsucceeded in getting out of the ravine where the army had taken shelter, and no one noticed that it was always at the point where the Turk washelping to herd them, that the horses escaped. Even after he was put inchains and kept under the General's eye on the way to Quivira, now andthen there would be a horse, usually a mare with a colt, who slipped herstake-rope. Little gray coyotes came in the night and gnawed them. Butcoyotes will not gnaw a rope unless it has been well rubbed with buffalofat, " said the Road-Runner. 

"I should have thought the Spaniards would have caught him at it, " saidOliver. 

"White men, when they are thinking of gold, " said the Road-Runner, "areparticularly stupid about other things. There was a man of the Wichitas, a painted Indian called Ysopete, who told them from the beginning thatthe Turk lied about the gold. But the Spaniards preferred to believethat the Indians were trying to keep the gold for themselves. They didnot see that the Turk was losing their horses one by one; no more didthey see, as they neared Quivira, that every day he called his people. 

"There are many things an Indian can do and a white man not catch him atit. The Turk would sit and feed the fire at evening, now a bundle of drybrush and then a handful of wet grass, smoke and smudge, such as huntersuse to signal the movements of the quarry. He would stand listening tothe captains scold him, and push small stones together with his foot fora sign. He could slip in the trail and break twigs so that Pawnees couldread. When strange Indians were brought into camp, though he could onlyspeak to them in the language of signs, he asked for a Pawnee calledRunning Elk, who had been his friend before he was carried captive intoZuñi Land. They had mingled their blood after the custom of friendshipand were more than brothers to one another. And though the Iron Shirtslooked at him with more suspicion every day, he was almost happy. Hesmelled sweet-grass and the dust of his own country, and spoke face toface with the Morning Star. 

"I do not understand about stars, " said the Road-Runner. "It seems thatsome of them travel about and do not look the same from differentplaces. In Zuñi Land where there are mountains, the Turk was not alwayssure of his god, but in the Pawnee country it is easily seen that he isthe Captain of the Sky. You can lie on the ground there and lose sightof the earth altogether. Mornings the Turk would look up from his chainsto see his Star, white against the rosy stain, and was comforted. It wasthe Star, I suppose, that brought him his friend. 

"For four or five days after Running Elk discovered that the Turk wascaptive to the Iron Shirts, he would lurk in the tall grass and theriver growth, making smoke signals. Like a coyote he would call atnight, and though the Turk heard him, he dared not answer. Finally hehit upon the idea of making songs. He would sing and nobody couldunderstand him but Running Elk, who lay in the grass, and finally hadcourage to come into the camp in broad day, selling buffalo meat andwild plums. 

"There was a bay mare with twin colts that the Turk wished him to loosefrom her rope and drive away, but Running Elk was afraid. Cold morningsthe Indian could see the smoke of the horses' nostrils and thought thatthey breathed fire. But the Turk made his friend believe at last thatthe horse is a great gift to man, by the same means that he had made theSpaniards think him evil, by the In-knowing Thought. 

"'It is as true, ' said the Turk, 'that the horse is only another sort ofelk, as that my wife is married again and my son died fighting theHo-he. ' All of which was exactly as it had happened, for his wife hadnever expected that he would come back from captivity. 'It is alsotrue, ' the Turk told him, 'that very soon I shall join my son. '

"For he was sure by this time that when the Spaniards had to give up thehope of gold, they would kill him. He told Running Elk all the care ofhorses as he had learned it, and where he thought those that had beenlost from Coronado's band might be found. Of the Iron Shirts, he saidthat they were great Medicine, and the Pawnees were by all means to getone or two of them. 

"By this time the Expedition had reached the country of the Wichitas, which is Quivira, and there was no gold, no metal of any sort but acopper gorget around the Chief's neck, and a few armbands. The nightthat Coronada bought the Chief's gorget to send to his king, as proofthat he had found no gold, Running Elk heard the Turk singing. It was nosong of secret meaning; it was his own song, such as a man makes to singwhen he sees his death facing him. 

"All that night the Turk waited in his chains for the rising of hisStar. There was something about which he must talk to it. He had made agift of the horse to his people, but there was no sacrifice to wash awayall that was evil in the giving and make it wholly blessed. All nightthe creatures of the earth heard the Turk whisper at his praying, askingfor a sacrifice. 

"And when the Star flared white before the morning, a voice was in theair saying that he himself was to be the sacrifice. It was the voice ofthe Morning Star walking between the hills, and the Turk was happy. Thedoves by the water-courses heard him with the first flush of the dawnwaking the Expedition with his death song. Loudly the Spaniards swore athim, but he sang on steadily till they came to take him before theGeneral, whose custom it was to settle all complaints the first thing inthe morning. The soldiers thought that since it was evident the Turk hadpurposely misled them about the gold and other things, he ought to diefor it. The General was in a bad humor. One of his best mares with hercolts had frayed her stake-rope on a stone that night and escaped. Nevertheless, being a just man, he asked the Turk if he had anything tosay. Upon which the Turk told them all that the Caciques had said, andwhat he himself had done, all except about the horses, and especiallyabout the bay mare and Running Elk. About that he was silent. He kepthis eyes upon the Star, where it burned white on the horizon. It was atits last wink, paling before the sun, when they killed him. "

The children drew a long breath that could hardly be distinguished fromthe soft whispering _whoo-hoo_ of the Burrowing Owl. 

"So in spite of his in-knowing he could not save himself, " Dorcas Janeinsisted, "and his Star could not save him. If he had looked in theearth instead of the heavens he would have found gold and the Spaniardswould have given him all the horses he wanted. "

"You forget, " said the Road-Runner, "that he knew no more than the IronShirts did, where the gold was to be found. There were not more than twoor three in any one of the Seven Cities that ever knew. Ho-tai ofMatsaki was the last of those, and his own wife let him be killed ratherthan betray the secret of the Holy Places. "

"Oh, if you please--" began the children. 

"It is a town story, " said the Road-Runner, "but the Condor that has hisnest on El Morro, he might tell you. He was captive once in a cage atZuñi. " The Road-Runner balanced on his slender legs and cocked his headtrailwise. Any kind of inactivity bored him dreadfully. The burrowingowls were all out at the doors of their _hogans_, their heads turningwith lightning swiftness from side to side; the shadows were long in thelow sun. "It is directly in the trail from the Rio Grande to Acoma, theold trail to Zuñi, " said the Road-Runner, and without waiting to seewhether or not the children followed him, he set off. 

[Illustration]

XIV

HOW THE MAN OF TWO HEARTS KEPT THE SECRET OF THE HOLY PLACES; TOLD BYTHE CONDOR

"In the days of our Ancients, " said the Road-Runner between shortskimming runs, "this was the only trail from the river to the Middle AntHill of the World. The eastern end of it changed like the tip of a wildgourd vine as the towns moved up and down the river or the Querescrossed from Katzimo to the rock of Acoma; but always Zuñi was the root, and the end of the first day's journey was the Rock. "

Each time he took his runs afresh, like a kicking stick in a race, andwaited for the children to catch up. The sands as they went changed fromgray to gleaming pearl; on either side great islands of stone thinnedand swelled like sails and took on rosy lights and lilac shadows. 

They crossed a high plateau with somber cones of extinct volcanoes, crowding between rivers of block rock along its rim. Northward awilderness of pines guarded the mesa; dark junipers, each one with asecret look, browsed wide apart. They thickened in the cañons from whicharose the white bastions of the Rock. 

Closer up, El Morro showed as the wedge-shaped end of a high mesa, soaring into cliffs and pinnacles, on the very tip of which they couldjust make out the hunched figure of the great Condor. 

"El Morro, 'the Castle, ' the Spaniards called it, " said the Road-Runner, casting himself along the laps of the trail like a feathered dart. "Butto our Ancients it was always 'The Rock. ' On winter journeys they campedon the south side to get the sun, and in summers they took the shade onthe north. They carved names and messages for those that were to comeafter, with flint knives, with swords and Spanish daggers. Men are allvery much alike, " said the Road-Runner. 

On the smooth sandstone cliffs the children could make out strange, weathered picture-writings, and twisty inscriptions in much abbreviatedSpanish which they could not read. 

The white sand at the foot of the Rock was strewn with flakes ofcharcoal from the fires of ancient camps. A little to the south of thecliff, that towered two hundred feet and more above them, shallowfootholds were cut into the sandstone. 

"There were pueblos at the top in the old days, " said the Road-Runner, "facing across a deep divide, but nobody goes there now except owls thathave their nests in the ruins, and the last of the Condors, who sinceold time have made their home in the pinnacles of the Rock. He'll haveseen us coming. " The children looked up as a sailing shadow began tocircle about them on the evening-colored sands. "You can see by thefrayed edges of his wing feathers that he has a long time forremembering, " said the Road-Runner. 

The great bird came slowly to earth, close by the lone pine thattasseled out against the south side of El Morro and the Road-Runnerducked several times politely. 

"My children, how is it with you these days?" asked the Condor withgreat dignity. 

"Happy, happy, Grandfather. And you?"

The Condor assured them that he was very happy, and seeing that no onemade any other remark, he added, after an interval, looking pointedly atthe children, "It is not thinking of nothing that strangers come to thehouse of a stranger. "

"True, Grandfather, " said the Road-Runner; "we are thinking of the gold, the seed of the Sun, that the Spaniards did not find. Is there left toyou any of the remembrance of these things?"

"_Hai, hai_!" The Condor stretched his broad wings and settled himselfcomfortably on a nubbin of sandstone. "Of which of these who passed willyou hear?" He indicated the inscriptions on the rock, and then by way ofexplanation he said to the children, "I am town-hatched myself. Lads ofZuñi took my egg and hatched it under a turkey hen, at the Ant Hill. They kept my wings clipped, but once they forgot, so I came away to theancient home of my people. But in the days of my captivity I learnedmany tales and the best manner of telling them. Also the Tellings of myown people who kept the Rock. They fit into one another like the arrowpoint to the shaft. Look!"--he pointed to an inscription protected by alittle brow of sandstone, near the lone pine. "Juan de Oñate did thatwhen he passed to the discovery of the Sea of the South. He it was whobuilt the towns, even the chief town of Santa Fé. 

