I decided that my time had come—and then Peter trotted around the rock-shoulder, a worried look on his fat face. For a bare instant the Dutchman hung paralyzed, one foot off the ground. The next moment his heavy musket had leaped to his shoulder, and the flame darted from the muzzle. But the bear was no less quick. It lurched forward and to one side, ignoring me with the changeable ferocity of its kind, and all intent upon this latest intruder. By doing so it took Peter's shot in the shoulder instead of in the brain, and this served only to infuriate it the more. The creature's snarls were demoniacal as it reared to its hind-feet again, and advanced at a waddling run, heedless of the blood that streamed from the bullet-hole in its furry hide.
"My gun, Peter!" I cried. "Down-hill! Never mind me."
Peter's answer was to draw knife and tomahawk, jump over my body that was sprawled out before him and meet the bear half-way with a whirling wheel of steel. That was a battle for you! Peter, big as he was, looked small beside the bear. The great beast's mask overhung the Dutchman's head, and for a moment I thought it would snap off Peter's neck. The cavernous mouth was distended; the little eyes gleamed red; the jaws came together with a click. But Peter was not there. With the amazing agility that was always so out-of-place in connection with his awkward figure he had stooped, evaded the beast's embracing paws and ripped it down the ribs with knife and tomahawk.
The bear howled in mingled pain and anger, slumped to its four feet and circled its enemy—and now Peter was at a disadvantage, for he would not leave me uncovered, and this circumscribed the area he could maneuver over. The bear seemed to comprehend this. It made a quick dash at me, and when Peter stepped lightly betwixt us reared up on hind-legs for the third time, and rushed at Peter, forepaws cast wide to hug him in. And Peter met the rush without budging.
I expected to see the Dutchman toppled over, but he held his ground. The bear caught him, its furry paws, so absurdly like a man's arms, enfolded him, their claws ripping convulsively at his shirt and breeches. But Peter was busy too. Hugged close to the big beast's body, he was butchering for all he was worth with both his tools. His knife worked in and out—in and out. His hatchet in his left hand pecked remorselessly at groin and hams.
The bear's insane growls, low, tense, rasping drones of utter rage, became instinct with pain. The creature yelped. Its grip slackened, and Peter tore himself away. But I lay aghast at sight of the Dutchman's reeking figure. He had dodged the snapping jaws successfully, but no celerity of movement had availed against those two fore-paws working with spasmodic energy. His back, flanks and thighs were one mess of blood. His tattered clothing was in ribbons. But he crouched unperturbed, his gaze fixed on the bear.
"Give over, Peter!" I cried again. "Run whilst you can. I will roll down the hill."
"Stay!" he croaked at me, without shifting his eyes from his antagonist. "I finish him dis time."
The bear felt the same way, and prowled forward on all-fours, its roars echoing between the hillsides. Peter, anticipating its rush, sprang in so swiftly that his tomahawk clattered on the lowered skull and chopped out one of the little, red eyes. Then the bear went mad. So far it had fought with the cautious circumspection of a great, stupid man-beast, aware that it was at a disadvantage as regards wits. Now it simply threw itself upon Peter. They met in a desperate clinch, as the bear heaved itself erect, and it hacked at him with all four sets of claws, rolling over and over on the ground, until Peter slipped free and staggered off, wiping the blood from his eyes.
He had no time to rest, however. The beast was on him once more, bellowing wildly, its hide gashed and torn. They came chest to chest in full career, Peter chopping and stabbing, the bear champing its teeth and slashing with its claws; and I found myself crawling toward them, dragging my injured ankle, fighting over a yard of pebbly slope to gain a foot of distance. But before I could reach them the end came.
The bear seemed to throw its weight forward with desperate energy and Peter reeled back, exposing his throat so that the bear bent its head and snapped for the throat. But Peter twisted violently and the savage teeth met on his collar-bone. In its preoccupation with this new hold the beast must have relaxed its grip upon him, for in that very moment he slipped his knife home through a gash in its ribs and reached its heart.
It tottered there, its eyes glazing slowly, whilst Peter frantically whittled at its vitals and the blood pumped from the hole in its side and its claws dug at him with dying energy. Then it slumped over on its back, dragging Peter with it. When I reached the two bodies they lay in one heap, the bear's teeth still gripped in the flesh of the Dutchman's shoulder, his knife embedded in the beast's flank. I pried loose the bear's teeth with my knife-blade before the final rigor set in, and pulled Peter away as gently as I could. I was sure his life was oozing with every gush of the red tide. But he opened his eyes and grinned up at me.
"I make me a fine robe of dot pelt—Ja," he squeaked faintly.
I did what I might to staunch Peter's terrible wounds, but that was very little. We had no medicines and no cloths, save a handful or two of tow-wadding for the cleaning of our pieces. I used this stuff to pack the worst gashes, and bound the lips of other wounds with strips of hide cut from my shirt that I wound about his body. Then I scrambled over to his musket and loaded and fired it twice, in case Tawannears had not heard the first report. This much accomplished, I accumulated a stack of twigs and damp leaves and set them alight with my flint and steel. I knew the plume of smoke would attract the Seneca's eye, if his attention had been drawn by the musket-shots, and moreover, 'twould serve to guide him to us all the quicker.
Afterwards I made Peter comfortable as best I could, stacking a pillow of leaves beneath his head and searching his inert form for concealed wounds that I had missed in my first hasty examination. He was scratched from instep to scalp, scarce an inch of skin left whole. Yet he breathed, as I convinced myself by holding my knife-blade to his lips, and his pulse still fluttered feebly. His heart I could not hear. His eyes were closed. He had not uttered a sound after that last expiring flicker of vitality when he promised himself "a fine robe of dot pelt"; and I was certain he was dying. My one idea was to ease him out with as little suffering as possible.
But Tawannears refused to accept my theory when he climbed the hillside an hour later.
"Corlaer will not die today," he declared looking up from the Dutchman's scarred body. "Otetiani stopped the bleeding in time."
"'Tis impossible," I protested. "You have not seen how dreadfully he is hurt. And the bleeding is not stopped."
Tawannears removed the pack I had inserted in one of the ghastliest of the wounds in Peter's belly.
"See!" he said, holding back the flaps of flesh. "It is a clean wound—or it will be when I have drawn the poison from it. No ordinary man could have lived through this, but Corlaer is not ordinary. His fat has saved him. None of these hurts goes deep enough to kill."
I joined the Seneca and probed the gashes with a knife-blade seared in the flame. Tawannears was correct. In no case had the bear's claws sliced through the overlying blubber into the vital parts. Such wounds would have meant the slashing of our intestines for Tawannears or me, but they had done no more than drain Peter of some of the blood that always poured in a torrent through his giant frame. His shoulder was badly torn where the beast had nipped him with its teeth, and we could not be certain whether the bone was broken; but aside from loss of blood and the chance of poisoning, here again 'twas a mere flesh wound, more ill to look upon than to cure, as Tawannears asserted.
