Wiki said, in one of his conversational moods, that their traditions taught them that long ago this barren land of rocks was much richer than it now was, and at that distant time their people were very numerous in this locality. But in the course of ages the climate changed, and with it the nature of the country. The rivers dried up; the deposits of soil were blown away; vegetation died; the sun's heat became so fierce as to wither growing things, except in a few favored spots.
About the same time there was a succession of eruptions of hordes of savages from the north, low-browed, ferocious people, akin, perhaps to the Awataba—and on the same count to the people of Homolobi themselves. These were the Shunwi, or "Flesh Creatures," as they called themselves—who overran many villages, driven mad by starvation probably and aided by an enormous numerical superiority. And the populations of other villages, disheartened by these experiences, moved away into the South, where conditions were more favorable, and gradually lost touch with those who had remained in the home-land of the race.
The coming of the Spaniards sealed the doom of all of them. To Wiki, who evidently had visited the Spanish colonies, possibly had indulged in the occasional Indian plots to regain independence and restore the dominance of the red race under a new Montezuma, the tragedy of his people was very apparent. He had seen village after village on the outskirts of the rock desert conquered and Christianized. His life was dedicated to an effort to protect Homolobi from the universal fate. This was the reason for his equivocal reception of our party. It was the reason, too, I suspect, for his uncertain attitude toward us after he had saved our lives. He was not sure how best to make use of us, whether it would more aptly serve his purpose to let us go or to sacrifice us to the superstitious wrath and priestly politics of Kokyan's faction.
The hub of the situation, indeed, was the factional politics that rent the village. As Kachina had told us, the priestly organization was likewise the political superstructure of the social life of the community. The council of wise men was really a council of the priests, with a handful of others selected by and under the control of the priests. They not only regulated the religious life of the village, but exerted a general supervision over its agricultural and industrial undertakings, adjusted inter-family or clan disputes, made and administered laws, interpreted traditions, and in event of war furnished the military leadership that was required.
The one-sided intellectuality which resulted was probably the cause of the decline of the race. This was the judgment of Tawannears, who was best qualified to estimate their tribal characteristics, combining in his mind, as he did, the training and outlook of red man and white. He took a keen interest in the problem, despite his absorption in his own tangled thoughts and his strange infatuation with Kachina, which was to lead to the crisis of our affairs. And it was largely through him and the attraction which he possessed for the girl, with all her weird power and influence, that we were enabled to gain a really intimate view of the drama which was centering around our three alien lives.
Briefly, it was the old, old story of all communities. Wiki represented the wisdom of age. Fifteen years before, I gathered, he had acquired preponderating power when he went out into the desert, as he said, "to fast and ask a message forecasting the future," and returned with the woman-child who grew to be Kachina, and who, he told the village, had been sent to him by Massi to serve the temple and dance in honor of the Ruler of the Dead. His own shrewd intellect combined with the Latin grace of the girl and her original personality had strengthened his position so that he ruled practically supreme, being able to ignore, if he chose, the rival authority of old Angwusi, who represented the women in the hierarchy.
It was, by the way, typical of the social organization of Homolobi that the women had important representation in the priesthood. The women were in all ways equal to the men. They held their share of property, and they had the right to be consulted on all matters of public import. They upheld and maintained the sanctity of monogamous marriage. They had the right to secure punishment for any man who neglected, abused or maltreated his wife. And while they were barred from the service of Chua and from membership in the priestly clan or participation in the religious dances, they had in Angwusi a representative who ranked next to the chief priest in authority, who might, in some cases, compel even his acquiescence on questions of policy.
Angwusi was as clever as a priestess-stateswoman as Wiki, but she lacked his breadth and experience. She had been instrumental in building up the prestige of Kokyan, the young priest of Yoki and suitor for Kachina's hand; but as soon as he was strong enough to make himself felt in opposition to the chief priest, she had hastened to redress the balance, hoping, in the conflicting ambitions of the two men, to find the means for gaining her own ends, whatever they were.
But the situation was complicated again by the interposition of Kachina. She had not, until recently, been regarded as more than an assistant and subordinate of Wiki. Kokyan's courtship and rivalry of the chief priest and the politics precipitated by his rise, however, had lifted her to an importance equal with that enjoyed by the other three; and she was not slow to take advantage of it. How loyal she was to Wiki, of course, I cannot say; but from my knowledge of her afterward I should say that she would have stood by him, after securing such concessions as she wanted for herself, had it not been for the arrival of Tawannears.
Love and hate, the lure of beauty, hunger for power, these were the factors here as elsewhere. Suppose we had gone north, instead of south, to pass the Salt Lake, suppose we had not ventured into these mountains! What would have happened then to the fortunes of Wiki, of Kachina, of Kokyan and Angwusi and the people of Homolobi—ay, and of Tawannears, Peter and myself. Fifteen hundred lives would have ended differently—I say nothing of the Awataba, who perished for causes beyond their comprehension.
So slender is the thread of destiny which weaves our lives!
But my speculation, after all, is purposeless. We were fated to do what we did. It was written in the Book that we should go to Homolobi, just as it was written that Tawannears' fantastic search should be carried to its logical conclusion. How else can you explain the instant attraction he had for the girl, the light that shone in his eyes when he first fronted her threatening arrow, the very ease with which they two brushed aside from their path the needs and wants and desires and wishes of fifteen hundred others? It was written that it should be so. Why, even Peter's giant strength had its rôle to play in this, as in other acts, of the drama we lived. And I—am I not the narrator?
So I say there was no accident in what transpired. Accident must have slain us heedlessly a score of times before Destiny was ready for us to work the deeds it had prepared for us.
If Wiki, priest of Massi, from whatever abode he occupies, looks over my shoulder as I write I know that he will smile assent. There are some forces beyond human control. We were caught fast in the grip of such a force when the people of Homolobi gathered before the kiva of Massi for the pre-harvest festival at the end of that moon in which we had come into their valley—I cannot make the date more specific, for we had lost all track of time in more than two years of wandering.
It was a clear, cloudless day, still not too hot, with almost no breeze stirring, exactly like all the other days since our arrival; and I remember the people squatting around the open space in front of the temple made room for us readily in the front row, some of them actually smiling, so popular had we become on account of the good weather we had brought the village.
Weather was everything to these people. In fear of a failed harvest they always kept a year's store of dried crops ahead; but there had been times when the crops had failed two years running, and they regulated their whole lives to the one end of securing enough food. Religion, with them, was weather. Hence the popularity of Kokyan, Priest of Yoki, who had twice secured them abundant early Summer rain. Hence, too,—and most paradoxically—our own popularity, because we had staved off the unseasonably heavy storms which sometimes destroyed or diminished a good planting.
Observe the irony. We had made headway against Kokyan's enmity by virtue of the very talent he arrogated to himself. Hence the frowns he bent on us as he danced from the temple, leading his snake priests, every man a center of twisting coils of slimy reptiles.
This was the opening phase of the ceremonies. Wiki and Angwusi sat in front of the temple entrance upon solid blocks of wood, behind them leering the horrid features of Massi, carried forward from his darksome shrine into the glare of daylight for this occasion. Kachina had not yet appeared, but grouped in a semicircle in back of idol, priest and priestess were the masked dancers of the different clans, arrayed in the semblance of bird, beast, reptile, vegetable or insect.