"There signed with his sword, Vargas, who reconquered the pueblos afterthe rebellion--yes, they rebelled again and again. On the other side ofthe Rock you can read how Governor Nieto carried the faith to them. Theycame and went, the Iron Shirts, through two hundred years. You can seethe marks of their iron hats on some of the rafters of Zuñi town to thisday, but small was the mark they left on the hearts of the Zuñis. "

"Is that so!" said the Road-Runner, which is a polite way of saying thatyou think the story worth going on with; and then cocking his eye at theinscription, he hinted, "I have heard that the Long Gowns, the Padreswho came with them, were master-workers in hearts. "

"It is so, " said the Condor. "I remember the first of them who managedto build a church here, Padre Francisco Letrado. Here!" He drew theirattention to an inscription almost weathered away, and looking more likethe native picture-writings than the signature of a Spanish gentleman. He read:--

"They passed on the 23d of March of 1832 years to the avenging of thedeath of Father Letrado. " It was signed simply "Lujan. "

"There is a Telling of that passing and of that soldier which has to dowith the gold that was never found. "

_"Sons eso, "_ said the Road-Runner, and they settled themselves tolisten. 

"About the third of a man's life would have passed between the time whenOñate came to the founding of Santa Fé, and the building of the firstchurch by Father Letrado. There were Padres before that, and manybaptizings. The Zuñis were always glad to learn new ways of persuadingthe gods to be on their side, and they thought the prayers andceremonies of the Padres very good Medicine indeed. They thought theIron Shirts were gods themselves, and when they came received them withsprinklings of sacred meal. But it was not until Father Letrado's timethat it began to be understood that the new religion was to take theplace of their own, for to the Indians there is but one spirit inthings, as there is one life in man. They thought their own prayers asgood as any that were taught them. 

"But Father Letrado was zealous and he was old. He made a rule that allshould come to the service of his church and that they should obey himand reverence him when they met, with bowings and kissings of his robe. It is not easy to teach reverence to a free people, and the men of theAnt Hill had been always free. But the worst of Father Letrado's rulingswas that there were to be no more prayers in the kivas, no dancings tothe gods nor scatterings of sacred pollen and planting of plumes. Also--this is not known, I think--that the sacred places where the Sunhad planted the seed of itself should be told to the Padres. "

"He means the places where the gold is found mixed with the earth andthe sand, " explained the Road-Runner to Dorcas Jane and Oliver. 

"In the days of the Ancients, " said the Condor, "when such a place wasfound, it was told to the Priests of the Bow, and kept in reverence bythe whole people. But since the Zuñis had discovered what things whitemen will do for gold, there had been fewer and fewer who held thesecret. The Spaniards had burnt too many of those who were suspected ofknowing, for one thing, and they had a drink which, when they gave tothe Indians, let the truth out of their mouths as it would not have gonewhen they were sober. 

"At the time Father Letrado built his first chapel there was but one manin Hawikuh who knew. 

"He was a man of two natures. His mother had been a woman of theMatsaki, and his father one of the Oñate's men, so that he was half ofthe Sun and half of the Moon, as we say, --for the Zuñis called the firsthalf-white children, Moon-children, --and his heart was pulled two ways, as I have heard the World Encompassing Water is pulled two ways by theSun and the Moon. Therefore, he was called Ho-tai the Two-Hearted. 

"What finally pulled his heart out of his bosom was the love he had forhis wife. Flower-of-the-Maguey, she was called, and she was beautifulbeyond all naming. She was daughter to the Chief Priest of the Bow, andyoung men from all the seven towns courted her. But though she waslovely and quiet she was not as she seemed to be. She was a PassingBeing. " The Condor thoughtfully stretched his wings as he considered howto explain this to the children. 

"Such there are, " he said. "They are shaped from within outward by theirown wills. They have the power to take the human form and leave it. Butit was not until she had been with her mother to To-yalanne, the sacredThunder Mountain, as is the custom when maidens reach the marriageableage, that her power came to her. She was weary with gathering the sacredflower pollen; she lay under a maguey in the warm sun and felt the lightairs play over her. Her breath came evenly and the wind lifted her longhair as it lay along her sides. 

"Strangely she felt the pull of the wind on her hair, all along herbody. She looked and saw it turn short and tawny in the sun, and theshape of her limbs fitted to the sandy hollows. Thus she understood thatshe was become another being, Moke-iche, the puma. She bounded about inthe sun and chased the blue and yellow butterflies. After a time sheheard the voice of her mother calling, and it pulled at her heart. Shelet her heart have way and became a maid again. But often she wouldsteal out after that, when the wind brought her the smell of the maguey, or at night when the moon walked low over To-yalanne, and play as puma. Her parents saw that she had power more than is common to maidens, butshe was wise and modest, and they loved her and said nothing. 

"'Let her have a husband and children, ' they said, 'and her strangenesswill pass. ' But they were very much disappointed at what happened to allthe young men who came a-courting. 

"This is the fashion of a Zuñi courting: The young man says to his OldOnes, 'I have seen the daughter of the Priest of the Bow at the MiddleAnt Hill, what think ye?' And if they said, 'Be it well!' he gatheredhis presents into a bundle and went to knock at the sky-hole of herfather's house. 

"'_She_!' he said, and '_Hai_!' they answered from within. 'Help medown, ' he would say, which was to tell them that he had a bundle withhim and it was a large one. Then the mother of the girl would know whatwas afoot. She would rise and pull the bundle down through thesky-hole--all pueblo houses are entered from the top, did you not know?"asked the Condor. 

The children nodded, not to interrupt; they had seen as they came alongthe trail the high terraced houses with the ladders sticking out of thedoor-holes. 

"Then there was much politeness on both sides, politeness of foodoffered and eaten and questions asked, until the girl's parents weresatisfied that the match would be a good one. Finally, the Old Oneswould stretch themselves out in their corners and begin to scrape theirnostrils with their breath--thus, " said the Condor, making a gentlesound of snoring; "for it was thought proper for the young people tohave a word or two together. The girl would set the young man a task, soas not to seem too easily won, and to prove if he were the sort of manshe wished for a husband. 

"'Only possibly you love me, ' said the daughter of the Chief Priest ofthe Bow. 'Go out with the light to-morrow to hunt and return with it, bringing your kill, that I may see how much you can do for my sake. '

"But long before light the girl would go out herself as a puma and scarethe game away. Thus it happened every time that the young man wouldreturn at evening empty-handed, or he would be so mortified that he didnot return at all, and the girl's parents would send the bundle back tohim. The Chief Priest and his wife began to be uneasy lest theirdaughter should never marry at all. 

"Finally Ho-tai of the pueblo of Matsaki heard of her, and said to hismother, 'That is the wife for me. '

"'_Shoom_!' said his mother; 'what have you to offer her?' for they werevery poor. 

"'_Shoom_ yourself!' said Ho-tai. 'He that is poor in spirit as well asin appearance, is poor indeed. It is plain she is not looking for abundle, but for a man. ' So he took what presents he had to the house ofthe Chief Priest of the Bow, and everything went as usual; except thatwhen Ho-tai asked them to help him in, the Chief Priest said, 'Beyourself within, ' for he was growing tired of courtings that came tonothing. But when Ho-tai came cheerfully down the ladder with his gift, the girl's heart was touched, for he was a fine gold color like a fullmoon, and his high heart gave him a proud way of walking. So when shehad said, 'Only possibly you love me, but that I may know what manner ofhusband I am getting, I pray you hunt for me one day, ' and when they hadbidden each other 'wait happily until the morning, ' she went out as apuma and searched the hills for game that she might drive toward theyoung man, instead of away from him. But because she could not take hereyes off of him, she was not so careful as she should be not to let himsee her. Then she went home and put on all her best clothes, the whitebuckskins, the turquoises and silver bracelets, and waited. At evening, Ho-tai, the Two-Hearted, came with a fine buck on his shoulders, and astiff face. Without a word he gave the buck to the Priest's wife andturned away, '_Hai_', ' said the mother, 'when a young man wins a girl heis permitted to say a few words to her!'--for she was pleased to thinkthat her daughter had got a husband at last. 

"'I did not kill the buck by myself, ' said Ho-tai; and he went off tofind the Chief Priest and tell him that he could not marry his daughter. Flower-of-the-Maguey, who was in her room all this time peeking throughthe curtain, took a water jar and went down to the spring where Ho-taicould not help but pass her on his way back to his own village. 

"'I did not bring back your bundle, ' she said when she saw him; 'what isa bundle to a woman when she has found a man?'

"Then his two hearts were sore in him, for she was lovely past allnaming. 'I do not take what I cannot win by my own labor, ' said he;'there was a puma drove up the game for me. '

"'Who knows, ' said she, 'but Those Above sent it to try if you werehonest or a braggart?' After which he began to feel differently. And indue course they were married, and Ho-tai came to live in the house ofthe Chief Priest at Hawikuh, for her parents could not think ofparting with her, "They were very happy, " said the Condor, "for she was wisely slow aswell as beautiful, and she eased him of the struggle of his two hearts, one against the other, and rested in her life as a woman. "

"Does that mean she wasn't a puma any more?" asked Dorcas Jane. 

The Condor nodded, turning over the Zuñi words in his mind for just theright phrase. "Understanding of all her former states came to her withthe years. There was nothing she dreaded so much as being forced out ofthis life into the dust and whirl of Becoming. That is one reason whyshe feared and distrusted the Spanish missionaries when they came, asthey did about that time. 

"One of her husband's two hearts pulled very strongly toward thereligion of the Spanish Padres. He was of the first that were baptizedby Father Letrado, and served the altar. He was also the first of thoseupon whose mind the Padre began to work to persuade him that in takingthe new religion he must wholly give up the old. 

"At the end of that trail, a day's journey, " said the Condor, indicatingthe narrow foot-tread in the sand, which showed from tree to tree of thedark junipers, and seemed to turn and disappear at every one, "lies thevalley of Shiwina, which is Zuñi. 