"There is the chance that Peter will die," he admitted. "Not today, but tonight or tomorrow or the day after that. If we are to save him we must have him under cover. We must secure herbs to dress his wounds. We must have warmth to fan his life-spark alight.
"Otetiani must first skin the bear here. We shall have need of the hide and the meat, and the fat will make grease for a healing salve. In the meantime, Tawannears will seek shelter. We must hurry, brother. Before night we must have him settled quietly. He should be moved before his mind escapes from the cloud that is over it."
When Tawannears returned he brought two young saplings, which he had laced together with vines to form a litter, and we rolled Peter—my swollen ankle would not permit me to exert my full strength—upon it. He had also cut a stick for me so that I could hobble beside him and be of some aid in handling the litter.
"We owe much to the bear," remarked Tawannears grimly. "He had a comfortable den at the foot of this slope. We will lower Peter to it, and then you shall clean it whilst Tawannears hunts herbs to mingle with the bear's grease. If Hawenneyu's face is smiling, Corlaer will be a whole man before the Winter's snow is gone."
It was a back-breaking task to work down-hill with that inert weight, and most of the effort fell upon Tawannears. But we made it, and dragged the litter slowly into the mouth of a shallow cave under the shadow of a jutting pinnacle of rock. The bear had left visible traces of his occupation in the shape of a litter of bones and filth, and I made shift to sweep out the rock chamber with a broom of pine-boughs, and later burned over the floor and walls with torches of light-wood. A fire in a convenient corner by the entrance drove out the dampness and the lingering beast odor, and long before Tawannears was back I had carried water from a near-by brook that fed our little river.
All this time Peter had not moved a muscle. He lay like a lump of tallow, white and wan, exactly as if he were a corpse. The shaking he had received in being moved down from the ledge to this level had reopened several of his wounds, but I contrived to staunch the blood with bunches of leaves that Tawannears indicated to me as possessing styptical properties, and even washed the gore from his head and arms and torso. I met Tawannears as I was limping up from the brook with a second potful of water, and he took it from my hand and directed me to cut pine-boughs for bedding for the three of us.
Neither of us slept much that night, however, he because there was too much to be done, I in part because of the need to help him, and likewise because of the throbbing of my ankle. From the slabs of fat that I had hacked from the bear's belly Tawannears brewed a heavy grease, and when this had boiled to a paste he mixed with it quantities of leaves and roots, and bits of bark shredded fine, stirring the mess so that it might not catch fire. It had a fine, savory smell. When it was of such a consistency that the stick he used in stirring would stand upright he withdrew it from the fire, and between us we laid bare Peter's mangled body.
Tawannears' first thought was to wash those parts which I had not attended to, and after that he overspread the wounds with his salve, one by one. Next we boiled out the meager handfuls of tow I had used to pack the wounds and reëmployed them for dressings, cutting up portions of our own garments for bandages. We cast aside the remnants of Peter's shirt and breeches and reclad him in Tawannears' and mine, I offering the upper and Tawannears the nether garment, slitting them to make room for his cumbrous form. And lest he take cold in the night we covered him with aromatic pine-boughs and built up the fire to a roaring blaze.
Then, Peter being attended to, Tawannears turned his attention to my ankle, prepared a plaster of leaves immersed in boiling water and wrapped the whole in mud, bidding me sleep; and when I demanded to stand my watch, promised to awake me in due time. But the bare truth is that I collapsed from sheer weariness and suffering in that hour which precedes the dawn when life is at its lowest ebb, and I did not awaken until Tawannears touched my shoulder as the noon sun beat into the cavern entrance. He put aside my protests with a smile, and handed me a barken bowl of bear's broth.
"Drink," came Peter's voice weakly. "Dot bear makes goodt soup.Ja!"
There across the cave the big Dutchman lay with his eyes open again and a grin on his marred face.
"Is he—alive?" I asked in amazement.
Tawannears nodded, still smiling, and Peter's grin broadened.
"Dis time Peter hafe der choke on you, eh?" He shook a feeble fist at me.
"You t'ink I die, eh? Nein, we need bear's grease for der Winter, dot's all."
But it was many a long week before Peter was able to be up and out with us at our daily chores in the valley. Most of his wounds healed rapidly, thanks to the magic salve that Tawannears had concocted, and the healing balsam pitch of the fir-trees; but his mangled shoulder was stubborn, and we made him give it time. After the first month there were plenty of small undertakings for him about the cave, and in his own placid fashion he was able to keep sufficiently amused; but no other man I ever knew would have suffered the torments Corlaer did in regaining his health, let alone the physical strain of his struggle with the bear, and come through alive and untouched in sanity.
We never built the cabin we had planned, for we could not have moved Peter with safety a second time. Instead, Tawannears and I sealed up the entrance to the cave with bowlders and mud from the river, leaving a recess for fireplace and smoke-hole. 'Twas a tight, weather-proof habitation, the most comfortable we enjoyed upon our travels. But Tawannears and I were seldom within doors except for meals and sleeping, for there was more work to be done than we could well attend to, especially in the opening months of Winter.
Naked as we had been before Peter's fight with the bear, we were less covered there afterward; and we had pressing urgency for furs to shield us from the cold. But for the hardihood we had acquired we must have died from exposure during the first week, whilst we were tanning skins of deer and sheep and drying sinews for use as thread. If I stick to the truth, I shall admit that we made no very careful job of that first tanning emprise. Our wants were too pronounced. But later Tawannears took the pride of his people in curing and dressing to the softness of woven goods the store of pelts we captured.
For lack of the required materials he could not use the Iroquois method, which I hold to be unmatchable; but, assisted by the devices of the Plains tribes, he turned out robes and garments that no white man could have matched. In place of cornmeal for the dressing process he cooked a paste of brains and liver. His final stage, after soaking, scraping and dressing, was to rub the skin over the rounded top of a tree-stump. Squaw's work, he called it, laughing; but it made a pelt as pliable as a woolen shirt, and of course, 'twas vastly warmer.
We did not want for anything all Winter long. We killed only what we required, and the animals that swarmed in the valley were not frightened away. We had firewood in abundance within twenty steps of our door. We had a warm, dry house. And we found delight in manufacturing for ourselves all manner of little utensils that we had dispensed with on our wanderings, vessels crudely molded in clay—Peter would have toyed with these by the hour; barken bowls and containers; cups and knives and spoons carved from horn.
We furnished our abode with the loving care of housewives. We labored tirelessly over tricksy devices which were unnecessary, merely to surprise one another. But in the long run we wearied of it. The call of the unknown country beyond the Eastern vent of the valley cast its spell upon us. The hunger for the untrodden trail welled up again in our hearts.