Overhead towered the bulging brow of the cliff. Across the housetops reared the distant wall of the valley, crowned by the slim smokes of the Awataba, those persistent savages who belied their inconsequential natures by the fixity of the purpose with which they hemmed us in. And all around the plaza, and on the nearby house-roofs, too, were crowded the village people, the men in their white kilts—the red border being reserved for the highest members of the priesthood and the Wise Men of the Council; the women in plain white robes that folded over the right shoulder and slid under the left breast, curving graciously to the figure and banded tight around the waist.
Drums thudded inside the temple to herald the approach of Kokyan and his loathsome attendants. They pranced slowly into the light, snakes twining about their middles, their arms and their necks, forked tongues darting and hissing—and never a man bitten!
The snake priests sounded a low chant, as they advanced with a jerking, undulating step, apparently designed to reproduce the traveling motion of a snake. Whining in a minor key, the chant progressed in volume, the rumble of the unseen drums rising in tune with it.
Bound the open space danced the ugly procession, the people instinctively drawing back as the snake-ridden men came near. Kokyan, the scowl of a fiend on his face, passed us and went on. The whole line passed, and I breathed freely again, for I did not like those scores of unrestrained reptiles, any one of which in threshing free of its bearer might carry death into the throng.
The drums thudded louder and louder as the priests circled the plaza the second time; and the snakes were more excited than ever by the noise, the unaccustomed sunlight and the white-garbed rows of onlookers. They writhed up above the heads of the priests, struck at each other and hissed into the empty air. 'Twas a nightmare spectacle—such a picture as the Italian Dante dreamed of the torments of Hell. But again Kokyan passed, and again I felt the breath whistle from my lungs. Then it came—what I had been expecting!
The drumming became hurried, confused, and the priests jostled together, as if surprised. There was aplop!on the sandy ground, and a rattlesnake as long as Peter contorted into its fighting coils within arm's-reach of Tawannears. But the Seneca remained perfectly quiet, not moving a muscle of face or body. A gasp went up from the people around us. Women cried out, and children whimpered. Wiki rose from his stool with a single curt order, and one of the priests stepped out of the line and retrieved the snake, calming it by a stroking motion down its belly as he grasped it just under the venomous head.
It all happened so quickly that few saw the incident, but Peter's big hand gripped my arm until I thought he would tear it off.
"If he mofed he was deadt!" he gasped in my ear. "Ja, if he mofed, Tawannears was deadt!"
"Did he drop it?" I whispered fiercely to Tawannears. "Did you see the priest drop it?"
"Yes, brother," he answered coolly, "but who could swear he was responsible?"
"And you stayed quiet!" I marveled. "How could you know the snake would not strike?"
"It was nothing," he returned. "That snake never strikes unless it thinks you are frightened of it. The man bungled. He should have dropped it on Tawannears. Then it would have struck instinctively. But Hawenneyu did not will it so. Tawannears' medicine is too strong for the snake-priest, Kokyan."
The last of the snake priests disappeared through the temple entrance, and old Angwusi left her stool and advanced in front of Massi's image, prostrated her bulky figure with much difficulty and then made invocation to the sun, riding high toward mid-afternoon. Her words had the form of a prayer, but at intervals responses were intoned by the masked clan dancers behind her, and at the end all the people shouted an answer, turning their faces up to the sky.
She returned to her seat amidst a rapt silence that was broken only when Wiki made a signal with his "paho," or prayer-stick, a painted and befeathered baton, which was the symbol of his office. As he raised it the drums in the temple rumbled again, and the masked dancers began to sing, swaying their bodies to the haunting rhythm of the music. After each stanza Wiki would chant an invocation of his own, prostrating himself on the sand before Massi. And this song terminated, as had Angwusi's prayer, in a chorus of all the people, the thudding of the drums running in and out of the roar of voices that echoed against the overhanging cliff.
The singing died away. Silence once more. Wiki, standing now beside the image of the Ruler of the Dead, lifted his paho in a second gesture of command. Tap-tap-tap! very slow, went the drums. The masked clan dancers sorted themselves into two files facing inward on either side of the temple doorway. The people around us, whose interest in the ceremonies had been perfunctory since the snake dance, bunched forward in attitudes of pleasurable expectancy. A murmur of voices bandied back and forth the one word—"Kachina!"
I saw the muscles twisting on Tawannears' jaw. His face, that was usually so masklike, was openly expressive. But a look of puzzled inquiry in his eyes changed to bewilderment, when, instead of the Sacred Dancer, appeared the snake priests, marshaled by Kokyan and staggering under the weight of a hurdle upon which reposed a mighty pumpkin. It was twice as thick as Peter in girth and half as tall from the litter of stalks and vine-leaves upon which it was set.
The drums throbbed slowly, and to the cadence of their beat the masked dancers struck up a new song, a wailing, minor melody, beseeching, imploring of Massi the continued toleration of their wants. The snake priests and their burden passed between the two lines from the temple doorway to the image of the Ruler of the Dead, halted a moment facing it, turned, and then, with Wiki and Angwusi preceding Kokyan, and the column of masked dancers following the hurdle-bearers, solemnly paraded the circuit of the plaza; whilst all the people sitting or crouching on the ground bent their heads and muttered, "Kachina!" or "The Sacred Dancer comes!" or else addressed impromptu personal prayers to Massi, Yoki, Chua and other lesser divinities.
Tawannears' excitement had grown to an extraordinary degree. The breath whistled in his nostrils. His chest rose and fell as though he were running. His features were drawn and haggard. His eyes never swerved from the enormous pumpkin.
"How could they have nourished it to such a size!" I whispered.
He did not hear me, but Peter, on my other side, made shrill reply—
"Idt is not real."
"Not real?"
"Ja, you vatch."
I peered at it the more closely, myself. Certes, it had all the outward seeming of a pumpkin magnified a score of times. There were the corrugations of the surface, the mottled yellow color with a hint of pale green, the blunt-ended stalk. But whilst I watched, the snake priests completed the plaza's circuit, gently deposited the hurdle in front of Massi, and took their position behind the idol in a single rank, with Kokyan a step in advance, arms folded on their breasts. The masked dancers formed a ring around the image, the giant pumpkin and the group of priests; and Wiki and Angwusi, on either side of the hurdle, commenced the next phase of the elaborate ritual.
Wiki seemed to be delivering an oration to the god. He included by his gestures the people in the plaza, the village, the priests, the valley below the cliff, and finally the pumpkin. Afterward we learned that he had been summing up the tribe's case for divine assistance, speaking from the viewpoint of the men. Angwusi, who followed him, described for the benefit of the deity the efforts put forward by the women and the especial reasons they thought they had for meriting aid. And to cap it, both of them united in an address drawing to Massi's notice the magnificent pumpkin which they would sacrifice to him.