"It is a narrow valley, watered by a muddy river. Red walls of mesasshut it in above the dark wood. To the north lies Thunder Mountain, wall-sided and menacing. Dust devils rise up from the plains and veilthe crags. In the winter there are snows. In the summer great cloudsgather over Shiwina and grow dark with rain. White corn tassels arewaving, blue butterfly maidens flit among the blossoming beans. 

"Day and night at midsummer, hardly the priests have their rattles outof their hands. You hear them calling from the house-tops, and the beatof bare feet on the dancing places. But the summer after Father Letradobuilt his chapel of the Immaculate Virgin at Halona and the chapel andparish house of the Immaculate Conception at Hawikuh, he set his faceagainst the Rain Dance, and especially against the Priests of the Rain. Witchcraft and sorcery he called it, and in Zuñi to be accused ofwitchcraft is death. 

"The people did not know what to do. They prayed secretly where theycould. The Priests of the Rain went on with their preparations, and thesoldiers of Father Letrado--for he had a small detachment withhim--broke up the dance and profaned the sacred places. Those were harddays for Ho-tai the Two-Hearted. The gods of the strangers were stronggods, he said, let the people wait and see what they could do. The whitemen had strong Medicine in their guns and their iron shirts and theirlong-tailed, smoke-breathing beasts. They did not work as other gods. Even if there was no rain, the white gods might have another way to savethe people. 

"These were the things Father Letrado taught him to say, and thedaughter of the Chief Priest of the Bow feared that his heart would bequite pulled away from the people of Zuñi. Then she went to her fatherthe Chief Priest, who was also the keeper of the secret of the HolyPlaces of the Sun, and neared the dividing of the ways of life. 

"'Let Ho-tai be chosen Keeper in your place, ' she said, 'so all shall bebound together, the Medicine of the white man and the brown. '

"'Be it well, ' said the Priest of the Bow, for he was old, and hadrespect for his daughter's wisdom. Feeling his feet go from him towardthe Spirit Road, he called together the Priests of the Bow, andannounced to them that Ho-tai would be Keeper in his stead. 

"Though Two-Hearted was young for the honor, they did not question it, for, like his wife, they were jealous of the part of him that waswhite--which, for her, there was no becoming--and they thought of thisas a binding together. They were not altogether sure yet that theSpaniards were not gods, or at the least Surpassing Beings. 

"But as the rain did not come and the winter set in cold with a shortageof corn, more and more they neglected the bowings and the reverences andthe service of the mass. Nights Father Letrado would hear the muffledbeat of the drums in the kivas where the old religion was beingobserved, and because it was the only heart open to him, he twisted theheart of Ho-tai to see if there was not some secret evil, some seed ofwitchcraft at the bottom of it which he could pluck out. "

"That was great foolishness, " said the Road-Runner; "no white man yetever got to the bottom of the heart of an Indian. "

"True, " said the Condor, "but Ho-tai was half white, and the white partof him answered to the Padre's hand. He was very miserable, and in fact, nobody was very happy in those days in Hawikuh. Father Martin who passedthere in the moon of the Sun Returning, on his way to establish amission among the People of the Coarse Hanging Hair, reported to hissuperior that Father Letrado was ripe for martyrdom. 

"It came the following Sunday, when only Ho-tai and a few old women cameto mass. Sick at the sound of his own voice echoing in the empty chapel, the Padre went out to the plaza of the town to scold the people intoservices. He was met by the Priests of the Rain with their bows. Beingneither a coward nor a fool, he saw what was before him. Kneeling, heclasped his arms, still holding the crucifix across his bosom, and theytransfixed him with their arrows. 

"They went into the church after that and broke up the altar, and burnedthe chapel. A party of bowmen followed the trail of Father Martin, coming up with him after five days. That night with the help of some ofhis own converts, they fell upon and killed him. There was a half-breedamong them, both whose hearts were black. He cut off the good Padre'shand and scalped him. "

"Oh, " said Oliver, "I think he ought not to have done that!"

The Condor was thoughtful. 

"The hand, no. It had been stretched forth only in kindness. But I thinkwhite men do not understand about scalping. I have heard them talksometimes, and I know they do not understand. The scalp was taken inorder that they might have the scalp dance. The dance is to pacify thespirit of the slain. It adopts and initiates him into the tribe of thedead, and makes him one with them, so that he will not return as aspirit and work harm on his slayers. Also it is a notice to the gods ofthe enemy that theirs is the stronger god, and to beware. The scalpdance is a protection to the tribe of the slayer; to omit one of itsobservances is to put the tribe in peril of the dead. Thus I have heard;thus the Old Ones have said. Even Two-Hearted, though he was sad for thekilling, danced for the scalp of Father Martin. 

"Immediately it was all over, the Hawikuhkwe began to be afraid. Theygathered up their goods and fled to K'iakime, the Place of the Eagles, on Thunder Mountain, where they had a stronghold. There were Iron Shirtsat Santa Fé and whole cities of them in the direction of the SaltContaining Waters. Who knew what vengeance they might take for thekilling of the Padres? The Hawikuhkwe intrenched themselves, and fornearly two years they waited and practiced their own religion intheir own way. 

"Only two of them were unhappy. These were Ho-tai of the two hearts, andhis wife, who had been called Flower-of-the-Maguey. But her unhappinesswas not because the Padres had been killed. She had had her hand in thatbusiness, though only among the women, dropping a word here and therequietly, as one drops a stone into a deep well. She was unhappy becauseshe saw that the dead hand of Father Letrado was still heavy on herhusband's heart. 

"Not that Ho-tai feared what the soldiers from Santa Fé might do to theslayer, but what the god of the Padre might do to the whole people. ForPadre Letrado had taught him to read in the Sacred Books, and he knewthat whole cities were burned with fire for their sins. He saw doomhanging over K'iakime, and his wife could not comfort him. After awhileit came into his mind that it was his own sin for which the people wouldbe punished, for the one thing he had kept from the Padre was the secretof the gold. 

"It is true, " said the Condor, "that after the Indians had forgottenthem, white men rediscovered many of their sacred places, and manyothers that were not known even to the Zuñis. But there is one place onThunder Mountain still where gold lies in the ground in lumps like pinenuts. If Father Letrado could have found it, he would have hammered itinto cups for his altar, and immediately the land would have beenoverrun with the Spaniards. And the more Ho-tai thought of it, the moreconvinced he was that he should have told him. 

"Toward the end of two years when it began to be rumored that soldiersand new Padres were coming to K'iakime to deal with the killing ofFather Letrado, Ho-tai began to sleep more quietly at night. Then hiswife knew that he had made up his mind to tell, if it seemed necessaryto reconcile the Spaniards to his people, and it was a knife inher heart. 

"It was her husband's honor, and the honor of her father, Chief Priestof the Bow; and besides, she knew very well that if Ho-tai told, thePriests of the Bow would kill him. She said to herself that her husbandwas sick with the enchantments of the Padres, and she must do what shecould for him. She gave him seeds of forgetfulness. "

"Was that a secret too?" asked Dorcas, for the Condor seemed not toremember that the children were new to that country. 

"It was _peyote_. Many know of it now, but in the days of Our Ancientsit was known only to a few Medicine men and women. It is a seed thatwhen eaten wipes out the past from a man's mind and gives him visions. In time its influence will wear away, and it must be eaten anew, but ifeaten too often it steals a man's courage and his strength as well ashis memory. 

"When she had given her husband a little in his food, Flower-of-the-Maguey found that he was like a child in her hands. 

"'Sleep, ' she would say, 'and dream thus, and so, ' and that is the wayit would be with him. She wished him to forget both the secret of thegold in the ground and the fear of the Padres. 

"From the time that she heard that the Spaniards were on their way toK'iakime, she fed him a little _peyote_ every day. To the others itseemed that his mind walked with Those Above, and they were respectfulof him. That is how Zuñis think of any kind of madness. They were notsure that the madness had not been sent for just this occasion when theyhad need of the gods, and so, as it seemed to them, it proved. 

"The Spaniards asked for parley, and the Caciques permitted the Padresto come up into the council chambers, for they knew that the long gownscovered no weapons. The Spaniards had learned wisdom, perhaps, andperhaps they thought Father Letrado somewhat to blame. They askednothing but permission to reëstablish their missions, and to have theman who had scalped Father Martin handed over to them forSpanish justice. 

"They sat around the wall of the kiva, with Ho-tai in his place, hearingand seeing very little. But the parley was long, and, little by little, the vision of his own gods which the _peyote_ had given him began towear away. One of the Padres rose in his place and began a long speechabout the sin of killing, and especially of killing priests. He quotedhis Sacred Books and talked of the sin in their hearts, and, little bylittle, the talk laid hold on the wandering mind of Ho-tai. 'Thus, inthis killing, has the secret evil of your hearts come forth, ' said thePadre, and 'True, He speaks true, ' said Ho-tai, upon which the Priestsof the Hawikuhkwe were astonished. They thought their gods spoke throughhis madness. 

"Then the Padre began to exhort them to give up this evil man in theirmidst and rid themselves of the consequences of sin, which he assuredthem were most certain and as terrible as they were sure. Then the whiteheart of Ho-tai remembered his own anguish, and spoke thickly, as a mandrunk with _peyote_ speaks. 

"'He must be given up, ' he said. It seemed to them that his voice camefrom the under world. 

"But there was a great difficulty. The half-breed who had done thescalping had, at the first rumor of the soldiers coming, taken himselfaway. If the Hawikuhkwe said this to the Spaniards, they knew very wellthey would not be believed. But the mind of Ho-tai had begun to comeback to him, feebly as from a far journey. 

"He remembered that he had done something displeasing to the Padre, though he did not remember what, and on account of it there was doomover the valley of the Shiwina. He rose staggering in his place. 

"'Evil has been done, and the evil man must be cast out, ' he said, andfor the first time the Padres noticed that he was half white. Not one ofthem had ever seen the man who scalped Father Letrado, but it was knownthat his father had been a soldier. This man was altogether such a oneas they expected. His cheeks were drawn, his hair hung matted over hisreddened eyes, as a man's might, tormented of the spirit. 'I am thatman, ' said Ho-tai of the Two Hearts, and the Caciques put their handsover their mouths with astonishment. "

"But they never, " cried Oliver, --"they never let him be taken?"