One evening as we listened through the open doorway to the drip of the melting snow on the lower hillsides I broke a prolonged silence, a silence compounded of three men's unspoken thoughts.
"Peter," I said, "how many miles did you do today!"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Aroundt der valley—how many miles I don't know."
"Does your shoulder pain you?"
He flexed his arm and shoulder muscles for answer.
I bent my eyes upon Tawannears.
"We have had a long rest, brother. 'Tis time we resumed our quest."
His face lighted with the glad zest it had owned when we first started from the Long House.
"Tawannears is ready," he said.
Corlaer yawned sleepily.
"Ja," he muttered. "We better go. If we stay der moss grows on us. We better go."
We slung on our equipment and tramped out of the valley in the morning, bound we knew not whither. But after beating indiscriminately through the mountains for a week we decided to strike due east, at least, until we discovered a reason for altering our course. And God knows there was no reason for heading otherwise in this devil's country we were soon swallowed up in.
Beyond the range of snow mountains surrounding our happy valley we traversed first a high plateau, well-watered; but a few days' journey eastward conditions changed.
At intervals were low ranges of mountains or hills. Betwixt the ranges were barren plateaus or basins. Sometimes they were covered with coarse grass. Along the infrequent streams were patches of dwarf timber. But often we tramped over bare, blistered rock or dry sand deserts, where the wind, when it blew, scorched us like the breath of an oven.
Many times we should have died had it not been for the forethought of Tawannears, who, during the Winter, had sewn up two sheepskins into water-bags. 'Twas these saw us safe across the deserts.
In the beginning the heat was not bad, but as we continued, and Spring turned to Summer it became severe. The dust of these high deserts had some chemical reaction upon the skin, and our faces were cracked and creased with crusted blood. Food was hard to come at, and when we killed an antelope or deer we must take pains to jerk every shred of meat.
Twice we thought of turning back, but we had a feeling that this country would have to be passed before we could gain more favorable lands, and we did not like to spoil our record of overcoming every difficulty that offered. So we kept on, and always, as we advanced, our privations became more extreme, so much so, that whatever had been our former reasons for continuing, we were now governed rather by dread of what we had seen than by fear of the unknown ahead.
Three months after leaving our happy valley we had our first gleam of hope. We were crossing a barren country of rocks when Tawannears' keen eyes perceived the glitter of sunlight on water. We pressed on eagerly, thinking of drinking without stint, of being able to bathe our hot bodies; and as we drew nearer, our excitement grew, for the water stretched away into the far distance, with no visible banks or boundaries. We concluded it must be a lake of considerable size.
But when we rushed down to the shore and buried our faces in the nearest pool, its water choked and burned our throats. 'Twas bitter salt.
"Der sea again!" exclaimed Peter, puzzled.
"We have gone in a circle," said Tawannears, glumly.
"We have walked for three months with our backs to the westering sun," I cried. "We could not have circled."
"It is another sea," said Tawannears.
"Ja," agreed Corlaer, "der Spanish Sea, eh?"
But I was sure it could not be. I had studied the southern section of the continent fairly drawn upon Master Golden's maps, and I was convinced we could not possibly have reached the coast of the Mexican Gulf of the Main. We were thousands of miles North and West of it. There was also the thought that we had seen no signs of Spanish influence, had not even seen savages for months. And finally, the water was salter than the spray of the Western Ocean.
I suggested, then, that we follow the salt water southward, and this proved me right, for three days' journey disclosed it to be no more than a great lake. We struck off to the southeast where mountains loomed across the sky, and were overjoyed at last to find a sufficiency of water. But we saw smoke-signals on the horizon, and deemed it wisest to continue into the mountains in case the Indians were watching us. Our ammunition was very low, and we could not afford to fight unless we must.
It is strange by what trivial incidents men's lives are influenced. Instead of turning south along the shores of the Salt Lake we might equally as well have turned north. And but for the smoke-signals I have referred to we should certainly have plunged on eastward. In either event the issue of this story would have been different. Strange, indeed! But if we speak of strangeness in our own petty affairs, how much more strange that that Salt Lake should be isolated a thousand miles from the salt sea which doubtless mothered it. After all, what is strange?
In these mountains we discovered the easiest progress was gained by following the channels of the streams that flowed through them, and they carried us south of east into a country more terrifying than the nightmare ranges of mountains and deserts we had recently traversed. It was a country of monstrous plateaus intersected by abysmal ravines, ay, sometimes many thousands of feet in depth, so buried in the bowels of the earth that we, in pursuing the course of a river, could scarce see the daylight overhead. And the rocks were most astonishingly colored, almost as though it had been done by painters' brushes, in lurid streaks, chromatic, dazzling. And there was never a tree or blade of true grass, only occasionally a few stunted bushes, rooted in a sediment of pulverized rock.
Did I say the other was a nightmare country? This was far worse! So empty, so appallingly desolate!
We were picking our way amidst the bowlders in the bottom of one of these ravines when an arrow shattered against a rock under Tawannears' arm. In the same breath Peter leveled his gun and fired, and a squat savage came twirling down through the air and landed almost at our feet. Such of him as was left showed him to have been naked, with long, lank hair and primitive weapons; and whilst we viewed him his comrades assailed us with a continued patter of arrows. We hurried on, thinking to placate them by retreat. But we were mistaken.
They harried us all that day, and we remained awake most of the night in fear of a surprise-attack. In the morning they were at our heels again. Day succeeded day, and they clung to us. After their first experience they never tried to rush us, but they were numerous and persistent and uncannily skillful in utilizing the cover of the rocks; and we were obliged to fire at them every so often, in order to hold them off. And this meant a steady drain upon our ammunition, which compelled us to cut bullets in half and reduce the powder-charge.
A week of this, and we lost our sense of direction, for we had difficulty in estimating the sun's course. We did not know where we were or how we were heading. Two or three times we had emerged temporarily from the gloomy light of ravines into wide, rocky valleys, scattered with square, table-like rock-masses, rising abruptly from the valley-floor. But invariably the squat bow-men, no matter how deadly our fire, would swarm over the valley behind us and on both flanks and herd us into another ravine.
Two things we were thankful for. We had enough water, and they never attacked at night. So confident did we become on this last score that we abandoned attempts to watch, and slept, all three of us, from dusk to daylight, for we were always dog-tired.
But now we reached a ravine which was waterless. One of our water-skins was punctured by an arrow and useless. The other was rapidly diminishing in contents. Our jerked meat was running out. Thirst and hunger confronted us. We were in desperate plight, and our relentless pursuers knew it. They crept closer and closer. We must move as carefully as they if we were to escape an arrow in the chest.
