Taku and Arrumpa

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Umph, uh-ump!" chuckled the old beast reminiscently. "We drove; we drove. What else was there to do? Taku-Wakin was my man. Besides, it was great fun. One-Tusk helped me. He was one of our bachelor herd who had lost a tusk in his first fight, which turned out greatly to his advantage. He would come sidling up to a refractory young cow with his eyes twinkling, and before anybody suspected he could give such a prod with his one tusk as sent her squealing.... But that came afterward. The Mammoth herd that fed on our edge of the Great Swamp was led by a wrinkled old cow, wise beyond belief. Scrag we called her. She would take the herd in to the bedding-ground by the river, to a landing-point on the opposite side, never twice the same, and drift noiselessly through the canebrake, choosing blowy hours when the swish of cane over woolly backs was like the run of the wind. Days when the marsh would be full of tapirs wallowing and wild pig rootling and fighting, there might be hundreds feeding within sound of you and not a hint of it except the occasionaltoot-tootof some silly cow calling for Scrag, or a young bull blowing water.

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

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

"Not for nothing was he called Taku-Wakin, which means 'The Wonderful.' He brought a tiger cub's skin of his father's killing, dried stiff and sewed up with small stones inside it. At one end there was a thong with a loop in it, and it smelled of tiger. I could see the tip of One-Tusk's trunk go up with a start every time he winded it. There was a curled moon high up in the air like a feather, and a moon-white tusk glinting here and there, where the herds drifted across the flats. There was no trouble about our going among them so long as Scrag did not wind us. Theyclaimed to be kin to us, and they cared nothing for Man even when they smelled him. We came sidling up to a nervous young cow, and Taku dropped from my neck long enough to slip the thong over a hind foot as she lifted it. The thong was wet at first and scarcely touched her. Presently it tightened. Then the cow shook her foot to free it and the skin rattled. She squealed nervously and started out to find Scrag, who was feeding on the far side of the hummock, and at every step the tiger-skin rattled and bounced against her. Eyes winked red with alarm and trunks came lifting out of the tall grass like serpents. One-Tusk moved silently, prod-prodding; we could hear the click of ivory and the bunting of shoulder against shoulder. Then some silly cow had a whiff of the skin that bounded along in their tracks like a cat, and raised the cry of 'Tiger! Tiger!' Far on the side from us, in the direction of the Squidgy Islands, Scrag trumpeted, followed by frantic splashing as the frightened herd plunged into the reed-beds. Taku slipped from my neck, shaking with laughter.

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

"It was two days before Scrag stopped running.

"From the Grass Flats on to the Islands it was all one reed-bed where the water gathered into runnels between hummocks of rotten rushes, where no trail would lie and any false step might plunge you into black bog to the shoulder. About halfway we found the tiger-skin tramped into the mire, but as soon as we struck the Islands I turned back, for I was in need of good oak browse, and I wished to find out what had become of Taku-Wakin. It was not until one evening when I had come well up into the hills for a taste of fir, that I saw him, black against the sun with the tribe behind him. The Five Chiefs walked each in front of his own village, except that Taku-Wakin's own walked after Opata, and there were two of the Turtle clan, each with his own head man, and two under Apunkéwis. Before all walked Taku-Wakin holding a peeled stick upright and seeing the end of the trail, but not what lay close in front of him. He did not even see me as I slipped around the procession and left a wet trail for him to follow.

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

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

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

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

"'Eyah, eyah!' they sang.

"Taku-Wakin whirled like a spark into the ring. 'Eyah, eyah!' he shouted,--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Boomerangs!" cried the children, delighted.

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

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

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

"Taku-Wakin slapped my trunk.

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

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

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

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

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

"I looked where Opata looked, for I said to myself, from that point comes the mischief, and looking I saw a streak of silver pour out of the mouth of the bottle and coil and lift and make as a snake will for the nearest shadow. It was the shadow of Taku-Wakin's bare legs. Then I knew why Opata smelled of mischief when he had caught snakes in the lagoon. But I was afraid to speak, for I saw that if Taku moved the snake would strike, and there is no cure for the bite of the snake called Silver Moccasin.

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

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

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

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

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

Arrumpa was silent so long that the children fidgeted.

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

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

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

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

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

The Indians nodded.

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

"Shell Mounds," said Oliver. "I've heard of those, too. But I never thought they had stories about them."

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

The Trail to the Sea

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

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

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

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

"Then that," said Bighorn, dropping with one bound from his aerial lookout, "should bemystory, for my people made that trail, and it was long before any other trod in it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"'Now, for this,' said Howkawanda to my First Father, when they had breathed a little, 'you are become my very brother.' Then he marked the coyote with the blood of his own hurts, as the custom is when men are not born of one mother, and Younger Brother, who had never been touched by a man, trembled. That night, though it made the hair on his neck rise with strangeness, he went into the hut of Howkawanda at Hidden-under-the-Mountain and the villagers wagged their heads over it. 'Hunger must be hard on our trail,' they said, 'when the wolves come to house with us.'