This brought from the ring of dancers a prolonged shout of applause, the drums in the temple pulsed into a jerky, varying beat, and the masked figures pranced crazily around the idol and the pumpkin, the priests singing another of their weird, hesitating songs. Faster and faster thumped the drums. Swifter and swifter whirled the dancers. Wilder and wilder waxed the song. The end came in a crescendo of noise, color and movement. It snapped off almost with a physical jar. Priests and dancers flung themselves upon their faces in the send. The drums were stilled. The quiet was so intense that all about me I could hear people's breathing, the gusty pants of Tawannears as loud as musketry by contrast.
For a dozen breaths this quiet reigned. Then Wiki rose, bowed low to that monstrous idol and stepped to the vast yellow pumpkin, sitting serenely upon its hurdle. He extended his paho before Massi's unseeing eyes, recited briefly a prayer—and rapped the pumpkin once. A sigh of anticipation burst from the audience. The pumpkin fell apart, dividing cleanly in quarters, and from its hollow shell stepped Kachina, a lithe bronze statue came to life, clad from breast to thighs in a sheath of turkey-feathers that puffed out under her arms in a mockery of wings. Her blue-black hair floated free beneath the confining band of serpent's-skin around her brow.
For an instant she poised in the fallen shell of the pumpkin, arms spread as though for flight. Then she leaped—almost, it seemed, she flew—from the hurdle to the sand, swooped this way and that, always with the gliding, wavy motion of a bird on the wing, hovered before Wiki, before Angwusi, sank in a pretty pose of piety before Massi's warped face, and so sped into the measures of a dance that was all grace and fire and vivid emotion, a dance no Indian could have done, and which charmed her beholders by its very exotic spell, its fierce bursts of passion, demonstrative, seductive.
Kokyan made no secret of its effect upon him. The gloomy face of the young priest was lit by the unholy fires that burned within him. He came from his place at the head of the snake priests and stood with Wiki and Angwusi by the wooden idol, his eyes drinking in the sinuous loveliness of the dancer, her slender, naked feet scarcely touching the sand as she leaped and postured from mood to mood, her own eyes flaring through the tossing net of her hair, her lips pouting, smiling, luring, challenging, repulsing.
But I had little chance to observe her influence upon the Priest of Yoki. Beside me Tawannears was risen to his knees and in his face was the look of the damned man who sees heaven's gates opening for him, doubting, trusting, unbelieving, paralyzed by joy, scorched by fear. He started to clamber to his feet and the people in back of us volleyed low protests. I seized his arm.
"Sit," I adjured him. "What ails you, man?"
I think he did not even hear me.
"Use your wits," I exclaimed irritably. "You will have us all slain. You can see the maid anon."
'Twas Peter gave me the key to his state.
"He t'inks she is Gahano," he muttered. "Ja, dot's idt."
I exerted all my strength, and dragged the Seneca back to his haunches.
"Will you ruin us, brother?" I rasped. "This is sacred in the eyes of these people. We are——"
For the first time he seemed to comprehend what I was trying to do.
"Otetiani does not know," he said mildly. "She is my Lost Soul."
"A mist has clouded Tawannears' eyes," I answered, realizing that in this humor I must abide by the imagery of his people.
"No, brother," he returned, still without feeling. "You have not seen. You have forgotten. But Tawannears knew—before this happened there was a song in his heart that told him this would be."
"Of what?" I begged, conscious of the hostile looks that were acknowledging this interruption of the scene. "What said this song? Was it of one maid who looked like another?"
"She does not look like another," he said with dignity. "She is another. She is my Lost Soul."
"You are mad, brother," I groaned.
He smiled pityingly at me.
"No, my eyes are opened. But Otetiani cannot see. What said the ancient tale of my people? That the warrior who traveled beyond the sunset would find the land of Lost Souls——"
"Is this land beyond the sunset?" I inquired sarcastically.
"It must be!" His voice rang with conviction. "Did we not see the sun set behind the Sky Mountains? And we crossed the Sky Mountains—and this land must be still beyond the Sky Mountains."
"Ay, but Tawannears, you know that this is but a tale——"
"Yes, a tale of my people," he agreed steadily. "If one warrior did it, why could not Tawannears? So I believed always. Now I know it to be so. I have done it. Here we sit in the valley of Lost Souls. There is Ataentsic, brother."
He pointed to fat old Angwusi, who was eying us as balefully as Kokyan and the snake priests, at last oblivious to the untiring grace with which Kachina still danced before Massi's wooden grimace.
"And there is Jouskeha, her grandson." He singled out Wiki. "As the tale told, when the warrior came to the valley his Lost Soul was dancing with other souls before those two, and Jouskeha, in pity for him, took his Lost Soul and placed her in a pumpkin, and he carried the pumpkin back to his own country.
"See it is all here. There is the pumpkin. There are the Lost Souls, who also danced. Ataentsic, I think, is loath to give up my Lost Soul, but Jouskeha's face is only sad. It is all as the tale said it would be. All that remains, brother, is to replace the Lost Soul in the pumpkin, and carry her back to my village."
Argument with him was impossible. He believed implicitly in this chain of inexplicable coincidences. He, who was in so many ways as cultured as an English gentleman, was the complete savage in this matter, resting his confidence in the vague mythology of his people, accepting for truth a familiar likeness and a sequence of parallel incidents.
I turned to Peter with a gesture of despair.
"What can we do?" I asked.
"Nothing," replied the Dutchman phlegmatically.
Whilst my back was toward him for this fleeting exchange of words, the Seneca wrenched loose from my grasp and strode out into the center of the plaza toward the group of priests and masked dancers surrounding Kachina's whirling form. The ceremony was suspended, stopped, as if the atrocious image of Massi had issued a direct vocal fiat. A growl of resentment came from the watchers on our side of the plaza. The faces of the snake priests were murderous. The leaping hate of the masked dancers was reflected in pose and denunciations. Angwusi frowned; Kokyan grinned with diabolical satisfaction. Kachina showed surprise and a certain distaste. Wiki alone concealed his feelings.
For us there was left no other course save audacity. We were committed. The conduct of Tawannears was such as to stir the anger of any barbarous people. Excuses were impossible. Our one chance was to carry it off boldly. And that meant we must make the first attack. 'Twas for us to take and keep the offensive.
"Come," I said to Peter.
He reared himself erect and lumbered beside me.
"Ja," he squeaked through his nose, "we hafe a —— of a time."
I caught up with Tawannears, and resumed my grip on his arm.
"Keep quiet. 'Tis for me to do the talking."
He made no answer, offered no opposition. I do not believe he had had any plan in rising when he did. He simply obeyed the urge in his heart to possess himself at once of this girl, whom he supposed to be the incarnation of his lost love, which had torn him free of all restraints, impelled him forward calmly to claim what he considered nobody would dare to deny him. But he had no means of speaking intelligibly to anyone within the priests' circle, unless it was to Kachina herself. And whether he had thought of this or not, he obeyed me now as docilely as a child.
"Do as I do," I muttered to my comrades, as we passed the circle of the masked dancers.
And opposite Massi's image I paused and offered a low bow. Tawannears and Peter imitated me faithfully; and that served to stall off the first wave of indignation. The priests were nonplussed. We had accepted their deity, rendered him adequate honor. I drove home the advantage whilst I held it.
"We are strangers in your midst," I said to Wiki, speaking in Spanish. "It may be we have offended against your customs, but let our excuse be that my red brother thinks he has just seen a mighty piece of magic performed."