A charge, attended by a waste of powder and lead, drove them back temporarily, but they had caught up with us again when we sighted an elbow turn in the ravine ahead of us. They seemed to be oddly excited. We could hear their guttural calls from cliff to cliff, could see them running between the bowlders and along the cliff-ledges. They came after us with increasing confidence, and we dodged under their arrows and raced around the elbow of the cliff.
Tawannears was leading us, and he froze stiff at the first glimpse of the valley below. But it was not at the valley he was looking. I saw that at once. His eyes were glued on the figure of the shepherd maid, who stood lithely in front of her feathered flock, bow raised and arrow on string, challenging our approach.
She was a lissom creature, with a ruddy skin and blue-black hair as fine-spun as silk—not coarse as is most Indians'—bound with a fillet of serpent's-skin. Her dress was a robe of white cotton, edged with vivid crimson, that was looped over her right shoulder, passed under her left arm and belted about her waist with another band of serpent's-skin. It stopped short of her bare knees. On her feet were sandals, cleverly made of some vegetable fiber. And all around her strutted and cackled and gobbled hundreds of turkeys, their brazen plumage a splendid foil for her bronze beauty.
Her arrow was aimed full at Tawannears' chest, and she called to him with a kind of high disdain in a throaty dialect which none of us understood. But in the middle of her question she caught sight of Corlaer and me, and her lustrous brown eyes widened in an excess of surprise.
"Espanya!" she exclaimed.
Now, in my youth, amongst many other experiences of great and little value, I campaigned in Spain with the Duke of Berwick—a good lord and a man of honor, albeit a bastard—and I have some lingering knack with the Spanish tongue. So I called back to her.
"Not Spaniards, but Englishmen!"
Her arrow wavered from one to the other of us.
"Espanya," she repeated uncertainly.
I took a step forward, but instantly the arrow steadied, and for the blink of an eye I thought she would loose.
"We are friends," I said.
"Stand," she ordered in broken Spanish, with a strange accent such as I had never heard. "What are English? You are Spanish! Go away!"
At that there came a yelp from the squat bowmen on our trail, and a squad of them rained arrows on us from the cliffs overhead. She looked up more startled than ever.
"We are friends," I insisted. "The bowmen pursued us here."
"Awataba," she murmured, almost to herself.
And quick as a flash she snatched a turkey-bone whistle from the breast of her robe and blew a keen treble note, that seemed to slip like a knife-blade through that clear, dry air. She half-turned as she did so, and I seized the opportunity to examine the valley behind her. 'Twas a bowl in the riven plateau-country, perhaps a league wide and twice as long. Through it flowed a respectable stream that issued from a ravine to the right of where we stood, and its floor was carpeted with green fields, interspersed with the stunted trees that were all this desert land afforded.
The whistle-blast called up dozens of men from the nearer bank of the river, and looking closer, I saw that they had been working in cultivated fields. Indeed, the whole surface of the valley appeared to be given over to cultivation. Beyond the river, against the right-hand wall of the valley, loomed a rounded protuberance of rock that hung from the towering cliffs like a woman's breast. Its top was surmounted by a mass of walls and towers, and as the shrilling whistles carried back the warning of the turkey shepherdess a host of tiny figures popped out upon the roofs and battlements.
"What place is that?" I asked curiously.
The turkey-girl replied mechanically—
"Homolobi."
It meant nothing to me at the time, but afterwards I was struck by its aptness—The Place of The Breast.*
* This word, as well as most of the other bits of phraseology which Ormerod mentions, indicates a relation between this cliff-dwelling tribe and the present Hopi. There is similar evidence in the religious customs cited.—A.D.H.S.
I started to walk forward for a better view, and the turkey-girl promptly renotched her arrow.
"You must wait for Wiki," she announced.
"But we are friends," I declared. "If we stay here——"
"Who is he?" she interrupted with more interest than she had yet shown, gesturing with her arrow toward Tawannears, who had not moved since first he saw her, his eyes devouring her face in a manner most extraordinary in one so self-contained and regardless of women as the Seneca.
"He is an Indian warrior, who has journeyed with us from the country by the Eastern Ocean, where we English dwell. He is of the People of the Long House."
She shook her head.
"You talk nonsense. What are English? People of the Long House! Do not we of Homolobi dwell in long houses? Wiki says that all our people do so, except the Awataba, who have been cursed by Massi* to go naked amongst the rocks. And what is an ocean?"
* Ruler of the Dead.
How I should have answered these very difficult questions I don't know, but fortunately—or unfortunately—at that moment the bowmen, the Awataba, as the turkey-girl called them, were emboldened by our quiescence to attempt a final charge. They preceded it with a tempest of arrows aimed to follow a high arc and fall on our side of the bowlders that partially sheltered us. One of these shafts killed a turkey, and the herd-girl was immediately almost in tears. Another stuck in the sleeve of Peter's shirt, and he squeaked indignantly.
"Come! We gife der naked men a lesson, eh? Afterward we take der girl's friendts."
We had no choice. Our tormenters were dodging in and out of the rocks at the mouth of the ravine, and if we ran from them we should present excellent marks on the open ground of the valley floor.
Peter tumbled over one of the nearest to us, and I knocked a poor wretch from his cliff-perch. Tawannears, rousing from the bewildered stupor which had overcome him, was equally successful. A bow-string twanged at my elbow, and the turkey-girl pointed proudly to a savage who was making off with her shaft in his arm. But the Awataba refused to lose courage as they had in every previous attack upon us; and in ten minutes of rapid firing we exhausted our ammunition.
I looked behind me as I fired my last shot, and was relieved to see that several hundred men were running up from the valley; for the naked bowmen were now at close range, their hideous, bestial faces bobbing betwixt the rocks, dropping from ledge to ledge in efforts to come at us in flank. They reached Peter first, and he surprised them by reversing his piece and using the butt for a flail. I imitated him, but Tawannears preferred to trust to knife and tomahawk, after the manner of his race. And at intervals, when I cleared myself of an opponent, I saw the turkey-girl, still standing undaunted in front of her excited flock, loosing her arrows with cold precision.
Then a flood of stinking bodies submerged me. I went down, and struggled to my feet again. Gap-toothed mouths yapped at my throat. Squat fiends struck at me with stone-mauls and flint knives. But I smashed right and left with my musket-butt, and kept my footing until Corlaer came to my rescue, swinging his clubbed musket in one hand, his knife in the other, ready for the few who passed its orbit.
"Tawannears!" he grunted, his little pig-eyes gleaming joyously.
Side by side we chopped our way through the smelly mob to where the Seneca stood with his back to a bowlder, the herd-girl crouched beside him. Her turkeys had taken flight at last, and she was wielding a rock-maul one of the savages had dropped, laughing with glee as she pecked at men who tried to attack Tawannears from the rear.
She even shook her weapon at us, as though to ask us why we intruded. But the fight was over, for her own people were surging into the defile, arrows slatting on the rocks, and the squat savages fled incontinently.