"A life for a life, " said the Condor, "that is the law. It was necessarythat the Spaniards be pacified, and the slayer could not be found. Besides, the people of Hawikuh thought Ho-tai's offer to go in his placewas from the gods. It agrees with all religions that a man may lay downhis life for his people. "

"Couldn't his wife do anything?"

"What could she? He went of his own will and by consent of the Caciques. But she tried what she could. She could give him _peyote_ enough so thathe should remember nothing and feel nothing of what the Spaniards shoulddo to him. But to do that she had to make friends with one of thesoldiers. She chose one Lujan, who had written his name on the Rock onthe way to K'iakime. By him she sent a cake to Ho-tai, and promised tomeet Lujan when she could slip away from the village unnoticed. 

"Between here and Acoma, " said the Condor, "is a short cut which may betraveled on foot, but not on horseback. Returning with Ho-tai, manacledand fast between two soldiers, the Spaniards meant to take that trail, and it was there the wife of Ho-tai promised to meet Lujan at the end ofthe second day's travel. 

"She came in the twilight, hurrying as a puma, for her woman's heart wastoo sore to endure her woman's body. Lujan had walked apart from thecamp to wait for her; smiling, he waited. She was still very beautiful, and he thought she was in love with him. Therefore, when he saw thelong, hurrying stride of a puma in the trail, he thought it a pity sobeautiful a woman should be frightened. The arrow that he sped from hiscross-bow struck in the yellow flanks. 'Well shot, ' said Lujancheerfully, but his voice was drowned by a scream that was strangelylike a woman's. He remembered it afterward in telling of theextraordinary thing that had happened to him, for when he went to look, where the great beast had leaped in air and fallen, there was nothing tobe found there. Nothing. 

"If she had been in her form as a woman when he shot her, " said theCondor, "that is what he would have found. But she was a Passing Being, not taking form from without as we do, of the outward touchings ofthings, and her shape of a puma was as mist which vanishes in death asmist does in the sun. Thus shortens my story. "

"Come, " said the Road-Runner, understanding that there would be no moreto the Telling. "The Seven Persons are out, and the trail is darkling. "

The children looked up and saw the constellation which they knew as theDipper, shining in a deep blue heaven. The glow was gone from the highcliffs of El Morro, and the junipers seemed to draw secretly together. Without a word they took hands and began to run along the trail afterthe Road-Runner. 

[Illustration]

XV

HOW THE MEDICINE OF THE ARROWS WAS BROKEN AT REPUBLICAN RIVER; TOLD BYTHE CHIEF OFFICER OF THE DOG SOLDIERS

This is the story the Dog Soldier told Oliver one evening in April, justafter school let out, while the sun was still warm and bright on theyoung grass, and yet one somehow did not care about playing. Oliver hadslipped into the Indian room by the west entrance to look at the DogDancers, for the teacher had just told them that our country was to jointhe big war which had been going on so long on the other side of theAtlantic, and the boy was feeling rather excited about it, andyet solemn. 

The teacher had told them about the brave Frenchmen, who had stood up inthe way of the enemy saying, "They shall not pass, " and they hadn't. Itmade Oliver think of what he had read on the Dog Dancer's card--how in adesperate fight the officer would stick an arrow or a lance through hislong scarf, where it trailed upon the ground, pinning himself to theearth until he was dead or his side had won the victory. 

Oliver thought that that was exactly the sort of thing that he would dohimself if he were a soldier, and when he read the card over again, hesat on a bench with his back to the light looking at the Dog Dancers, and feeling very friendly toward them. It had just occurred to him thatthey, too, were Americans, and he liked to think of them as brave andfirst-class fighters. 

From where he sat he could see quite to the end of the east corridorwhich was all of a quarter of a mile away. Nobody moved in it but asolitary guard, looking small and flat like a toy man at that distance, and the low sun made black and yellow bars across the floor. In a momentmore, while Oliver was wondering where that woodsy, smoky smell camefrom, they were all around him, all the Dog Warriors, of the fourdegrees, with their skin-covered lances curved like the beak of theThunder Bird, and the rattles of dew-claws that clashed pleasantlytogether. Some of them were painted red all over, and some wore tallheaddresses of eagle feathers, and every officer had his trailing scarfof buckskin worked in patterns of the Sacred Four. Around every neck wasthe whistle made of the wing-bone of a turkey, and every man's foreheadglistened with the sweat of his dancing. The smell that Oliver hadnoticed was the smoke of their fire and the spring scent of the youngsage. It grew knee-high, pale green along the level tops, stretchingaway west to the Backbone-of-the-World, whose snowy tops seemed to floatupon the evening air. Off to the right there was a river dark withcottonwoods and willows. 

"But where are we?" Oliver wished to know, seeing them all pause intheir dancing to notice him in a friendly fashion. 

"Cheyenne Country, " said one of the oldest Indians. "Over there"--hepointed to a white thread that dipped and sidled along the easy roll ofthe hills--"is the Taos Trail. It joins the Santa Fe at the Rio Grandeand goes north to the Big Muddy. It crosses all the east-flowing riversnear their source and skirts the Pawnee Country. "

"And who are you--Cheyennes or Arapahoes?" Oliver could not be sure, though their faces and their costumes were familiar. 

"Cheyennes _and_ Arapahoes, " said the oldest Dog Dancer, easing himselfdown to the buffalo robe which one of the rank and file of the warriorshad spread for him. "Camp-mates and allies, though we do not callourselves Cheyennes, you know. That is a Sioux name for us, --Red Words, it means;--what you call foreign-speaking, for the Sioux cannot speakany language but their own. We call ourselves Tsis-tsis-tas, Our Folk. "He reached back for his pipe which a young man brought him and loosenedhis tobacco pouch from his belt, smiling across at Oliver, "Have youearned your smoke, my son?"

"I'm not allowed, " said Oliver, eyeing the great pipe which he wascertain he had seen a few moments before in the Museum case. 

"Good, good, " said the old Cheyenne; "a youth should not smoke until hehas gathered the bark of the oak. "

Oliver looked puzzled and the Dog Warrior smiled broadly, for gatheringoak bark is a poetic Indian way of speaking of a young warrior'sfirst scalping. 

"He means you must not smoke until you have done something to prove youare a man, " explained one of the Arapahoes, who was painted bright redall over and wore a fringe of scalps under his ceremonial belt. Pipescame out all around the circle and some one threw a handful ofsweet-grass on the fire. 

"What I should like to know, " said Oliver, "is why you are called DogDancer?"

The painted man shook his head. 

"All I know is that we are picked men, ripe with battles, and the Dog isour totem. So it has been since the Fathers' Fathers. " He blew two puffsfrom his pipe straight up, murmuring, "O God, remember us on earth, "after the fashion of ceremonial smoking. 

"God and us, " said the Cheyenne, pointing up with his pipe-stem; andthen to Oliver, "The Tsis-tsis-tas were saved by a dog once in thecountry of the Ho-Hé. That is Assiniboine, " he explained, following itwith a strong grunt of disgust which ran all around the circle as theDog Chief struck out with his foot and started a little spurt of dustwith his toe, throwing dirt on the name of his enemy. "They are calledAssiniboine, stone cookers, because they cook in holes in the groundwith hot stones, but to us they were the Ho-Hé. The first time we met wefought them. That was in the old time, before we had guns or bowseither, but clubs and pointed sticks. That was by the Lake of the Woodswhere we first met them. "

"Lake of the Woods, " said Oliver; "that's farther north than theheadwater of the Mississippi. "

"We came from farther and from older time, " said the Dog Soldier. "Wethought the guns were magic at first and fell upon our faces. Nevertheless, we fought the Ho-Hé and took their guns away from them. "

"So, " said the officer of the Yellow Rope, as the long buckskin badge ofrank was called. "We fought with Blackfoot and Sioux. We fought withComanches and Crows, and expelled them from the Land. With Kiowas wefought; we crossed the Big Muddy and long and bitter wars we had withShoshones and Pawnees. Later we fought the Utes. We are the FightingCheyennes. 

"That is how it is when a peaceful people are turned fighters. For weare peaceful. We came from the East, for one of our wise men hadforetold that one day we should meet White Men and be conquered by them. Therefore, we came away, seeking peace, and we did not know what to dowhen the Ho-Hé fell upon us. At last we said, 'Evidently it is thefashion of this country to fight. Now, let us fight everybody we meet, so we shall become great. ' That is what has happened. Is it not so?"

"It is so!" said the Dog Dancers. "Hi-hi-yi, " breaking out all at oncein the long-drawn wolf howl which is the war-cry of the Cheyennes. Oliver would have been frightened by it, but quite as suddenly theyreturned to their pipes, and he saw the old Dog Chief looking at himwith a kindly twinkle. 

"You were going to tell me why you are called Dog Soldiers, " Oliverreminded him. 

"Dog is a good name among us, " said the old Cheyenne, "but it isforbidden to speak of the Mysteries. Perhaps when you have been admittedto the Kit Foxes and have seen fighting--"

"We've got a war of our own, now, " said Oliver hopefully. 

The Indians were all greatly interested. The painted Arapahoe blew him apuff from his pipe. "Send you good enemies, " he said, trailing the smokeabout in whatever direction enemies might come from. "And a good fight!"said the Yellow Rope Officer; "for men grow soft where there is nofighting. "

"And in all cases, " said the Dog Chief, "respect the Mysteries. Otherwise, though you come safely through yourself, you may bring evilon the Tribe. . .. I remember a Telling . .. No, " he said, following thelittle pause that always precedes a story; "since you are truly at war Iwill tell a true tale. A tale of my own youth and the failure that cameon Our Folks because certain of our young men forgot that they werefighting for the Tribe and thought only of themselves and theirown glory. "

He stuffed his pipe again with fine tobacco and bark of red willow andbegan. 