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

"But when no rain fell at all, the camp was moved far up the shrunken creek, and Younger Brother learned to catch grasshoppers, and ate juniper berries, while the men sat about the fire hugging their lean bellies and talking of Dead Man's Journey. This they would do whenever there was a Hunger in the Country of the Dry Washes, and when they were fed they forgot it."

The Coyote interrupted his own story long enough to explain that though there were no buffaloes in the Country of the Dry Washes, on the other side of the Wall-of-Shining-Rocks the land was black with them. "Now and then stray herds broke through by passes far to the north in the Land of the Salmon Rivers, but the people of that country would not let Howkawanda's people hunt them. Every year, when they went up by tribes and villages to the Tamal-Pyweack to gather pine nuts, the People of the Dry Washes looked for a possible trail through the Wall to the Buffalo Country. There was such a trail. Once a man of strange dress and speech had found his way over it, but he was already starved when they picked him up at the place called Trap-of-the-Winds, and died before he could tell anything. The most that was known of this trail at Hidden-under-the-Mountain was that it led through Knife-Cut Cañon; but at the Wind Trap they lost it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The sickness must have sharpened Howkawanda's senses, for the next day the coyote brought him word that the water had come back in the gully where they threw the buck, which was a sign that rain was falling somewhere on the high ridges. And the next day he brought word, 'The tent of the sky is building.' This was the tentlike cloud that would stretch from peak to peak of the Tamal-Pyweack at the beginning of the Rainy Season.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It was a fearful thing to them that he should come back from being dead. Besides, the hair was burned half off his head, and he was streaked raw all down one side where the fire had bitten him. He stood blinking, trying to pick up their meaning with his eyes. His maiden looked up from her mother's lap where she wept for him, and fled shrieking.

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

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

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

"By the time they were able to climb to the top of Knife-Cut Cañon the snow lay over the mountains like a fleece, and at every turn of the wind it shifted. From the Pass they dropped down into a pit between the ranges, where, long before they came to it, they could hear the wind beating about like a trapped creature. Here great mountain-heads had run together like bucks in autumn, digging with shining granite hooves deep into the floor of the Cañon. Into this the winds would drop from the high places like broken-winged birds, dashing themselves against the polished walls of the Pyweack, dashing and falling back and crying woundedly. There was no other way into this Wind Trap than the way Howkawanda and Younger Brother had come. If there was any way out only the Four-Footed People knew it.

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

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

Shot downward to the ledge where Hokeawanda and Younger Brother hugged themselves.

"Shot downward to the ledge where Howkawanda and Younger Brother hugged themselves"

"On one of these occasions, caught by a sudden storm, they hugged themselves for three days and ate what food they had, mouthful by mouthful, while the snow slid past them straight and sodden. It closed smooth over the tree where their house was, to the middle branches. Two days more they waited until the sun by day and the cold at night had made a crust over the fresh fall. On the second day they saw something moving in the middle of the Cañon. Half a dozen wild geese had been caught in one of the wind currents that race like rivers about the High Places of the World, and dropped exhausted into the Trap. Now they rose heavily; but, starved and blinded, they could not pitch their flight to that great height. Round and round they beat, and back they dropped from the huge mountain-heads, bewildered. Finally, the leader rose alone higher and higher in that thin atmosphere until the watchers almost lost him, and then, exhausted, shot downward to the ledge where Howkawanda and Younger Brother hugged themselves in the shelter of a wind-driven drift. They could see the gander's body shaken all over with the pumping of his heart as Younger Brother took him hungrily by the neck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Howkawanda took off his deerskin and put around the coyote so that he should have man smell about him, for at that time the Bighorn had not learned to fear man.

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

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

"Toward nightfall they found an ancient wether the weight of whose horns had sunk him deep in the soft snow, so that he could neither go forward nor back. Him they took. It was pure kindness, for he would have died slowly otherwise of starvation. That is the Way Things Are," said the Coyote; "when onemustkill, killing is allowed. But before they killed him they said certain words.

"Later," the Coyote went on, "they found a deer occasionally and mountain hares. Their worst trouble was with the cold. Snow lay deep over the dropped timber and the pine would not burn. Howkawanda would scrape together moss and a few twigs for a little fire to warm the front of him and Younger Brother would snuggle at his back, so between two friends the man saved himself."

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

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

"In the moon of Tender Leaves, the people of the Buffalo Country, when they came up the hills for the spring kill, met a very curious procession coming down. They saw a man with no clothes but a few tatters of deerskin, all scarred down one side of his body, and following at his back a coyote who dragged a curiously plaited platform, by means of two poles harnessed across his shoulders. It was the first travoise. The men of the Buffalo Country put their hands over their mouths, for they had never seen anything like it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back to Index Next