The turkey-girl tossed away the stone-maul she had used so valiantly.
"Whoever you are," she remarked, "you are good fighters—better than Kokyan,* I think."
* The Spider.
"Who is Kokyan?" I asked.
But she ignored me, as she had once before.
"What is his name!" she demanded, pointing at Tawannears.
I told her, and Tawannears, at sound of his name, suspended cleaning his knife-blade and gave her a long look.
"Ask the maiden who she is, brother," he said.
I did so, and she answered without hesitation—
"I am Kachina.* Is Tawannears a priest, too, or only a warrior?"
* The Sacred Dancer.
"He is a great chief, a war-captain," I answered. "He guards the Western Door of the Long House in which his people dwell."
She pursed her lips contemptuously.
"Anybody can be a warrior," she commented. "The warriors must have priests to pray for them and secure them victory."
I smiled at this naïve view.
"In my red brother's country the warrior is honored above the priest," I said.
"They must be very ignorant people," she declared. "Like the Awataba. Are you a priest?"
"I am a trader. I buy and sell."
Her contempt for me was even more pronounced than for Tawannears.
"And the fat one?"
"He is a warrior, too."
"I am sorry," she said royally. "I thought you might be great ones, priests of some far people come to sit at Wiki's feet and hear Kokyan cast spells for Yoki*—or perhaps to see me dance."
* The Rain.
"Are you a priestess?" I inquired respectfully.
"I am Kachina," she said, and her words were a rebuke.
I would have asked more, but an angry-eyed young man in a kilt of serpent's-skins thrust himself between us and addressed her volubly, with denunciatory gestures at us. She replied to him as coolly as she had to me, and finally turned away and beckoned to an older man who was leading back the men from the fields who had pursued the squat bowmen. The older man issued a brief order to his followers and walked over to our group. Like the voluble young man, he wore a kilt of serpent's-skins, and both of them had their lank black hair bound with fillets of the same material.
The two were much alike, their skins a muddy reddish hue, their figures spare and lean and rather under-sized. In fact, they and all the other people of Homolobi resembled in general appearance the squat savages who had driven us into their hands, except that they were less muscular and had much more intelligent faces. They were markedly inferior in stature to the Plains tribes, and equally superior in mental development as regards their domestic life.
Kachina, the turkey-shepherdess, was entirely different from the Homolobi people. Her bronze skin had a tawny note in it. Her shape was exquisitely molded; her hands and feet were small; and her features were of a clear-cut, aquiline cast very dissimilar from the flat physiognomy of all the others we saw. I may as well say here, that from these circumstances and others which we discovered I became convinced she had a considerable proportion of Spanish blood in her; but we never were able to secure any definite account of her origin from Wiki, who alone knew the truth.
The older man, after a glance of appraisal at us, engaged in a prolonged conversation with the girl, interrupted frequently by his younger associate; and gradually a circle of curious townsmen formed around us. They were all dressed in cotton kilts of varying colors, and the vegetable-fiber sandals, and carried bows and arrows, spears, hatchets and knives. Their manner toward us was non-committal rather than hostile. The conversation terminated abruptly when the younger man, with a savage glance at Tawannears, snapped a hot retort to something Kachina had said and strode out of the circle, followed by nearly half of its members.
The older man and the girl turned to us as though nothing had happened.
"This is Wiki," said the girl. "He is the High Priest of Massi."
I bowed.
"Tell him," I began, but Wiki himself interrupted me, speaking in Spanish more fragmentary than Kachina's, yet understandable.
"You are not Spanish?"
"No."
"Say after me: 'Go with God, most excellent señor,'" he prescribed.
I obeyed, and took no special pains with my accent—albeit I doubt if I had need to be more slovenly than ordinary. However, Wiki seemed satisfied.
"You are French?"
I was surprised. This man, then, knew something of the outside world.
"No."
"English?"
"Yes."
He nodded thoughtfully.
"Why do you come here?" he demanded
"We were pursued by the squat bowmen the maiden calls Awataba."
"Were you seeking Homolobi?"
He eyed me sharply as he spoke.
"We had never heard of it."
"Then what are Englishmen doing here so many months' journey from their own land? Why do you bring this red man with you?"
"We have been traveling, partly to forget sorrows laid upon us by the Great Spirit, partly to see new countries."
"Have you traveled far?"
"To the coast of the Western ocean."
He nodded again.
"What the Spaniards call the Pacifico?"
"Yes."
"And this red man?"
"He is a chief of the Hodenosaunee, a great nation of the Eastern Indians, who are allied with the English. He is my brother."
Wiki nodded a third time. He was obviously a man of unusual intellectual ability. His face was thoughtful. His forehead was high, and his deep-set eyes were inscrutable. There was about him nothing of the trickster, the charlatan, the types of most Indian priests or medicine-men. And plainly, he was well-informed. He had an air of concealing more knowledge than he admitted.
"All we ask," I continued, "is permission to rest in your valley before we continue our journey."
An enigmatic smile flickered across Wiki's face. He waved an arm toward the smoke-puffs that were beginning to spurt up from the rocks bordering the defile.
"The Awataba would not let you go as easy as that," he replied. And after a moment: "If you went, you might lead Spaniards to Homolobi."
"We have nothing to do with the Spaniards," I denied.
"You speak their language," he observed.
"So do you. I learned it when I was in the army of the French in Spain."
He shrugged his shoulders.
"You seem to be all things," he remarked. "You are an Englishman, yet you have been a French soldier and in Spain."
I laughed.
"Why, that is true," I admitted, "but you need have no fear of our returning here. We have suffered too much. Our one desire is to return safely to our own country—and there seems little chance of that, for our powder and lead are gone."
He tipped my powder-horn to prove my words.
"Huh!" he grunted. "We talk too much. Come with me to Homolobi."
"And the Awataba?" I questioned. "Will they make trouble for you if we go?"
"I think not," he answered calmly. "They are children. They cannot harm us, and if they ravage our gardens they know that I will make a curse against them, and they will die of hunger when the Winter comes."
"But if we go with you will you guarantee us against treachery?" I asked.
His eyes swept from me to Kachina, intent on our conversation, and on to Corlaer, phlegmatically surveying the prospect of the valley, and Tawannears, whose gaze was still riveted on the girl's face.
"All things are as Massi wills," he returned.
"That may be," I rasped, with all the ferocity I could muster. "But if we are to die, we will die here in the open, taking with us as many of you as we can slay."
The girl broke in impetuously.
"What talk is this of treachery and slaying? Wiki said only 'all things are as Massi wills.' Is it likely Massi wills your deaths when you fought in defense of the sacred turkeys?"
Wiki smiled his shadowy, enigmatical smile.
"Stay here and risk the Awataba, if you choose," he offered.