"Of one mystery of the Cheyennes every man may speak a little--of theMystery of the Sacred Medicine Arrows. Four arrows there are with stoneheads painted in the four colors, four feathered with eagle plumes. Theygive power to men and victory in battle. It is a man mystery; no womanmay so much as look at it. When we go out as a Tribe to war, the Arrowsgo with us tied to the lance of the Arrow-Keeper. 

"The Medicine of the Arrows depended on the Mysteries which are made inthe camp before the Arrows go out. But if any one goes out from the camptoward the enemy before the Mysteries are completed, the protection ofthe Arrows is destroyed. Thus it happened when the Potawatami helped theKitkahhahki, and the Cheyennes were defeated. This was my doing, mineand Red Morning and a boy of the Suh-tai who had nobody belongingto him. 

"We three were like brothers, but I was the elder and leader. I waitedon War Bonnet when he went to the hunt, and learned war-craft from him. That was how it was with us as we grew up, --we attached ourselves tosome warrior we admired; we brought back his arrows and rounded up hisponies for him, or washed off the Medicine paint after battle, orcarried his pipe. 

"War Bonnet I loved for the risks he would take. Red Morning followedMad Wolf, who was the best of the scouts; and where we two went theSuh-tai was not missing. This was long after we had learned all thetricks of the Ho-Hé by fighting them, after the Iron Shirts brought thehorse to us, and we had crossed the Big Muddy into this country. 

"We were at war with the Pawnees that year. Not, " said the Dog Chiefwith a grin, "that we were ever at peace with them, but the year beforethey had killed our man Alights-on-the-Cloud and taken our iron shirt. "

"Had the Cheyennes iron shirts?" Oliver was astonished. 

"Alights-on-the-Cloud had one. When he rode up and down in front of theenemy with it under his blanket, they thought it great Medicine. Therewere others I have heard of; they came into the country with the men whohad the first horses, but this was ours. It was all fine rings of ironthat came down to the knees and covered the arms and the head so thathis long hair was inside. 

"It was the summer before we broke the Medicine of the Arrows that theTsis-tsis-tas had gone out against the Pawnees. Arapahoes, Sioux, Kiowas, and Apaches, they went out with us. 

"Twice in the year the Pawnees hunted the buffaloes, once in the winterwhen the robes were good and the buffaloes fat, and once in the summerfor food. All the day before we had seen a great dust rising and allnight the ground shook with the buffaloes running. There was a mist onthe prairie, and when it rose our scouts found themselves almost in themidst of the Pawnees who were riding about killing buffaloes. 

"It was a running fight; from noon till level sun they fought, and inthe middle of it, Alights-on-the-Cloud came riding on a roan horse alongthe enemy line, flashing a saber. As he rode the Pawnees gave back, forthe iron shirt came up over his head and their arrows did him no harm. So he rode down our own line, and returning charged the Pawnees, butthis time there was one man who did not give back. 

"Carrying-the-Shield-in-Front said to those around him: 'Let him come on, and do you move away from me so he can come close. If he possesses greatMedicine, I shall not be able to kill him; but if he does not possessit, perhaps I shall kill him. '

"So the others fell back, and when Alights-on-the-Cloud rode near enoughso that Carrying-the-Shield-in-Front could hear the clinking of the ironrings, he loosed his arrow and struck Alights-on-the-Cloud in the eye. 

"Our men charged the Pawnees, trying to get the body back, but in theend they succeeded in cutting the iron shirt into little pieces, andcarrying it away. This was a shame to us, for Alights-on-the-Cloud waswell liked, and for a year there was very little talked of but how hemight be avenged. 

"Early the next spring a pipe was carried. Little Robe carried it alongthe Old North Trail to Crows and the Burnt Thigh Sioux and the NorthernCheyennes. South also it went to Apaches and Arapahoes. And when thegrape was in leaf we came together at Republican River and swore that wewould drive out the Pawnees. 

"As it turned out both Mad Wolf and War Bonnet were among the firstscouts chosen to go and locate the enemy, and though we had no businessthere, we three, and two other young men of the Kiowas, slipped out ofthe camp and followed. They should have turned us back as soon as wewere discovered, but Mad Wolf was good-natured, and they were pleased tosee us so keen for war. 

"There was a young moon, and the buffalo bulls were running and fightingin the brush. I remember one old bull with long streamers of grapevinesdragging from his horns who charged and scattered us. We killed a youngcow for meat, and along the next morning we saw wolves running away froma freshly killed carcass. So we knew the Pawnees were out. 

"Yellow Bear, an Arapahoe Dog Soldier, who was one of the scouts, beganto ride about in circles and sing his war-song, saying that we ought notto go back without taking some scalps, or counting coup, and weyoungsters agreed with him. We were disappointed when the others decidedto go back at once and report. I remember how Mad Wolf, who was thescout leader, sent the others all in to notify the camp, and how, asthey rode, from time to time they howled like wolves, then stopped andturned their heads from side to side. 

"There was a great ceremonial march when we came in, the Dog Soldiers, the Crooked Lances, the Fox Soldiers, and all the societies. First therewere two men--the most brave in the society leading, and then all theothers in single file and two to close. The women, too--all the brightblankets and the tall war bonnets--the war-cries and the songs and thedrums going like a man's heart in battle. 

"Three days, " said the Dog Chief, "the preparation lasted. Wolf Face andTall Bull were sent off to keep in touch with the enemy, and the womenand children dropped behind while the men unwrapped their Medicinebundles and began the Mysteries of the _Issiwun_, the Buffalo Hat, and_Mahuts_, the Arrows. It was a long ceremony, and we three, Red Morning, the Suh-tai boy, and I, were on fire with the love of fighting. You maybelieve that we made the other boys treat us handsomely because we hadbeen with the scouts, but after a while even that grew tame and wewandered off toward the river. Who cared what three half-grown boys did, while the elders were busy with their Mysteries. 

"By and by, though we knew very well that no one should move toward theenemy while the Arrows were uncovered, it came into our heads what afine thing it would be if we could go out after Wolf Face and Tall Bull, and perhaps count coup on the Pawnees before our men came up with them. I do not think we thought of any harm, and perhaps we thought theMedicine of the Arrows was only for the members of the societies. But wesaw afterward that it was for the Tribe, and for our wrong theTribe suffered. 

"For a while we followed the trail of Tall Bull, toward the camp ofPawnees. But we took to playing that the buffaloes were Pawnees and woreout our horses charging them. Then we lost the trail, and when at lastwe found a village the enemy had moved on following the hunt, leavingonly bones and ashes. I do not know what we should have done, " said theDog Chief, "if we had come up with them: three boys armed withhunting-knives and bows, and a lance which War Bonnet had thrown awaybecause it was too light for him. Red Morning had a club he had made, with a flint set into the side. He kept throwing it up and catching itas he rode, making a song about it. 

"After leaving the deserted camp of the Pawnees, we rode about lookingfor a trail, thinking we might come upon some small party. We had leftour own camp before finding out what Wolf Face and Tall Bull had comeback to tell them, that the enemy, instead of being the whole Nation ofPawnees as we supposed, was really only the tribe of the Kitkahhahki, helped out by a band of the Potawatami. The day before our men attackedthe Kitkahhahki, the Potawatami had separated from them and started upone of the creeks, while the Pawnees kept on up the river. We boysstumbled on the trail of the Potawatami and followed it. 

"Now these Potawatami, " said the Dog Chief, "had had guns a long time, and better guns than ours. But being boys we did not know enough to turnback. About midday we came to level country around the headwaters of thecreek, and there were four Potawatami skinning buffaloes. They hadbunched up their horses and tied them to a tree while they cut up thekill. Red Morning said for us to run off the horses, and that would bealmost as good as a scalp-taking. We left our ponies in the ravine andwriggled through the long grass. We had cut the horses loose and wererunning them, before the Potawatami discovered it. One of them calledhis own horse and it broke out of the bunch and ran toward him. In amoment he was on his back, so we three each jumped on a horse and beganto whip them to a gallop. The Potawatami made for the Suh-tai, and rodeeven with him. I think he saw it was only a boy, and neither of them hada gun. But suddenly as their horses came neck and neck Suh-tai gave aleap and landed on the Potawatami's horse behind the rider. It was atrick of his with which he used to scare us. He would leap on and offbefore you had time to think. As he clapped his legs to the horse's backhe stuck his knife into the Potawatami. The man threw up his arms andSuh-tai tumbled him off the horse in an instant. 

"This I saw because Red Morning's horse had been shot under him, and Ihad stopped to take him up. By this time another man had caught a horseand I had got my lance again which I had left leaning against a tree. Ifaced him with it as he came on at a dead run, and for a moment Ithought it had gone clean through him, but really it had passed betweenhis arm and his body and he had twisted it out of my hand. 

"Our horses were going too fast to stop, but Red Morning, from behindme, struck at the head of the man's horse as it passed with hisknife-edged club, and we heard the man shout as he went down. I managedto get my horse about in time to see Suh-tai, who had caught up with us, trying to snatch the Potawatami's scalp, but his knife turned on one ofthe silver plates through which his scalp-lock was pulled, and all theSuh-tai got was a lock of the hair. In his excitement he thought it wasthe scalp and went shaking it and shouting like a wild man. 

"The Potawatami pulled himself free of his fallen horse as I came up, and it did me good to see the blood flowing from under his arm where mylance had scraped him. I rode straight at him, meaning to ride him down, but the horse swerved a little and got a long wiping stroke from thePotawatami's knife, from which, in a minute more, he began to stagger. By this time the other men had got their guns and begun shooting. Suh-tai's bow had been shot in two, and Red Morning had a graze thatlaid his cheek open. So we got on our own ponies and rode away. 

"We saw other men riding into the open, but they had all been chasingbuffaloes, and our ponies were fresh. It was not long before we left theshooting behind. Once we thought we heard it break out again in adifferent direction, but we were full of our own affairs, and anxious toget back to the camp and brag about them. As we crossed the creekSuh-tai made a line and said the words that made it Medicine. We feltperfectly safe. 