This whetted their appetites and equally placated their wrath. Wiki was naturally pleased with the idea of having an outsider testify to the closeness of his relations with his deity. He and Kachina, who had danced to his side, translated rapidly the gist of what I had said. Kokyan and his serpent priests scowled blackly. Old Angwusi looked interested. The others were baffled. But whatever they secretly felt they were induced to lay aside their hostility long enough to listen to my story, and that was everything, because it provided the opportunity for driving in tighter than ever the political wedges which disrupted the priesthood.
The effect of my narrative upon Kachina was comic. She swelled with pride, repeating with gusto Tawannears' claim that he had known her in a previous existence, and thus arrogating to herself an undeniably superior position. Wiki was equally strengthened by the tale, as bearing out his original announcement of Kachina's divine origin, but perplexed by the possible contingencies in Tawannears' appearance.
Angwusi was flatly disdainful of the whole affair. It helped her in nowise, except that she was identified with a goddess of a strange tribe. And against this she arrayed the probable enhancement of Kachina's position, and the certainty of increased prestige for Wiki.
But the one who foamed at the mouth at my amazing tale was Kokyan. The Priest of Yoki literally stamped and chewed his lips with rage. His hot eyes flickered. The sweat beaded his forehead as he fought for self-control. Again and again he ripped out savage objections or mocking comments. He saw in acceptance of our story double defeat for himself; Wiki's leadership impregnably fortified and another bar thrown betwixt himself and Kachina.
"The red stranger lies," he stormed—Wiki translating his criticisms with gleeful assistance from Kachina, who delighted in being at the center of the debate. "If Kachina was of his people, why can she not talk to him in his tongue?"
"The Great Spirit took the knowledge from her—for reasons of his own," answered Tawannears, and I translated.
"I can talk in Tawannears' tongue," snapped Kachina. "It comes to me easily." She cast a sly glance at the Seneca. "I am sure I must have known it once."
"It is a lie," howled Kokyan. "Has he not said that this Lost Soul of his was a maid full-grown when she died? And do we not know that Kachina was a child with new teeth when Wiki brought her to Homolobi?"
"The Great Spirit's ways are not our ways," returned Tawannears steadily. "He may change the maid's years, but he cannot change her face or the Soul that was lost. What are years to Him?"
"Bah!" snarled Kokyan. "Will wise men believe such tales? Is it likely the Ruler of Death or any other god would allow such wanderers as these to have knowledge of the Heaven-sent?"
Wiki, who had said little after his habit, contenting himself with translating the arguments back and forth, and now and then checking Kachina when she developed a tendency to embroil still further the irate Kokyan, now pursed his lips and sought for safe middle-ground.
"Here is no question to be judged with heat," he declared. "There is much that is strange in what these strangers say. Yet how can priests, who live their lives with what is unreal, be unwilling to believe a tale because it denies what seems truth? It does seem strange to me that Massi, whose servant I am, has never been disposed to acquaint me with what the strangers have said, although often, as you know, he has come to me and made clear the future—to the great good of the village."
At this there were cries of:
"Great is Wiki!"
"Favored above other priests is Wiki!"
"The Chief Priest speaks wisdom!"
"But who am I," continued Wiki, "to expect that Massi will tell me all? No, if he did so, then would I be as great as he, and a god. Perhaps Massi sent these strangers here to tell me this message, instead of summoning me into the desert to fast until wisdom came to me. I do not know. But I do know that the strangers have told us a marvelous tale. If it is true, then, indeed, are we favored of Massi, and Kachina, the Sacred Dancer, is twice holy. If it is not——"
"How can it be true!" insisted Kokyan boldly. "Chua the Snake, as all know, has taken Homolobi under his protection. Have not I had his confidence for two years past? Has he not told me things which Massi, busy ruling the villages of the dead, has forgotten? Is it likely that Chua would forbear to tell me of so wondrous an occurrence?"
"Chua has told you some things that did not come to pass," flashed Kachina. "You told us he said these strangers would bring bad-luck, and they brought good-luck."
"Yes, that is in their favor," interposed Wiki.
"There has been bickering about them since they set foot in the valley," Angwusi thrust in spitefully.
"There was bickering before," said Wiki sternly. "Enough has been said. We will examine the matter with care. I am Massi's priest, and I serve him in this. Let all——"
He was interrupted by shouts of alarm on the outskirts of the throng of village people who had clustered thickly about the group of priests, edging closer and closer as the discussion became more animated. We all turned in the direction of the disturbance. A lane was being formed through the crowd. Villagers with bows and arrows were forcing back the bystanders to make room for a little knot of squat, naked, brown-skinned men, who walked between the jostling walls with wary glances and startled leaps to avoid contact with those not of their kind.
A murmur rose—
"The Awataba!"
People gave ground more readily when they saw that the newcomers were the bowmen of the rock desert, men a degree or two above the level of the beasts, their bodies crusted with filth, their hair matted, their weapons crudely formed, their bellies protuberant from eating dirt when other food failed, their eyes dully stupid, but alive with animal dread of the unknown. These came forward until they reached the open circle in front of Massi's image, and at first sight of that dread countenance they cast themselves flat upon the ground and wriggled on until their leader was able to put his hand upon Wiki's foot.
The villagers who had attended them made brief report, and Kachina started, bending forward betwixt Tawannears and me, her lips close to my ear.
"This is bad," she whispered. "The field guards say the Awataba have left the cliffs and descended into the valley. They are come to ask Wiki to give you up to them. They——"
But now the Awataba were talking for themselves in awkward guttural clicks and clucking noises, peeping at us from under beetling brows and hanging mats of muddy hair, prostrating themselves anew at a wrinkle showing in Wiki's face; but withal, demonstrating a dumb persistency, a blunt determination, that reminded me of the smoke that swirled daily above the valley cliffs.
Kachina gasped.
"They are asking for you," she interpreted. "They say they have dreamed that if they sacrifice you three their wanderings will come to an end and they will always have food."
Wiki checked her with an order which sent the snake priests to close around us. They herded us out of the crowd and up to the temple roof, making signs that we were to enter the room assigned to us. In there we could neither see nor hear anything of what went on, and leaving one man to watch us from the terrace, they hastened back to take their share in the decision of our fate.
There was no twilight in Homolobi. Buried beneath the jutting overhang of the Western cliff, the village was plunged in darkness the moment the sun had sunk behind it. One minute I looked through the narrow doorway of our room and saw the gaunt figure of the serpent priest, our sentinel, limned against the gray house-walls across the temple plaza. Then the enveloping gloom had swallowed him. Only upon the distant Eastern cliffs of the valley a few crimson beams clashed harshly upon the painted rock strata, flickered courageously—and vanished, too.
But immediately other lights flared up. The plaza, whence rose—had risen this hour—a continuous hum and buzz of comment, of a sudden glared with torches. More torches shone on the opposite house-roofs, and from the unseen depths of the valley at the foot of the Breast blossomed a great flower of light that grew and grew, accompanied by a muted roar of savage voices, dissonant, unrestrained.