I don't know what I should have answered, but Tawannears plucked my sleeve and diverted my attention.
"Ask the chief whence came the maiden, brother," he urged.
I balked, inclined to doubt the wisdom of such personal questions.
"Ask!" he insisted. "Tawannears has a reason."
Wiki, himself, was attracted by the Seneca's earnest mien, and inquired the subject of his remark. I answered reluctantly, but Wiki evinced no displeasure.
"Say to your red brother," he answered courteously, "that the maiden is Kachina, the Sacred Dancer, who herds the sacred turkeys of Massi's shrine. She came to me once with a message from Massi, when I fasted in the desert seeking for knowledge of what was to come."
I repeated this to Tawannears, and he sighed, by an effort wrenching his eyes from the maiden's face.
"Tawannears thought—— But Hanegoategeh bewitches me!"
"Have a care he does not bewitch us all to death," I muttered fiercely. "Must you, of all men, endanger our lives for idle curiosity in a woman of a strange tribe?"
"What is death, brother?" returned the Seneca mournfully. "There were times when we both prayed for it. Shall we fear it now?"
Peter bent close to me, his lips against my ear.
"She has der look of Gahano," he murmured. "Say no more. Idt is a passing fancy. He will forget."
'Twas true. In no way identical, yet there was about this girl Kachina a mystic semblance of that dead priestess of a renegade Iroquois rite, for whom Tawannears had mourned so many years, whose memory was the mainspring of our fantastic search, whose Lost Soul he insisted was awaiting him in some dim land betwixt the worlds, presided over by Ataentsic and Jouskeha, demi-gods of his heathen pantheon.
"Pardon, brother," I said gently. "I spoke unkindly. My nerves are on edge. But what shall I say to these people? They bid us come with them or stay here and be finished by the naked savages who hounded us hither. And if we go with them——"
"Go with them!" exclaimed Tawannears eagerly. "Ay, let us go!"
"Peter?"
The Dutchman yawned.
"Ja, we better go. I hafe a hole in my belly."
Wiki made no comment when I announced our acceptance of his offer of hospitality—if that was what it was. He merely turned on his heel and strode off, and I was forced to extend myself to catch up with him. Kachina elected to accompany Tawannears and Peter. The remaining white-kilted men straggled back to resume the occupations they had abandoned when the girl's whistle blew. Nobody paid any more attention to the Awataba, whose smokes were rising all along the northern cliffs. A party of young girls were rounding up the scattered flock of sacred turkeys, and the river-bank was dotted with women washing clothes. The agricultural work in the fields was going on as if there had been no interruption.
Both banks of the river for a league or more were lined with open gardens, and immediately beneath the Breast on which Homolobi was built were a series of fenced gardens and stone storehouses, easily defensible. The nearer we approached the village, the more remarkable it became. Access to it was had by means of ladders and a trail which one man could hold against an army. Its houses, solidly constructed of stone blocks laid in mortar, were three and four stories in height, joined together and surrounded by a wall that was strengthened with round and square towers. It crowded the top of the Breast and was protected from assault from above by a bulging protuberance in the cliff overhead.
"Have your people lived here long?" I asked Wiki.
"Since the beginning of time," he returned sententiously.
"Have you many other villages?"
He eyed me askance a moment, then answered:
"The Spaniards and others before them have destroyed all save ours. Some of our brethren live under the tutelage of Christian priests in the South, but they build their homes upon open rocks. We are the last of the Dwellers in the Cliffs."*
* This amazing statement has been corroborated by scientists of the Smithsonian Institution, who agree it is probable some of the cliff-dwellings were inhabited in recent historic times.—A.D.H.S.
"That is why you hate the Spaniards," I said.
"Yes, Englishman. Wherever they have gone they have slain our people. But for what you said to Kachina and the fight you made to protect her and the sacred turkeys we should have slain you instantly. Even the Awataba had the hardihood to pursue you, in spite of the death you dealt them, because they supposed you were Spaniards, and they knew that if Spaniards escaped from their country, they would come back, bringing others with them, and in the end slay or enslave all not of their color."
"The Spaniards have always been enemies of the English," I replied, anxious to propitiate him. "It was the English who first denied the right of the Spaniards to exploit your country for themselves."
Have I said that Wiki had green eyes that sometimes sparkled and again seemed to flame? They stabbed at me like two daggers as he remarked—
"The English are white; we are red."
I said no more on that score. The man was as intelligent as I had first imagined, and cunning, too, possessed of information you would scarce expect to find in this isolated community in the heart of the great rock desert.
"We are friends," I protested, recurring to my original argument. "We have come amongst you practically without arms."
"You should not have come otherwise," he retorted.
We crossed an irrigation-ditch at this point, and I commented upon its excellent workmanship. He nodded his head without replying, but his manner declared as if he had shouted it: "Fool of a white man! Do you think your people are the only ones who can work in stone?"
I essayed once again to draw him out.
"How is it that you have no fear of the Awataba?" I asked.
"They are children," he answered in his earlier phrase.
"But they are many times your number."
"They fear us."
We had entered the walled enclosures at the base of the Breast, and he waved his hand to the bursting storehouses.
"When they starve they ask us for food, and if we have it to spare, we give them some. They know that if they fight us, we would never lift a hand to aid them, and they are too ignorant to help themselves."
I had no opportunity for further conversation, for we had come to the first of a series of ladders, each wide enough for two people to climb it at once, propped in ledges of the cliff-side. Wiki went up them, hand over hand, with the agility of a sailor. As I put my foot upon the lowest rung to follow him, I heard a giggle behind me, and Kachina pushed in front, dragging Tawannears by the hand. She had discovered a new game, it seemed, which consisted in her pointing to a given object and pronouncing its name in her tongue, and then having Tawannears christen it in the Seneca dialect. She was going into all the details of the ladder and the trail with him—his face a study in rapture and sheepishness—when Wiki called down a sharp command to her. She sobered instantly, and raced up the ladders after the priest, who continued beside her.
The people of Homolobi watched our ascent with grins of amusement. The feat looked simple enough from the ground, but 'twas as difficult, in its way, as our climbing of the Ice Mountain of Tamanoas. The ladders were the easiest part of it. After them came several sections of rock-trail over the swell of the Breast as far as a projection which answered to the nipple, where another ladder led to the topmost section of the trail, which ran at an angle up to the entrance of the village walls, a door that Peter must turn sideways to enter.
Inside we were in total darkness, and I experienced a chilling fear of treachery. But the worst that happened to us was to crack heads and shins on unseen stairs, angles and doorposts as we were drawn through a dingy warren of passages. Wiki guided me, and strangers conducted Tawannears and Peter. Kachina must have skipped ahead of us, for she was the first person we identified when we stepped suddenly out of a gloomy vestibule into the bright, sun-smitten plaza or central space of the village.