"It was our first fight, and each of us had counted coup. Suh-tai wasnot sure but he had killed his man. Not for worlds would he have wipedthe blood from his knife until he had shown it to the camp. Two of ushad wounds, for my man had struck at me as he passed, though I had beentoo excited to notice it at the time . .. '_Eyah!_' said the DogChief, --'a man's first scar . .. !' We were very happy, and Red Morningtaught us his song as we rode home beside the Republican River. 

"As we neared our own camp we were checked in our rejoicing; we heardthe wails of the women, and then we saw the warriors sitting around withtheir heads in their blankets--as many as were left of them. My fatherwas gone, he was one of the first who was killed by the Potawatami. "

The Dog Chief was silent a long time, puffing gently on his pipe, andthe Officer of the Yellow Rope began to sing to himself a strange, stirring song. 

Looking at him attentively Oliver saw an old faint scar running acrosshis face from nose to ear. 

"Is your name Red Morning?" Oliver wished to know. 

The man nodded, but he did not smile; they were all of them smokingsilently with their eyes upon the ground. Oliver understood that therewas more and turned back to the Dog Chief. 

"Weren't they pleased with what you had done?" he asked. 

"They were pleased when they had time to notice us, " he said, "but theydidn't know--they didn't know that we had broken the Medicine of theArrows. It didn't occur to us to say anything about the time we had leftthe camp, and nobody asked us. A young warrior, Big Head he was called, had also gone out toward the enemy before the Mystery was over. Theylaid it all to him. 

"And at that time we didn't know ourselves, not till long afterward. Yousee, we thought we had got away from the Potawatami because our ponieswere fresh and theirs had been running buffaloes. Rut the truth was theyhad followed us until they heard the noise of the shooting where OurFolks attacked the Kitkahhahki. It was the first they knew of the attackand they went to the help of their friends. Until they came Our Folkshad all the advantage. But the Potawatami shoot to kill. They carrysticks on which to rest the guns, and their horses are trained to standstill. Our men charged them as they came, but the Potawatami cameforward by tens to shoot, and loaded while other tens took their places. .. And the Medicine of the Arrows had been broken. The men of thePotawatami took the hearts of our slain to make strong Medicine fortheir bullets and when the Cheyennes saw what they were doing theyran away. 

"But if we three had not broken the Medicine, the Potawatami would neverhave been in that battle. 

"Thus it is, " said the Dog Soldier, putting his pipe in his belt andgathering his robes about him, "that wars are lost and won, not only inbattle, but in the minds and the hearts of the people, and by thekeeping of those things that are sacred to the people, rather than byseeking those things that are pleasing to one's self. Do you understandthis, my son?"

"I think so, " said Oliver, remembering what he had heard at school. Hefelt the hand of the Dog Chief on his shoulder, but when he looked up itwas only the Museum attendant come to tell him it was closing time. 

THE END

APPENDIX

GLOSSARY OF INDIAN AND SPANISH NAMES

THE BEGINNING OF THE TRAIL

The appendix is that part of a book in which you find the reallyimportant things, put there to keep them from interfering with thestory. Without an appendix you might not discover that all of theimportant things in this book really _are_ true. 

All the main traveled roads in the United States began as animal orIndian trails. There is no map that shows these roads as they originallywere, but the changes are not so many as you might think. Railways havetunneled under passes where the buffalo went over, hills have been cutaway and swamps filled in, but the general direction and in many placesthe actual grades covered by the great continental highways remainthe same. 

THE BUFFALO COUNTRY

_Licks_ are places where deer and buffaloes went to lick the salt theyneeded out of the ground. They were once salt springs or lakeslong dried up. 

_Wallows_ were mudholes where the buffaloes covered themselves with mudas a protection from mosquitoes and flies. They would lie down and workthemselves into the muddy water up to their eyes. Crossing the GreatPlains, you can still see round green places that were wallows in thedays of the buffalo. 

The Pawnees are a roving tribe, in the region of the Platte and KansasRivers. If they were just setting out on their journey when the childrenheard them they would sing:--

"Dark against the sky, yonder distant line Runs before us. Trees we see, long the line of trees Bending, swaying in the wind. 

"Bright with flashing light, yonder distant line Runs before us. Swiftly runs, swift the river runs, Winding, flowing through the land. "

But if they happened to be crossing the river at the time they would besinging to _Kawas_, their eagle god, to help them. They had a song forcoming up on the other side, and one for the mesas, with long, flat-sounding lines, and a climbing song for the mountains. 

You will find all these songs and some others in a book by Miss Fletcherin the public library. 

TRAIL TALK

You will find the story of the Coyote and the Burning Mountain in mybook _The Basket Woman_. 

The Tenasas were the Tennessee Mountains. Little River is on the map. 

Flint Ridge is a great outcrop of flint stone in Ohio, near the town ofZanesville. Sky-Blue-Water is Lake Superior. 

Cahokia is the great mound near St. Louis, on the Illinois side of theriver. 

When the Lenni-Lenape speaks of a Telling of his Fathers about themastodon or the mammoth, he was probably thinking of the story that ispictured on the Lenape stone, which seems to me to be the one told byArrumpa. Several Indian tribes had stories of a large extinct animalwhich they called the Big Moose, or the Big Elk, because moose and elkwere the largest animals they knew. 

ARRUMPA'S STORY

I am not quite certain of the places mentioned in this story, becausethe country has so greatly changed, but it must have been in Florida orGeorgia, probably about where the Savannah River is now. It is in thatpart of the country we have the proof that man was here in America atthe same time as the mammoth. 

Shell mounds occur all along the coast. No doubt the first permanenttrails led to them from the hunting-grounds. Every year the tribe wentdown to gather sea-food, and left great piles of shells many feet deep, sometimes covering several acres. It is from these mounds that wediscover the most that we know about early man in the United States. 

There are three different opinions as to where the first men in Americacame from. First, that they came from some place in the North that isnow covered with Arctic ice; second, that they came from Europe andAfrica by way of some islands that are now sunk beneath the AtlanticOcean; third, that they came from Asia across Behring Strait and theAleutian Islands. 

The third theory seems the most reasonable. But also it is very likelythat some people did come from the lost islands in the Atlantic, andleft traces in South America and the West Indies. It may be that DorcasJane and Oliver will yet meet somebody in the Museum country who cantell them about it. 

The Great Cold that Arrumpa speaks about must have been the Ice Age, that geologists tell us once covered the continent of North America, almost down to the Ohio River. It came and went slowly, and probably sochanged the climate that the elephants, tigers, camels, and otheranimals that used to be found in the United States could no longerlive in it. 

THE COYOTE'S STORY

_Tamal-Pyweack_--Wall-of-Shining-Rocks--is an Indian name for the RockyMountains. _Backbone-of-the-World_ is another. 

The Country of the Dry Washes is between the Rockies and the SierraNevadas, toward the south. A dry wash is the bed of a river that runsonly in the rainy season. As such rivers usually run very swiftly, theymake great ragged gashes across a country. 

There are several places in the Rockies called _Wind Trap_. The CrookedHorn might have been Pike's Peak, as you can see by the pictures. Thewhite men had to rediscover this trail for themselves, for the Indiansseemed to have forgotten it, but the railroad that passes through theRockies, near Pike's Peak, follows the old trail of the Bighorn. 

It is very likely that the Indian in America had the dog for his friendas soon as he had fire, if not before it. Most of the Indian stories ofthe origin of fire make the coyote the first discoverer and bringer offire to man. The words that Howkawanda said before he killed the Bighornwere probably the same that every Indian hunter uses when he goeshunting big game: "O brother, we are about to kill you, we hope that youwill understand and forgive us. " Unless they say something like that thespirit of the animal killed might do them some mischief. 

THE CORN WOMAN'S STORY

Indian corn, _mahiz_, or maize, is supposed to have come originally fromCentral America. But the strange thing about it is that no specimen ofthe wild plant from which it might have developed has ever been found. This would indicate that the development must have taken place a verylong time ago, and the parent corn may have belonged to the age of themastodon and other extinct creatures. 

Different tribes probably brought it into the United States at differenttimes. Some of it came up the Atlantic Coast, across the West Indies. The fragments of legend from which I made the story of the Corn Womanwere found among the Indians that were living in Virginia, Kentucky, andTennessee at the time the white men came. 

Chihuahua is a province and city in Old Mexico, the trail that leads toit one of the oldest lines of tribal migration on the continent. 

To be given to the Sun meant to have your heart cut out on a sacrificialstone, usually on the top of a hill, or other high place. The Aztecswere an ancient Mexican people who practiced this kind of sacrifice as apart of their religion. If it was from them the Corn Woman obtained theseed, it must have been before they moved south to Mexico City, wherethe Spaniards found them in the sixteenth century. 

A _teocali_ was an Aztec temple. 

MOKE-ICHA'S STORY

A _tipi_ is the sort of tent used by the Plains Indians, made of tannedskins. It is sometimes called a _lodge_, and the poles on which theskins are hung are usually cut from the tree which for this reason iscalled the lodge-pole pine. It is important to remember things likethis. By knowing the type of house used, you can tell more about thekind of life lived by that tribe than by any other one thing. When thepoles were banked up with earth the house was called an _earth lodge_. If thatched with brush and grass, a _wickiup_. In the eastern UnitedStates, where huts were covered with bark, they were generally called_wigwams_. In the desert, if the house was built of sticks and earth orbrush, it was called a _hogan_, and if of earth made into rude bricks, a _pueblo_. 

The Queres Indians live all along the Rio Grande in pueblos, since thereis no need of their living now in the cliffs. You can read about them atTy-uonyi in "The Delight-Makers. "

A _kiva_ is the underground chamber of the house, or if not underground, at least without doors, entered from the top by means of a ladder. 

_Shipapu_, the place from which the Queres and other pueblo Indianscame, means, in the Queres language, "Black Lake of Tears, " andaccording to the Zuñi, "Place of Encompassing Mist, " neither of whichsounds like a pleasant place to live. Nevertheless, all the Queresexpect to go there when they die. It is the Underworld from which theTwin Brothers led them when the mud of the earliest world was scarcelydried, and they seem to have gone wandering about until they foundTy-uonyi, where they settled. 