The voices of Homolobi were stilled—as though Wild had suppressed all with one wave of his feathered paho. The village became wrapped in the silence of death. And now our ears could hear distinctly that gritting insanity of frenzied noise, rising and falling with the leaping of the flames that streaked hundreds of feet into the air to illumine the darkness beyond the village walls. They were faint, far away, but the savage insistency of their chorus was unescapable, even when the hum of the village began knew.
"The Awataba," I muttered, more to myself than to the others.
"Ja," assented Corlaer. "Der bowmen are madt. Dey go crazy, eh?"
Tawannears said nothing. He had not spoken in the hour which had elapsed since the serpent priests had driven us from the plaza. Until the light failed I had been able to see him sitting motionless, with his back to the wall, his eyes staring into vacancy. Now, I suppose, he occupied the same position. At any rate, I could not see him.
"If we had but a pound of powder and ball between us," I groaned.
"What use?" replied Corlaer. "If you kill all der people in Homolobi we hafe still der Awataba."
"No use," I admitted. "Yet I like not the thought of dying in a trap."
"We will not be deadt alone," the Dutchman grunted. "Ha!"
His exclamation was caused by the soft tread of a foot in the doorway. I jumped to one side, drawing the knife and tomahawk from my belt.
"Into the open!" I whispered.
But Kachina's voice answered me, the sibilant Spanish just loud enough to reach my ear.
"Quiet! 'Tis I."
I extended my arm and clutched her feather garment.
"Alone?" I whispered.
"Yes. Let me in. I— Where is Tawannears?"
The Seneca's voice came from the darkness at my elbow.
"Tawannears is here, Gahano."
The throb of gladness in it sent my heart leaping into my throat. There were tears in my eyes.
She understood him.
"Tell him," she ordered me, with a tinkle of musical laughter, "my name is Kachina."
"She is Gahano to me," was Tawannears' answer.
I felt her press by me, and a moment later her voice reached me again, strangely muffled.
"What I am called matters little," she said. "I think Wiki lies when he says I came from Massi. I seem to remember a time many years ago when I often saw people who were white like you. But that does not matter. Tawannears is a man! And I am tired of priests and their ways. Ay, a man who would travel as far as Tawannears for a woman is a man!"
"We shall all of us go soon upon a longer journey," I returned significantly. "And you, too, if you stay here."
"Yes," she agreed, her voice still muffled.
I thrust out my hand and found her body in Tawannears' arms.
"What!" I gasped in astonishment.
Tawannears laughed softly—and at that note, contented, caressing, Peter, also, indulged in a peal of low laughter.
"Dot's funny," he squeaked. "We come all dis way, andt Tawannears gets her, andt we die quick."
"What did the fat one say?" inquired Kachina, wrenching herself from the Seneca's embrace.
I told her.
"Yes," she said a second time. "Death is coming. That is why I am here. The Awataba told the council they must have you to sacrifice. They said they dreamed that your lives would appease their gods, but I think that ant Kokyan planted the idea in their heads. I would have said so, but Wiki would not let me, and so I ran away."
"What will the council do?" I asked helplessly.
The hum of the village and the blurred voices of the bowmen at the foot of the Breast rasped through the night.
"They will give you up. Kokyan said there should be no argument. It was sufficient sign of your harmfulness that the Awataba were so emboldened. And when Wiki argued against it, the Bowmen said they would lay waste the valley, even though they all perished for it. Then Angwusi joined with Kokyan, and I spoke as I said."
"Hark!" said Peter.
From the plaza came a bellow of voices.
"The council is ended," exclaimed Kachina. "They are coming."
"A few of them will die," I answered grimly. "You had best go."
"Old fool!" she retorted contemptuously. "You have no wits. They will block up the doorway, and break in upon you from above. You have no chance here."
"Then we will go out into the open."
"No, you shall come with me. I know a way. It is dangerous in daylight, and perhaps we shall all perish; but if we gain the cliff-top we can hold our own. Come! I will lead Tawannears, and do you others follow him."
We moved softly out the door, and she guided us along the wall of the temple's upper story. Here was black night, unmitigated, for the overhang of the cliff shut out even the star-shine. We had passed two other doorways, as I could tell by feeling with my hands, the uproar in the plaza becoming deafening in the meantime when there was a patter of feet and torches blazed across the terrace. Men streamed by us, indistinct running figures, and we flattened against the wall, trusting to the shifting shadows to conceal us; but a group of a dozen or more with torches made the night brilliant as day.
A yell announced our discovery. There was a rush that we stemmed with ready steel, and Kachina cried:
"Run! Do not stay to fight!"
We won a brief respite by our efforts; and she dived into a nearby doorway, and we found ourselves tumbling down a steep stair that twisted on itself and debouched into a vast chamber which we recognized as the temple. Already men were pouring in from the plaza, Kokyan at their head, a torch waving in one hand, a knife in the other. And behind us the restricted stair echoed the shouts of our immediate pursuers.
Kachina ignored Kokyan, and guided us past the tank before the empty altar of Massi, in which writhed the reptile guardians of the shrine; but Kokyan sped around the other, and shorter, side of the temple. The foam was dripping from his jaws; his eyeballs were staring from their sockets. And as he saw Kachina turn toward a doorway that showed dimly behind the altar he shrieked with fury and hurled his torch at her. It would have struck her had not Tawannears reached out and caught it as expertly as he was used to catching the tomahawks thrown at him in practice by his warriors.
An instant Tawannears held the flaming club of resinous pine-wood. Then he sounded the war-whoop of the Iroquois that is dreaded by white man and red from the Great Lakes to the Ohio, and sprang forward to meet the Priest of Yoki. They came together beside the tank of snakes, but Tawannears refused to close, backing away in such fashion that the priest was poised on the very verge of the tank, from which arose an evil tumult of hissing as the snakes responded to the confusion above them.
Pursuit and flight were stayed for the instant by the spectacle of this struggle. Moreover, Peter and I guarded the space betwixt the opposite side of the tank and the temple wall, and no man, not even the snake priests themselves, cared to try to leap that gap. Kachina, smiling unconcernedly, her feather raiment rising and falling steadily with her even breathing, stood, with hands on her hips, in the doorway behind the tank, watching the contest of the two men for her. If she had any feeling of concern she covered it effectually.
Kokyan howled a curse at the Seneca. Tawannears replied with a smile as unconcerned as the girl's and the priest stabbed at him desperately, with all the strength of his body behind the blow. Never moving his feet, Tawannears swayed his shoulders to avoid the knife, and struck sideways with the torch he held in his left hand. It smote the priest on the thigh as he was off-balance, and Kokyan tottered and fell—into the squirming midst of the tank of snakes. Tawannears, without a word, tossed the torch after him, and a bedlam of angry hisses responded. Looking over my shoulder, I shuddered at what I saw.
The Priest of Yoki was submerged beneath a tempest of coiling monsters tortured by the flames of the torch and excited by the unusual light and noise. I had a vision of triangular heads that darted back and forth, of fangs that dribbled venom, of slimy, twisting lengths that coiled and uncoiled and coiled again—and under them all a shape that quivered and jerked and called feebly and was still.