This space was sufficiently large to accommodate all the population of the village, which must have numbered upwards of fifteen hundred souls. It was surrounded by the communal houses, in which these people lived, houses which made the Long Houses of the Iroquois appear as primitive as the skin teepees of the Dakota. They rose high above us, each story receding the depth of a room from the area of the one below it, so as to provide a succession of unroofed porches or verandas. These roof-tops were crowded with people, and several hundred men lounged in the central plaza.
Directly opposite us and situated in a notch or recess in the cliff-side was a building of somewhat different proportions. It had the same peculiar recession of the upper stories, but instead of having four floors it had only three, the first story being twice as high as in the adjoining houses. There was a great doorway midway of its windowless facade, with monstrous stone figures, creatures with the bodies of men and the heads of fabulous beasts, entwined with snakes, on either side.
In front of this doorway stood three people, of whom Kachina was the least remarkable. The one in the middle of the group was a very fat old woman, gray-haired, with dull, snaky eyes. She was dressed like Kachina in a white robe, bordered with crude red, and she held herself with a certain conscious dignity that was imposing, whatever you might think about her character and personal cleanliness.
On her left was the voluble young man, who had evinced so strongly his disapproval of us after the fight; and not content with his kilt of serpent's-skins he now had a rattlesnake coiled around his neck, its head poised next his left ear. He took a step forward as we appeared in the plaza, and began declaiming in a harsh voice, the snake at his ear hissing an accompaniment. Occasionally he would suspend his oration, and pretend to stop and listen to what the snake was telling him. The people heard him with awe; but I thought I surprised a look of mild cynicism upon Wiki's face. As for Kachina, she made no attempt to conceal her feelings.
After the voluble young man and the snake had talked until you could have heard the rustling of a grass-blade she interrupted them as ruthlessly as she had me. And she was not content with merely saying what she thought. She danced it, too. That is literally what I mean. She would say something, lift her eyes skyward, raise her arms in a beseeching gesture, and then dance a slow, stately measure, or perhaps a swift, heady one. Betwixt dances she was making demands of something inside the temple or arguing with the fat old woman or with Wiki.
When she ceased the voluble young man tried to continue his oration, but Wiki stepped to the front and cut him off. Then there was a four-sided debate, in which the fat old woman joined, and presently, she raised her arms in a gesture of invocation, blinked her eyes shut, waited—whilst everyone, including ourselves, became tense—and ejaculated a single sentence. After which she reopened her eyes, and waddled into the dark recesses of the temple, attended by the young man, no longer voluble, but very sullen, and hauling the snake from its embrace.
Wiki expressed no sentiment in his face or actions, but Kachina showed delight as plainly as she had disapprobation of the young man's suggestions, and she danced away by herself in the direction of a narrow door in one corner of the temple-block.
Wiki crooked his finger.
"Come," he said, and led us through another door to a stair which fetched us to the terrace on the roof of the fore part of the temple proper. We crossed this roof, eyed suspiciously by several men who wore the serpent's-skin kilt, to a doorway opening into a room probably twelve feet square. It had no windows, and its walls and floor were bare of furnishings.
"You may sleep here," Wiki announced briefly. "Food will be brought later."
"Are we at liberty to go out if we please?" I asked is he was leaving.
"Why not?" he returned indifferently. "But you must be careful. Your faces are strange to our people."
We pondered this statement until our doubts were presently set at rest by a visit from a party of the temple priests—the wearers of the serpent's skin kilts—headed by the voluble young man. They stalked in whilst I was dressing an arrow-cut in Tawannears' shoulder, their faces bleakly scowling, gathered up our guns, powder-horns and shot-pouches and walked out again. Peter started to rise, but sank to his haunches at a word from me.
"We better break dot feller's headt," he grumbled.
"That was what they wanted," I said.
"Otetiani is right," agreed Tawannears. "The guns are useless. If we had resisted they would have made it an excuse to kill us."
"Ja, dot's maype true," admitted Peter thoughtfully. "Andt what do we do now, eh?"
"Nothing," I answered. "'Tis sound strategy to hold our hands. This situation is still shaping. I know not what other powers there may be, but of the four leaders we have seen, I think Wiki has to make up his mind about us. The serpent priest hates us for reasons of his own. The old woman has given no sign. The girl Kachina has s fancy for Tawannears, but there is as much danger as advantage in that. Your feet are set upon a crooked path, brother."
Tawannears smiled, as I had not seen him smile in years, with a kind of glad expectancy.
"There is an echo calling in my heart, brother," he said. "I do not yet know what it is saying, but it calls louder and louder. Perhaps——"
Kachina glided through the doorway.
"Do not heed what Kokyan does or says to you," she ordered me curtly. "He is jealous, poor, crawling ant! And he thinks he can spoil my plans."
"Who is Kokyan?" I queried.
She stared at me, childishly puzzled that anyone should be no continually ignorant.
"He who has just left."
"Oh, the young man with the snake?"
"Yes, stupid buffalo," she derided me.
"And why is he jealous!"
She dimpled like any other girl, and dug her sandal-toe in the dust of the floor.
"Because of me, of course."
"Of course," I echoed. "But he is not jealous of me, for instance?"
"Oh, no," she answered frankly. "He is jealous of Tawannears."
She pronounced the Seneca's name with a delicious lisp.
"Is he your lover?"
"He wants to be." She became confidential. "He has been this way since he succeeded his father as Priest of Yoki and Voice of Chua.* He has brought rain two years running now, and everybody says how mighty a priest and spell-master he is. But Wiki says I must serve him first of all as Sacred Dancer, for Massi sent me direct to him and not to Kokyan. Besides, I don't like Kokyan. He is a good warrior and a clever priest—but I don't like him."
* The Snake.
"Is Kokyan Chief Priest?"
"How ignorant you are, Englishman! Of course not! Wiki is chief priest—and Angwusi is priestess of Tawa, the Sun, the Giver-of-Life. Kokyan is only priest of Yoki. But when a priest of Yoki is as successful as he is, he becomes really as important as the chief priest and the priestess. And then Kokyan has been telling the young men how much better things would go if he was chief priest or had more influence in the Council."
"But what does your chief say to all this?" I questioned.
"Chief? What chief?"
"The chief of the village! And the war-chiefs."
She gurgled with laughter.
"You are own brother to the Awataba, Englishman! We do not have such chiefs. We look down on warriors. When we must fight, we all do; but we make no practice of war. The priests and the council govern the village."
"Who are the council?" I pressed.
"Oh, the priests—and the elders—the priests select them. But I am tired of talking with you, Englishman. I came here to learn Tawannears' speech. I told Wiki I should. He told me I must not, and I said if I could not I should marry Kokyan to-night. Wiki does not want me to marry Kokyan."