The stone puma, which Moke-icha thought was carved in her honor, canstill be seen on the mesa back from the river, south of Tyuonyi. But theNavajo need not have made fun of the Cliff-Dwellers for praying to apuma, since the Navajos of to-day still say their prayers to the bear. The Navajos are a wandering tribe, and pretend to despise all people wholive in fixed dwellings. 

The "ghosts of prayer plumes, " which Moke-icha saw in the sky, is theMilky Way. The Queres pray by the use of small feathered sticks plantedin the ground or in crevices of the rocks in high and lonely places. Asthe best feathers for this purpose are white, and as everything isthought of by Indians as having a spirit, it was easy for them to thinkof that wonderful drift of stars across the sky as the spirits ofprayers, traveling to Those Above. If ever you should think of making aprayer plume for yourself, do not on any account use the feathers of owlor crow, as these are black prayers and might get you accused ofwitchcraft. 

The _Uakanyi_, to which Tse-tse wished to belong, were the Shamans ofWar; they had all the secrets of strategy and spells to protect a manfrom his enemies. There were also Shamans of hunting, of medicine andpriestcraft. 

It was while the Queres were on their way from Shipapu that theDelight-Makers were sent to keep the people cheerful. The white mud withwhich they daubed themselves is a symbol of light, and the corn leavestied in their hair signify fruitfulness, for the corn needs cheering upalso. There must be something in it, for you notice that clowns, whosebusiness it is to make people laugh, always daub themselves with white. 

THE MOUND-BUILDER'S STORY

The Mound-Builders lived in the Mississippi Valley about a thousandyears ago. They built chiefly north of the Ohio River, until they weredriven out by the Lenni-Lenape about five hundred years before theEnglish and French began to settle that country. They went south and areprobably the same people we know as Creeks and Cherokees. 

_Tallegewi_ is the only name for the Mound-Builders that has come downto us, though some people insist that it ought to be _Allegewi_, and thesingular instead of being _Tallega_ should be _Allega_. 

The _Lenni-Lenape_ are the tribes we know as Delawares. The name means"Real People. "

The _Mingwe_ or _Mingoes_ are the tribes that the French calledIroquois, and the English, Five Nations. They called themselves "Peopleof the Long House. " _Mingwe_ was the name by which they were known toother tribes, and means "stealthy, " "treacherous. " All Indian tribeshave several names. 

The _Onondaga_ were one of the five nations of the Iroquois. They livedin western New York. 

_Shinaki_ was somewhere in the great forest of Canada. _Namaesippu_means "Fish River, " and must have been that part of the St. Lawrencebetween Lakes Erie and Huron. 

The _Peace Mark_ was only one of the significant ways in which Indianspainted their faces. The marks always meant as much to other Indians asthe device on a knight's shield meant in the Middle Ages. 

_Scioto_ means "long legs, " in reference to the river's many branches. 

_Wabashiki_ means "gleaming white, " on account of the white limestonealong its upper course. _Maumee_ and _Miami_ are forms of the same word, the name of the tribe that once lived along those waters. 

_Kaskaskia_ is also the name of a tribe and means, "They scrape themoff, " or something of that kind, referring to the manner in which theyget rid of their enemies, the Peorias. 

The Indian word from which we take _Sandusky_ means "cold springs, " or"good water, here, " or "water pools, " according to the person whouses it. 

You will find all these places on the map. 

"_G'we_!" or "_Gowe_!" as it is sometimes written, was the war cry ofthe Lenape and the Mingwe on their joint wars. At least that was the wayit sounded to the people who heard it. Along the eastern front of thesenations it was softened to "_Zowie_!" and in that form you can hear thepeople of eastern New York and Vermont still using it as slang. 

THE ONONDAGA'S STORY

The _Red Score_ of the Lenni-Lenape was a picture writing made in redchalk on birch bark, telling how the tribe came down out of Shinaki anddrove out the Tallegewi in a hundred years' war. Several imperfectcopies of it are still in existence and one nearly perfectinterpretation made for the English colonists. It was in the nature ofshort-hand memoranda of the most interesting items of their tribalhistory, but unless Oliver and Dorcas Jane meet somebody in the Museumcountry who knew the Tellings that went with the Red Score, it isunlikely we shall ever know just what did happen. 

Any early map of the Ohio Valley, or any good automobile map of thecountry south and east of the Great Lakes, will give the_Muskingham-Mahoning Trail_, which was much used by the first whitesettlers in that country. The same is true of the old Iroquois TradeTrail, as it is still a well-traveled country road through the heart ofNew York State. _Muskingham_ means "Elk's Eye, " and referred to theclear brown color of the water. _Mahoning_ means "Salt Lick, " or, moreliterally, "There a Lick. "

_Mohican-ittuck_, the old name for the Hudson River, means the river ofthe Mohicans, whose hunting-grounds were along its upper reaches. 

_Niagara_ probably means something in connection with the river at thatpoint, the narrows, or the neck. According to the old spelling it shouldhave been pronounced Nee-ä-gär'-ä, but it isn't. 

_Adirondack_ means "Bark-Eaters, " a local name for the tribe that oncelived there and in seasons of scarcity ate the inner bark of thebirch tree. 

_Algonquian_ is a name for one of the great tribal groups, severalmembers of which occupied the New England country at the beginning ofour history. The name probably means "Place of the Fish-Spearing, " inreference to the prow of the canoe, which was occupied by the man withthe fish spear. The Eastern Algonquians were all canoers. 

_Wabaniki_ means "Eastlanders, " people living toward the East. 

The American Indians, like all other people in the world, believed insupernatural beings of many sorts, spirits of woods and rocks, Underwater People and an Underworld. They had stories of ghosts andflying heads and giants. Most of the tribes believed in animals that, when they were alone, laid off their animal skins and thought andbehaved as men. Some of them thought of the moon and stars as otherworlds like ours, inhabited by people like us who occasionally came toearth and took away with them mortals whom they loved. In the varioustribal legends can be found the elements of almost every sort ofEuropean fairy tale. 

_Shaman_ is not an Indian word at all, but has been generally adopted asa term of respect to indicate men or women who became wise in the thingsof the spirit. Sometimes a knowledge of healing herbs was included inthe Shaman's education, and often he gave advice on personal matters. But the chief business of the Shaman was to keep man reconciled with thespirit world, to persuade it to be on his side, or to prevent thespirits from doing him harm. A Shaman was not a priest, nor was heelected to office, and in some tribes he did not even go to war, butstayed at home to protect the women and children. Any one could be aShaman who thought himself equal to it and could persuade people tobelieve in him. 

_Taryenya-wagon_ was the Great Spirit of the Five Nations, who was alsocalled "Holder of the Heavens. "

Indian children always belong to the mother's side of the house. Theonly way in which the Shaman's son could be born an Onondaga was for themother to be adopted into the tribe before the son was born. Adoptionswere very common, orphans, prisoners of war, and even white people beingmade members of the tribe in this way. 

THE SNOWY EGRET'S STORY

The Great Admiral was, of course, Christopher Columbus. You will findall about him and the other Spanish gentlemen in the school history. 

Something special deserves to be said about Panfilo de Narvaez, since itwas he who set the Spanish exploration of the territory of the UnitedStates in motion. He landed on the west coast of Florida in 1548, andafter penetrating only a little way into the interior was driven out bythe Indians. But he left Juan Ortiz, one of his men, a prisoner amongthem, who was afterward discovered by Soto and became his interpreterand guide. 

There is no good English equivalent for Soto's title of _Adelantado_. Itmeans the officer in charge of a newly discovered country. _Cay_ is anold Spanish word for islet. "Key" is an English version of the sameword. _Cay Verde_ is "Green Islet. "

The pearls of _Cofachique_ were fresh-water pearls, very good ones, too, such as are still found in many American rivers and creeks. 

The Indians that Soto found were very likely descended from the earlierMound-Builders of the Ohio Valley. They showed a more advancedcivilization, which was natural, since it was four or five hundred yearsafter the Lenni-Lenape drove them south. Later they were called "Creeks"by the English, on account of the great number of streams intheir country. 

_Cacique_ and _Cacica_ were titles brought up by the Spaniards fromMexico and applied to any sort of tribal rulers. They are used in allthe old manuscripts and have been adopted generally by modern writers, since no one knows just what were the native words. 

The reason the Egret gives for the bird dances--that it makes the worldwork together better--she must have learned from an Indian, since thereis always some such reason back of every primitive dance. It makes thecorn grow or the rain fall or the heart of the enemy to weaken. TheCofachiquans were not the only people who learned their dances from thewater birds, as the ancient Greeks had a very beautiful one which theytook from the cranes and another from goats leaping on the hills. 

THE PRINCESS'S STORY

Hernando de Soto landed first at Tampa Bay in Florida, and after a shortexcursion into the country, wintered at Ana-ica Apalache, an Indian townon Apalachee Bay, the same at which Panfilo de Narvaez had beaten hisspurs into nails to make the boats in which he and most of his menperished. It was between Tampa and Anaica Apalache that Soto met andrescued Juan Ortiz, who had been all that time a prisoner and slave tothe Indians. 

When the Princess says that Talimeco was a White Town, she means that itwas a Town of Refuge, a Peace Town, in which no killing could be done. Several Indian tribes had these sanctuaries. 

In an account of Soto's expedition, which was written sometime afterwardfrom the stories of survivors, it is said by one that the Princess wentwith him of her own accord, and by another that she was a prisoner. Thetruth probably is that if she had not gone willingly, she would havebeen compelled. There is also mention of the man to whom she gave thepearls for assisting at her escape, six pounds of them, as large ashazel nuts, though the man himself would never tell where he got them. 

The story of Soto's death, together with many other interesting things, can be read in the translation of the original account made by FrederickWebb Hodge. 

THE ROAD-RUNNER'S STORY

Cabeza de Vaca was one of Narvaez's men who was cast ashore in one ofthe two boats ever heard from, on the coast of Texas. He wandered forsix years in that country before reaching the Spanish settlements in OldMexico, and it was his account of what he saw there and in Florida thatled to the later expeditions of both Soto and Coronado. 