I turned and ran, Peter at my heels. The Dutchman's flat, impassive face was a study in horror. Myself, I experienced a nausea that left me weak as I staggered behind Tawannears into the doorway before which ordinarily stood the idol of Massi. Kachina's figure flitted ahead of us, unseen, but notified to our senses by the echo of her feet and low-voiced directions as we came to turns or steps up and down in the course of the passage. And close after us sounded the hue and cry of the pursuit, a confused clamoring of people driven mad with hate.
Indeed, 'twas the stimulus of their hatred flogged me back to self-control. At a corner in the passage, with a glimmer of light beyond advertising its emergence upon some opening, I gripped Peter and bade him stop.
"We must fight them back," I panted. "They do not expect—we shall gain time."
He crouched next me, our bodies blocking the way, and the leaders of the pursuers, rounding the turn at a run, crashed full upon our knives. We flung the two corpses into the mob that pelted after them, slashing and hacking with knives and hatchets in the half-light of the torches, until we had reared a barricade that gave us an opportunity to resume our flight with a trifling lead—for men hesitated to cross the battered heap we had left behind us. Yet we were no more than a dozen paces in the lead when we broke from the passage into a courtyard deep in the cleft of the cliff. In front and overhead towered the peculiar bulging rock formation which protected Homolobi from assault from above. The cliff-top mushroomed out so that it overhung the Breast, and leaning against its base was a double ladder from which Kachina and Tawannears waved us on.
I could not see what use it was to climb to some rock-lodge where we would be picked off in daylight by archers on the temple roof, but there was no time for argument with that yelping horde on our track. Peter and I raced across the court, and rattled up the hidebound rungs as fast as we could go. There were men on the lower rungs already when we stepped upon a narrow shelf where the girl and Tawannears awaited us.
"Come," she said nervously in Spanish, and plucked the Seneca by the hand.
"Waidt," shrilled Peter solemnly, and he seized the ladder-ends in his huge paws, swayed them tentatively and gave a shove.
The ladder teetered erect on end, poised as if to drop back against the cliff—and went over backward, spilling its load of priests to an accompaniment of fearful screams.
"Now we got a better chance, eh?" commented the Dutchman.
Kachina chuckled with amusement. She had adopted our side unreservedly. The death of these people who had lately almost worshiped her distressed her no more than the slaying of the Awataba in the pass.
"That was a good blow for the fat one," she remarked. "They will set up the ladder again, but we shall have more time, and that means everything."
"How?" I questioned, as I strove to discern a way of escape from the scanty foothold of the rock-ledge.
"I will show you," she answered. "This is a secret path of the priests. Wiki used it when he went into the desert to commune with Massi. But it is very dangerous, and you who are not accustomed to climbing the rocks will have to go slowly. That is why I say the fat one did well to overthrow the ladder. Before they dare to set it up again we shall be able to climb beyond their reach."
She took Tawannears by the hand. He led me, and Peter brought up the rear, and we edged cautiously along the shelf, blessed by our blindness in that we could not see how perilously near eternity we walked. Some twenty feet from where the ladder had rested the ledge terminated in a series of foot- and hand-holds ascending a slope, and these we climbed by touch. In that pitch darkness 'twas impossible for one to see the others ahead of him. But we hurried, for behind us we heard the ladder creaking back into place.
The third stage of the path was another ledge, which carried us into a remarkable crevice in the face of the cliff, a kind of natural chimney, evidently a fault in the rock structure caused by some bygone disturbance of the earth's surface. In the crevice it was darker than it had been outside, if that was possible; but the footing was more secure, and we were spurred on by the sounds of our pursuers, better accustomed to such work than we and consequently making twice as rapid progress.
The path was made easier by occasional foot-rests chopped by the priests and by ladder-rungs braced in holes. It trended at first directly into the heart of the cliff, then turned at right angles and ascended diagonally, following a layer of soft rock which I could readily identify with my hands. In two places it was so steep as to demand progress by means of straddling. Atop of the first of these funnels it widened to become a chamber littered with rock fragments, and a beam of moonlight filtered into the somber place revealed a jagged crack along the side toward the valley.
Peter, following me up the second funnel, muttered he could see one of the priests climbing the slant of the path to its beginning, and in my energy to make way for him I deluged him with pebbles and fine gravel. This upper end of the crevice was very brittle, perhaps because it had been long baked in the heat of the sun, and we slipped and slid continually, losing a foot for every yard we scaled. But at last Kachina achieved the top, and helped Tawannears up, and betwixt them, they hauled up Peter and me.
To our surprise, we discovered ourselves to be on the summit of the cliff. Homolobi, of course, was hidden beneath the protuberance of rock that ran eastward many feet from where we stood. Beyond it, though, we could see the full sweep of the valley, dotted with the fires of the Awataba, the silver glitter of the moonlight on the river and the opposite wall of cliffs. The night was very bright and clear, the sky gemmed with a myriad stars, the moon shining full between draperies of purple velvet.
"What now!" I asked.
Kachina shook her head.
"We must keep back the priests from following us," she said. "If we left the path they would soon be close to us again."
"And if we wait," I returned, "they will send back messengers to guide the Awataba here by some other trail. Perhaps they have already done so."
"True," she agreed coolly. "Well, so far I have planned for you. It is time you took thought to save yourselves."
I translated this to the others, and Peter strode instantly to an enormous boulder, lying on its side in a bed of shale.
"We put a cork in der bottle," he announced.
He leaned his shoulder against the boulder, heaved and it rolled over toward the head of the funnel. Another heave and another, and it rested on the funnel's lip. Peter shoved it with his right arm, there was a shower of gravel, a startled yelp from the bowels of the rocks, and he turned to us, with a broad grin.
"Ja, dot's a goodt——"
I thought the end of the world had come. Deep underneath there was a heavy jar, then a sullen, sky-piercing roar that resounded and reëchoed, pounding our ears, dazing our senses, louder, ever louder, swelling and bursting into prodigious thunder-peals. A dense cloud of dust rose like a curtain around us. The rock on which we stood jumped as though it had been struck with the hammer of a god. The roar slid off into a declining repetition of earth-shocks. The dust settled slowly. And we looked from a sheer precipice at our feet upon what had been Homolobi.
Peter's boulder, bounding down the funnel in the cliff, must have encountered a fault in the rock, possibly the jagged crack I had noted above the first funnel, and with the momentum it had gathered and its accompanying wave of small stones and gravel, had started forces which had torn from the face of the cliff the overhanging projection which had shielded Homolobi from attack for centuries. This mass, in falling, had planed off the top of the Breast, and was now a sloping hill of rock fragments which stretched far into the valley.
Under it lay the people and the houses of Homolobi, their storehouses and choicest gardens and most of the Awataba, who had gathered close to the foot of the Breast to await the issue of their demands. It was the most utter, tragic ruin I have ever seen. The dust clouds seethed above the wreckage like the smoke of successful fires, but no fires could have been so successful. There were not left even ruins or ashes. Homolobi was abolished. It was gone without a trace to show where it had been.
Kachina cast herself at Tawannears' feet.
"How mighty are your gods!" she moaned. "I am yours. Save me from them."
Tawannears lifted her in his arms.