She sank down betwixt the Seneca and me, pointing a finger at Peter.
"What is that houaw's* name?"
* Bear's.
"Wait, wait!" I pleaded. "Tell me why you left us on the ladder and went ahead into the village."
"No, I am tired of all that," she declared mutinously. "I shall talk with Tawannears now."
"But 'tis he wishes to know," I lied. "And he must learn through me."
Her face brightened.
"Oh! Indeed, you are stupid, Englishman! Why did you not say so before?"
"Because I had no chance," I laughed.
"You are an Awataba," she insisted. "You must have killed a Spaniard, and taken his clothes. But you asked why Wiki called me. It was because I talked with Tawannears—and I am going to talk to him whenever I please. So I just told fat old Angwusi! Wiki said that Kokyan would make trouble, and that I must go ahead and tell Angwusi he was bringing you up to the village because you had saved me and the sacred turkeys and were not Spaniards."
"And then?" I prompted her.
"Why, then, I went to the kiva,* and Kokyan was talking to Angwusi against Wiki, and I told him I would dance against him if he continued to be foolish. And he said that Chua the Snake had counseled him that you three were to be the doom of Homolobi and you must all be slain for a sacrifice to Chua."
* Ceremonial Place or Temple.
"So that was what he was talking about when Wiki brought us in?"
"Yes, he told the people what Chua had said, and that you would probably bring heavy rain to spoil the harvest or a drought next Summer. And Chua prophesied to him again whilst he talked, and said you came here plotting evil, especially the red one called Tawannears.
"Then I danced for Massi, and cried to all the Gods, and as I danced they told me that Chua's voice had been mistaken, that men who saved the Sacred Dancer and the sacred turkeys of Massi's shrine could not be Massi's enemies. Kokyan said it was not true, that you were Chua's enemies. But I cried into the temple, and Massi answered back that such things were best left unsaid, that they made it seem that Chua was divided from Massi.
"Kokyan did not know what to say to that." She giggled reminiscently. "So Wiki talked to Angwusi, and she made a prayer to Tawa for light."
"What did Tawa say!" I demanded, for she had turned again to Tawannears.
"That it was too early to decide."
That, mark you, was the width of the margin betwixt my comrades and I and death—what an old Indian woman chose to say that the sun had told her to say!
"Is it left so?" I asked uneasily.
"How else!" she snapped pettishly. "I did not come here to talk to you."
"But for how long is it left so?"
"Until the festival at the end of this moon—the moon which precedes the harvest. But if you say any more, Englishman, I will go to Angwusi and ask her to have Tawa say that the others may be saved, but you must be cast from the cliff."
For all practical purposes we were prisoners during the weeks we spent in Homolobi, but I cannot say that we were fettered or chained. The whole village, with its rabbit-warrens of passages, its ponderous masses of masonry, its soaring walls and towers, its rare rock-gardens—odd patches of dirt in angles of the cliffs around the Breast—its plazas and hidden reservoirs, we were free to roam in.
Escorted by Kachina, we even ventured into the dim recesses of the temple and stared at the wooden image of Massi, a sinister object of partly human aspect presiding over a stone tank crammed with writhing rattlesnakes, which, our guide assured us, had not had their fangs drawn. Yet she and all the evil priests of this forbidding place handled the reptiles without fear, and so far as we could see were never bitten. Explain it how you will.
'Twas after this visit that a knife fell from the air at Tawannears' feet, missing the opening betwixt collar-bone and shoulder-blade by inches. If it dropped by accident none came to reclaim it, nor did we have sight of its owner; and we had no choice but to suppose it had been aimed at the Seneca's life. But we deemed it best to hold our tongues concerning the incident—with all save Kachina; she had become our staunch friend and ally, more through a whimsical interest in new faces—and especially Tawannears—as I believe, than for aught else, unless it was the opportunity to plague Kokyan and annoy Wiki the grave. Later—but I gallop in advance of my story.
Kachina approved our silence.
"'Twas that ant Kokyan, beyond a doubt," she glowered. "He shall suffer for it! I will dance his heart out of him, and laugh at his misery. But it will serve no purpose to denounce him. He would laugh at you, and turn people against you, saying you had come amongst us only to create discord. And that would be bad because it has not rained since you came, and already people are saying that you have brought us good luck and a fair harvest. But you must be careful how you walk—and keep out of dark passages."
At her suggestion we took to walking daily on the floor of the valley where no knives could fall upon us—although once, as Tawannears came through a copse by the river to where she was explaining to us their irrigation system, an arrow thrummed into a tree-trunk beside him. He looked unsuccessfully for the hidden archer, then ran on and joined us; and after that we avoided copses and groves, as well as dark corners and places commanded by overhanging walls. But I think the best reason why Tawannears was not assassinated was that she stuck so close to him.
"What chance has a warrior when he has a priest for enemy?" she said, laughing. "'Tis well he has me to care for him. Do Kokyan and his tools think I would let them slay Tawannears before I have learned this fine, booming speech of his?"
No hindrance was placed in the way of our excursions, but there were always men close by and—when we were in the open—a few of the priests in serpent's-skin kilts lurked within eye-shot. Moreover, the smokes of the Awataba now encircled the valley. North, south, east and west they rose languorously in the windless air, for the days were still, equably warm, without great heat and wondrously dry.
Twice I asked Wiki, mainly to see what he would say, if we might leave the valley. Each time he smiled cryptically, raised his arm and swept the compass of the cliffs.
"If you go, you go to death," he said the first time.
And a week later:
"Shall we send you to your deaths, Englishman? That would not be kind."
"But I think sometimes we linger here only to await death," I countered.
His face was solemn, but his green eyes mocked me.
"Can you see the future?" he asked.
"No, I am no miracle-worker."
"Then how can you know what Massi has in store for you?"
"Why do the naked bowmen lurk here so long?" I demanded, changing the subject.
His brow wrinkled in what might have been perplexity.
"Who can say?" he answered, with a shrug. "They are children. Perhaps they have killed enough meat to feed them a while."
At times he would be more communicative, and we discussed the beliefs of his people and their social and religious organization. They were in many ways the most civilized Indians I have seen, and they seemed all the more so, meeting them, as we did, after prolonged contact with the depraved tribes we had encountered west of the Sky Mountains and along the coast of the Western Ocean.
Perhaps because of the inaccessible character of their situation, they were essentially unwarlike, wrapped up in the pursuit of agriculture and the raising of turkeys. Certain of these birds they bred especially for the sacred flock attending on the shrine of Massi for the purpose of supplying feathers, with which women wove remarkably beautiful screens and robes. Their crops were as good as those obtained by European husbandmen, and much better than those ordinarily reaped by our own farmers in America, notwithstanding that their only tools for cultivation were pointed sticks and the most primitive kinds of rakes and hoes.