Francisco de Coronado brought his expedition up from Old Mexico in 1540, and reached Wichita in the summer of 1541. His party was the first tosee and describe the buffalo. There is an account of the expeditionwritten by Castenada, one of his men, translated by Frederick WebbHodge, which is easy and interesting reading. 

The Seven Cities were the pueblos of Old Zuñi, some of which are stillinhabited. Ruins of the others may be seen in the Valley of Zuñi in NewMexico. The name is a Spanish corruption of _Ashiwi_, their own name forthemselves. We do not know why the early explorers called thecountry "Cibola. "

The Colorado River was first called _Rio del Tizón_, "River of theBrand, " by the Spaniards, on account of the local custom of carryingfire in rolls of cedar bark. Coronado's men were the first to discoverthe Grand Cañon. 

_Pueblo_, the Spanish word for "town, " is applied to all Indians livingin the terraced houses of the southwest. The Zuñis, Hopis, and Queresare the principal pueblo tribes. 

You will find _Tiguex_ on the map, somewhere between the Ty-uonyi andthe place where the Corn Woman crossed the Rio Grande. _Cicuye_ is onthe map as Pecos, in Texas. 

The Pawnees at this time occupied the country around the Platte River. Their name is derived from a word meaning "horn, " and refers to theirmethod of dressing the scalplock with grease and paint so that it stoodup stiffly, ready to the enemy's hand. Their name for themselves isChahiksichi-hiks, "Men of men. "

THE CONDOR'S STORY

The _Old Zuñi Trail_ may still be followed from the Rio Grande to theValley of Zuñi. _El Morro_, or "Inscription Rock, " as it is called, isbetween Acoma and the city of Old Zuñi which still goes by the name of"Middle Ant Hill of the World. "

In a book by Charles Lummis, entitled _Strange Corners of Our Country_, there is an excellent description of the Rock and copies of the mostinteresting inscriptions, with translations. 

The Padres of Southwestern United States were Franciscan Friars who cameas missionaries to the Indians. They were not all of them so unwise asFather Letrado. 

_Peyote_, the dried fruit of a small cactus, the use of which was onlyknown in the old days to a few of the Medicine Men. The effect was likethat of opium, and gave the user visions. 

THE DOG SOLDIER'S STORY

The Cheyenne Country, at the time of this story, was south of thePawnees, along the Taos Trail. All Plains Indians move about a greatdeal, so that you will not always hear of them in the same neighborhood. 

You can read how the Cheyennes were saved from the Hoh by a dog, in abook by George Bird Grinnell, called the _Fighting Cheyennes_. There isalso an account in that book of how their Medicine Bundle was taken fromthem by the Pawnees, and how, partly by force and partly by trickery, three of the arrows were recovered. 

The Medicine Bundle of the tribe is as sacred to them as our flag is tous. It stands for something that cannot be expressed in any other way. They feel sure of victory when it goes out with them, and think that ifanything is done by a member of the tribe that is contrary to theMedicine of the Tribe, the whole tribe will suffer for it. This verylikely is the case with all national emblems; at any rate, it wouldprobably be safer while our tribe is at war not to do anything contraryto what our flag stands for. All that is left of the Cheyenne Bundle isnow with the remnant of the tribe in Oklahoma. The fourth arrow is stillattached to the Morning Star Bundle of the Pawnees, where it may be seeneach year in the spring when the Medicine of the Bundle is renewed. 

This is the song the Suh-tai boy--the Suh-tai are a sub-tribe of theCheyenne--made for his war club:--

"Hickory bough that the wind makes strong, -- I made it--Bones of the earth, the granite stone, -- I made it--Hide of the bull to bind them both, -- I made it--Death to the foe who destroys our land, -- We make it!"

The line that the Suh-tai boy drew between himself and the pursuingPotawatomi was probably a line of sacred meal, or tobacco dust, drawnacross the trail while saying, "Give me protection from my enemies; letnone of them pass this line. Shield my heart from them. Let not my lifebe threatened. " Unless the enemy possesses a stronger Medicine, this makesone safe. 

GLOSSARY OF INDIAN AND SPANISH NAMES

[Transcribers Note: ASCII just doesn't contain all the charactersrequired for the Glossary. This is an _attempt_ at rendering the Glossary. ]

ä sounds like a in father

a " " a " bay

a " " a " fat

á " " a " sofa

_e_ " " a " ace

e " " e " met

e " " e " me

e " " e " her

_i_ " " e " eve

i " " i " pin

i " " i " pine

o " " o " note

o " " o " not

u " " oo " food

u " " u " nut

Ä'-co-mä

A-ch_e_'-s_e_

Ä-d_e_-län-tä-do

Äl-tä-pä'-hä

Äl'-vär Nuñez (noon'-yath) Cä-b_e_'-zä (thä) d_e_ Vä'-cä

Än-ä-_i_'-cä

Ä-pach'-e

Ä-pä-lä'-ch_e_

Ä-pun-ke'-wis

Är-äp'-ä-hoes

Är-rum'-pä

Bäl-bo'-ä

B_i_'s-cay'-n_e_

Cabeza de Vaca (cä-b_e_'-thä d_e_ Vä'-cä)

C-c_i_'-cä

Cä-c_i_que'

Cä-ho'-ki-a

Cay Verd'-e

Cen-t_e_-o'-tl_i_

Chä-hik-s_i_-ch_i_'-hiks

Cheyenne (shi-en')

Ch_i_-ä'

Chihuahua (ch_i_-wä'-wa)

C_i_'-bo-lä

C_i_'-cu-y_e_

C_i_'-no-äve

Co-ch_i_'-t_i_

Co-fä-vh_i_'qu_e_

Co-fäque'

Co-man'ch_e_

Cor-t_e_z'

D_i_-n_e_'

_E_l Mor'-ro

_E_s'-t_e_-vän

Frän-c_i_s'-co d_e_ Co-ro-nä'-do

Frän-c_e_s'-co L_e_-trä'-do

Gä-hon'-gä

Gän-dä'-yäh

Hä-lo'-nä

Hä'-w_i_-kuh

Her-nän'-do d_e_ So'-to

H_i_s-pä-n_i_-o'-lä

Ho'-gan

Ho-h_e_'

Ho'-p_i_

Ho-tai' (ti)

How-ka-wän'-dä

_I_'-ró-quois

_I_s'-lay

_I_s-s_i_-wün'

Juan de Oñate (hwän d_e_ on-yä'-t_e_)

Juan Ortiz (hwän or'-t_i_z)

Kä-b_e_y'-d_e_

Kä-nä'-w_á_h

Kás-kas'-kl-_a_

Kät'-zi-mo

K'ia-k_i_'-mä

Ki'-ó-was

Kit-käh-häh'-k_i_

K_i_'-vä

Kó-kó'-mó

Koos-koos'-ki

Kó-shä'-r_e_

Lén'-n_i_-Len-ape'

Lü'-cäs de Ayllon (Il'-yon)

Lujan (lü-hän')

Mahiz (m_ä-iz'_)

Mä'-hüts

Mäl-do-nä'-do

Mät'-sä-k_i_

Mén'-gwé

Mesquite (m_es_-keét')

Mín'-go

Mó-h_í'_-cán-ít'-tück

Mo-k_e_-ích'-ä

M'toü'-lin

Müs-king'-ham

Nä-mae-s_i_p'-pu

Narvaez (när-vä'-_e_th)

Navajo (nä'-vä-hó)

N_i-é'_-tó

Nó'-päl

Nü-ke'-wis

Occatilla (õc-cä-t_i_l'-ya)

Ock-mül'-gée

O'-co-n_ee_

O-cüt'-_e_

O

O-dów'-as

O-g_e'_-ch_ee_

Olla (ól'-yä)

Ong-yä-tás'-s_e_

On-on-da'-gä

O-pä'-tä

O-wén-üng'-ä

Pän-f_i_'-lo de När-vä'-_e_z (_e_th)

Pän-ü'-co

Paw-nee'

P_e_'-cós

P_e_'-dró Mo'-ron

P_e_-r_i_'-co

P_e_-yo'-t_e_

P_i_-rä'-guäs

Pitahaya (pit-ä-hi'-ä)

P_i_-zär'-ro

Ponce (pón'-th_e_) d_e_ L_e_-on'

Pót-ä-wät'-ä-m_i_

Pueblo (pwéb'-tó)

Qu_e_-r_e'_-chos

Qu_e'_-r_e_s

Qu_e_-r_e_-sän'

Qu_í_-v_i'_-rä

R_i'_-tó de los Frijoles (fr_í_-ho'-l_e_s)

Sahuaro (sä-wä'-ró)

Scioto (sí-ó'-to)

Shä'-m_a_n

Sh_i_-nák'-_i_

Sh_i_'p-ä-pü'

Sh_i_-w_i_'-nä

Shó-sho'-n_e_s

Shüng-ä-k_e'_-lä

Sons _e'_-só, ts_e'_-nä

Süh-tai' (ti)

Tä'-kü-Wä'-kin

Täl-_í_-m_e'_-co

Täl-l_e'_-gä

Täl-l_e_-g_e'_-w_i_

Tä'-mäl-Py-we-ack'

Tä'-os

Tär-yen-y_a_-wag'-on

Tejo (ta'-ho)

Ten'-ä-säs

T_e_-o-cäl'-_e_s

Thlä-po-po-k_e_'-ä

T_i_-ä'-kens

Tiguex (t_i_'-gash)

T_i_'-p_i_

Tom'-b_e_s

To-yä-län'-n_e_

Ts_e_-ts_e_-yo'-t_e_

Ts_i_s-ts_i_s'-täs

Tus-cä-loos'-ä

Ty-ü-on'-y_i_

U-ä-kän-y_i_'

Vär'-gäs

Wä-bä-moo'-in

Wä-bä-n_i_'-k_i_

Wä-bä-sh_i_'-k_i_

Wap'-i-ti

W_i_ch'-_i_-täs

Zuñí (zun'-yee)