"Gahano need have no fear," he said proudly. "Tawannears' medicine is strong. All who oppose him shall perish. But Gahano is safe. Surely, Hawenneyu has us in His keeping that he should visit such destruction upon our enemies! He will send the Honochenokeh to guard us. Tharon the Sky-holder will let the clouds fall upon those who stand in our way. Gaoh will blow the winds against them. Tawannears' orenda will triumph over all!"
We were free, but new problems arose to confront us. Our only weapons were the knives and tomahawks in our belts. We were stranded all but defenseless in a desolate, unknown country. Without the protection afforded by our muskets 'twas exceedingly doubtful whether we could travel far in face of strong hostile opposition. The Awataba, any tribe of archers, easily could overwhelm us. Moreover, Winter was coming on. Autumn was actually at hand. There were the twin questions of food and shelter to be answered. And finally, we had a fourth comrade to feed, protect and clothe.
But on this final score we had no occasion for worry, as events soon showed. Kachina might acclaim the superior accessibility which Tawannears enjoyed with the high gods, but her native self-reliance, courage and intelligence refused to acknowledge the handicap of her sex. At the very beginning of her association with us she claimed and fulfilled the rôle of an equal—proving in this, as in countless other ways, that she was of Spanish blood, no ordinary Indian maiden to accept meekly the drab duties of a squaw. Tawannears, somewhat to my amusement, accepted her at her own valuation.
The Seneca possessed a streak of innate chivalry entirely different from the normal attitude of courteous toleration which the People of the Long House entertain for their women. No nation anywhere that I have read of in history give their wives and mothers greater honor than these barbarians of the forest. 'Tis the women who select the candidates for the high rank of Royaneh, the noble group of leaders who form the Hoyarnagowar, the ruling body of the Great League. They arrange marriages, and largely control clan politics. A warrior of the Hodenosaunee says that he is the son of his mother, not of his father, when you ask his name. Beyond all other Indians, ay, and beyond all white men they yield power and place to women.
But as a race they treat women as a sex apart. The lives the men live are denied to the women. Of love, in the sense that we entertain it, an affection transcending the arbitrary bounds of physical affinity, they are ignorant. Tawannears, alone, joined to the sex courtesy of the Hodenosaunee the white man's capacity for a flaming spiritual devotion. He loved with all his being, he worshiped, he felt a joyous sense of service based on an equality of partnership. So much, at least, of what they sought to achieve the missionaries had wrought into his character. Let it be said for them that they supplied him with the mainspring of his life.
So it was that, having asserted the protection of his gods, the superiority of his orenda over all powers which might be brought against it, he proceeded, with the naïveté that was a cardinal point of his character, to admit the validity of the aid she was able to give us, aid without which, I believe, we must have perished. Nor did he then or ever treat her as a squaw, a woman to be honored in the lodge and debarred from warriors' councils. And this, I must say clearly, has seemed most odd to me. For the real Gahano or any other Indian maid must naturally have adopted the habits, the ways of thought, bred into her. Yet never did Tawannears doubt the truth of the miraculous exploit he credited to himself.
So sure was he that he never mentioned it thereafterward. It had been a gift from Hawenneyu, a recognition of human endurance and loyalty. Very well, then, he took what Hawenneyu gave, offered thanks and went his way. Why talk of the obvious? Anyone, so Tawannears reasoned in his blend of Christian philosophy and pagan faith, who strove hard enough could do what he had done. It had been done before, he believed. He did not even question the failure of Jouskeha—or Wiki—to seal his Lost Soul in the pumpkin-shell in which she had first appeared, and deliver her to him so. The gods, no more than men, must do a thing in the same way each time they undertook it. They had acted toward him as they saw fit. He refused to quibble over details. He was satisfied.
I have said that without Kachina we should have perished. Mayhap I exaggerate, but nevertheless 'tis true that she was the means of guiding us from the cliff-top above the grave of Homolobi down to the valley-floor, which we had need to pass to gain the Eastern vents. 'Twas she who skirted the ragged mound the rock-slide had formed, and solved the first of our difficulties by retrieving two bows and a quiver of arrows which certain of the Awataba had cast aside in flight. As weapons these were not much, crudely made, lightly strung, with flint-tipped arrows none too straight or dependable in flight; but they were better than nothing.
Kachina, too, collected corn and vegetables from the standing fields and gardens on the far side of the river, which had been undamaged by the catastrophe, and with these she cooked us tasty stews that helped us to fight down the pangs of hunger we experienced as meat-eaters. And 'twas she who knocked over a turkey of one of the village flocks and afforded us thus a more substantial meal the next evening. And she knew the best passes and ravines leading from the valley, and saved us weeks of wandering, and very likely, death from starvation or at the hand of some hostile tribe, when we resumed our journey to the East.
She was a maid as quick in wit and devotion as in temper, scornful of Peter's bulk whilst she respected his strength, affecting for me an amused toleration as of one incomparably aged, an incumbrance to be admitted for sake of Tawannears. I think at first she was attracted by the Seneca because of the novelty of his case, the strange part it gave her to play, the whimsical sensation of being one reborn again, an accepted intimate and favorite of the gods. But there can be no question she grew to love him with devotion akin to his own. He was a man amongst millions, ay, in the very words she used, aMan!
Both Peter and I, whom she plagued and teased like the child she was, came to love her as a sister and a true comrade, and because of her mingling of Indian unconsciousness and stoicism and white woman's coy mannerisms. 'Twas Peter, for instance, insisted upon taking from her the ridiculous costume of turkey feathers, which was all she had to wear. For herself, she gave it not a second's thought. I daresay it was fairly warm if unsubstantial, and she had as little false modesty as might be expected in one who was convinced of her semi-divinity. Peter fashioned for her instead a neat costume of moccasins, breeches and coat, which he contrived from his own raiment, going afterward almost as naked as the Awataba until good fortune threw in our way the chance to replenish ourselves. But I am again galloping in advance of my story, an ill trick, and to be attributed to the garrulity of old memories stirred afresh.
With weapons and food for the time being, our next concern was as to shelter for the Winter, and on this point we were all agreed: we desired to get as far as possible from this valley of death before the cold weather and the terrible snows prevented traveling, and inasmuch as Tawannears' search was ended there was no question but that we should go east. Had we been by ourselves we three would have elected to follow the stream which flowed through the plantations of what had been Homolobi—and we should have been led hundreds of miles to the southward. It was by Kachina's advice that we chose a ravine which carried us due east into a more favorable country, where game was abundant.
We had feared the attentions of the remnants of the Awataba, but if any were left they gave us a wide berth, nor did we see signs of other savages, until we came to a considerable river some four days' journey from the edge of the rock desert, where we were attacked by a small band of stalwart warriors, whom Kachina called Navahu. They came at us boldly, seeing how few we were, and we pretended to flee behind a thicket; but as they approached us there we charged upon them with heavy clubs of wood that Peter had cut, and at the sight of our white, bearded faces they lost all their ardor and tried to escape, crying that we were Naakai, by which, it seems, they meant Spaniards. We overtook and plundered several of them, besides raiding their camp on the river-bank, and so became possessed of some handsomely woven robes or blankets, which Kachina assured us were highly prized by all the tribes in these regions.
Hitherto Peter and I had been obliged to content ourselves with clubs to supplement our knives and tomahawks, it being manifestly the wisest policy to award our two bows to Tawannears and Kachina, who were more expert archers than we. Now we acquired two more bows and nearly two quivers full of arrows, and plucking up our courage, deemed ourselves equipped to encounter any resistance short of musketry. We swam the river without difficulty, and continued east, being halted presently by a barrier of foothills beyond a smaller stream. Long since we had passed the confines of Kachina's narrow geographical knowledge, and after discussing the situation we decided to follow this stream north.
When it turned abruptly west three days afterward we were crestfallen, but we agreed to keep to its banks for one day more; and our perseverance was rewarded, for we discovered that it flowed into a larger river, apparently the one we had first crossed, which seemed to come down from the northeast. 'Twas in this direction we felt vaguely that we should aim, and we made the best progress the broken ground afforded. Several days' rough traveling brought us to a third stream, which joined our river from the east. Ahead loomed range after range of rocky peaks; southeast the prospect* was also forbidding. We made the only decision possible, and headed east up the course of this new river. Of course, it might have carried us anywhere, as in this land the streams seemed to be coming from and flowing toward all directions; but it was our good fortune that its head waters were high on the western slopes of the Sky Mountains, and we were able to Winter in a glorious valley such as had been our home the year previous.
* Ormerod's course grows increasingly difficult to trace, but I hazard a guess he came out of some point in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, crossed the Grand and followed that river to the Gunnison.—A.D.H S.
We built a comfortable cabin of two rooms, and had all the food we needed. Indeed, we grew fat and sleek, and Peter, with his clever hands, made us new garments of deerskin. The blankets we had captured from the Navahu kept us warm. And we whiled away the hours when we were not hunting or working on pelts by cutting and straightening arrow shafts, chipping and fastening stone-heads and adjusting the feathering. We were better armed than ever, and Peter and I improved in our shooting, although we could never hope to rival archers like Tawannears and Kachina, who had drawn bows since childhood—just as they were incomparably less expert than the marvelous bowmen of the Plains tribes, who spend their whole lives in attaining proficiency in this weapon, thanks to their being entirely dependent upon it and unable to secure firearms.
Spring set us afoot again. We delayed our departure from the cabin until we were certain the last snow storm had blanketed the mountains, but once we started we moved rapidly, as Tawannears had shaped snow-shoes for all of us, and the soggy crust packed firm. Two weeks' journey fetched us across a divide of land, a mountain-ridge running due north and south; and we descended by a series of valleys which carried us out of the mountains through a gateway betwixt two gigantic peaks that reared skyward many miles apart.*
* This tends to confirm the theory that Ormerod followed the Gunnison east, crossed the Continental Divide near Gannon City, and came down into the valley of the Arkansas, with Pike's Peak on his left and Spanish Peak visible in the distance.—A.D.H.S.
We encountered a river flowing east, which already was gathering size and force from the melting snows of countless minor streams. For want of more accurate guidance we followed its Southern bank, abandoning it twice, when it seemed to deviate to the north, and striking eastward in a bee line, although in each of these instances we picked up the river again.
On this comparatively low tableland the snow had disappeared, and the long grass and foliage were greening out. There was no lack of antelope and deer, and we saw frequent herds of buffalo, the advance-guards of the vast migrations which were shifting from the Southern feeding-grounds. We were now in the country of the horse Indians, those wide-ranging tribes whose bands ride hundreds of miles for a handful of booty or a scalp, lovers of fighting by preference, and we were at pains to avoid all contact with them. Twice we hid in the grass to let gorgeously feathered parties ride past. Once we lay in a patch of timber by the river-bank, unable to move, and watched a band make camp.
But we could not hope to be successful always, especially as the country became flatter and less adaptable for concealment as we traveled east. There arrived a day when the river looped north, and we abandoned it for the third time, squaring our backs to the westering sun and entrusting ourselves to the open plains. The grass here was still short of its midsummer luxuriance. Cover was negligible, and the land rolled evenly in gigantic swells. We were climbing one of these, weary and anxious to reach a water-supply, as a war-party rode over the crest, fifty painted warriors in breech-clouts and moccasins, long hair stuck with feathers, white shields and lance-points glistening, quivers bristling with arrows.
They howled their amazement, and swept down upon us, two of their number racing up the swell behind us to make sure we were not the bait of a larger band, lying in ambush. We bunched together, and made the peace sign, arms upthrust, palms out. But the newcomers rode wearily around us in a contracting circle, their lances slung, arrows notched, ready to overwhelm us with a rain of shafts. They carried hornbound bows that could shoot twice as far as ours. When the scouts scurried back with yells of reassurance, they reduced the circle they had strung until we were fairly within bow-shot from all sides. Then a chief, resplendent in eagle's feathers, hailed us in a sonorous dialect marked by rolling r's. Tawannears started at the words.
"They are the Nemene, or Comanche," he exclaimed. "We are in grave danger, brothers. These men are the mightiest raiders on the plains."
"Shall we fight them?" I asked.
"Yes," approved Kachina, notching an arrow. "Let us fight them."
"What does der chief say?" asked Peter. "Can you understand?"
"A part. I have heard the Comanches talk when they came North to trade with the Dakota. I will try them in Dakota."
Tawannears shouted his answer, and the Comanche chief summoned a warrior to interpret.
"He asks who we are," Tawannears explained swiftly after a brief interchange of words. "I have told him. He says that we must come with him to his camp."
There was another interchange of remarks.
"I have told him we are hurrying to our own land, that we mean no harm to his people, but he will not agree to let us go. He says we are on his people's land, and we should have asked permission to come here. I will say that we were looking for him, but——"
Tawannears shrugged his shoulders.
Once more the shouted questions and answers, accompanied by signs and gestures, and the ring of warriors commenced to weave around us again. The chief rode leisurely to one side, and regarded us indifferently. His interpreter shouted two words.
"It is no use, brothers," said Tawannears. "We are to throw down our weapons or they shoot."
"Is it a question of dying now or later?" I asked resentfully.
"It looks so."
"Let us die here in the open," proposed Kachina fearlessly.
"Nein," spoke up Peter. "If we fight here, we die, Dot's sure. If we go with dem, we die—maype. Berhaps not. Not sure, eh? We petter go, andt wait andt see.Ja!"
The Dutchman was right. We dropped our weapons, and the ring of Comanches swirled in upon itself. We were suddenly in the midst of a sweating mob of men and horses, scowling faces bent over us, rough hands snatching at our possessions; rawhide thongs were lashed about our waists, and the cavalcade dashed away between the swells, each of us running fast to keep up with the horseman who had us in tow, plenty of careless hoofs ready to beat our brains out if we stumbled. But after the first mile they lessened the pace, and toward evening we rode into a circle of teepees pitched on the bank of a tiny river.
On one side was a grove of trees, reaching to the high-water mark. Opposite, the pony herd grazed in a natural meadow. We were bound hand and foot and suffered to lie on the grass betwixt the easternmost of the teepees and the horse herd, the adolescents of the herd-guard being summoned to watch us. The chief and his warriors, after exhibiting us to a group of several hundred people, including women and children, shooed them all away and left us, evidently to decide how to treat us—which, apparently, meant how to end us.