The Basket Woman Part 10

When the arrow-maker came to this point, the boys fidgeted with their toes, and made believe to steal the old man's arrows to distract his attention. They did not care to hear about the falling off of the Paiutes; they wished to have the tale. Then the arrow-maker would hurry on to the time when there arose a war between the Paiutes and the Shoshones. Then Winnedumah put on his war bonnet, and Tinnemaha made medicine. Word went around among the braves that if they stood together man to man as brothers, then they should have this war.

"And so they might," said the arrow-maker, "but at last their hearts turned to water. The tribes came together on the top of Waban. Yes; where the boulder now stands, for that is the boundary of our lands, for no brave would fight off his own ground for fear of the other's medicine. So they fought. The eagles heard the tw.a.n.g of the bowstring, and swung down from White Mountain. The vul-tures smelled the smell of battle, and came in from Shoshone land. Their wings were dark like a cloud, and underneath the arrows flew like hail. The Paiutes were the better bowmen, and they caught the Shoshone arrows where they struck in the earth and shot them back again. Then the Shoshones were ashamed, and about the time of the sun going down they called upon their medicine men, and one let fly a magic arrow,--for none other would touch him,--and it struck in the throat of Tinnemaha.

"Now when that befell," went on the arrow-maker, "the braves forgot the word that had gone before the battle, for they turned their backs to the medicine man, all but Winnedumah, his brother, and fled this way from Waban. Then stood Winnedumah by Tinnemaha, for that was the way of those two; whatever happened, one would not leave the other. There was none left to carry on the fight, and yet since he was so great a chief the Shoshones were afraid to take him, and the sun went down. In the dusk they saw a bulk, and they said, 'He is still standing;' but when it was morning light they saw only a great rock, so you see it to this day. As for the braves who ran away, they were changed to pine trees, but in their hearts they are cowards yet, therefore they stretch out their arms and strive toward the mountain. And that," said the arrow-maker, "is how the tall stones came to be on the top of Waban. But it was not in my day nor my father's." Then the boys would look up at Winnedumah, and were half afraid, and as for the tale, they quite believed it.

The arrow-maker was growing old. His knee hurt him in cold weather, and he could not make arrow points fast enough to satisfy the boys, who lost a great many in the winter season shooting at ducks in the tulares.

Walter's father promised him a rifle when he was fifteen, but that was years away. There was a rock in the canon behind Tres Pinos with a great crack in the top. When the young men rode to the hunting, they shot each an arrow at it, and if it stuck it was a promise of good luck. The boys scaled the rock by means of a grapevine ladder, and pried out the old points. This gave them an idea.

"Upon Waban where the fighting was, there must be a great many arrow points," said Walter.

"So there must be," said Joe.

"Let us go after them," said the white boy; but the other dared not, for no Paiute would go within a bowshot of Winnedumah; nevertheless, they talked the matter over.

"How near would you go?" asked Walter.

"As near as a strong man might shoot an arrow," said Joe.

"If you will go so far," said Walter, "I will go the rest of the way."

"It is a two days' journey," said the Paiute, but he did not make any other objection.

It was a warm day of spring when they set out. The cattleman was off to the river meadow, and Joe's mother was out with the other mahalas gathering taboose.

"If I were fifteen, and had my rifle, I would not be afraid of anything," said Walter.

"But in that case we would not need to go after arrow points," said the Indian boy.

They climbed all day in a bewildering waste of boulders and scrubby trees. They could see Winnedumah shining whitely on the ridge ahead, but when they had gone down into the gully with great labor, and up the other side, there it stood whitely just another ridge away.

"It is like the false water in the desert," said Walter. "It goes farther from you, and when you get to it there is no water there."

"It is magic medicine," said Indian Joe. "No good comes of going against medicine."

"If you are afraid," said Walter, "why do you not say so? You may go back if you like, and I will go on by myself."

Joe would not make any answer to that. They were hot and tired, and awed by the stillness of the hills. They kept on after that, angry and apart; sometimes they lost sight of each other among the boulders and underbrush. But it seemed that it must really have been as one or the other of them had said, for when they came out on a high mesa presently, there was no Winnedumah anywhere in sight. They would have stopped then and taken counsel, but they were too angry for that, so they walked on in silence, and the day failed rapidly, as it will do in high places.

They began to draw near together and to be afraid. At last the Indian boy stopped and gathered the tops of bushes together, and began to weave a shelter for the night, and when Walter saw that he made it large enough for two, he spoke to him.

"Are we lost?" he said.

"We are lost for to-night," said Joe, "but in the morning we will find ourselves."

They ate dried venison and drank from the wicker bottle, and huddled together because of the dark and the chill.

"Why do we not see the stone any more?" asked Walter in a whisper.

"I do not know," said Joe. "I think it has gone away."

"Will he come after us?"

"I do not know. I have on my elk's tooth," said Joe, and he clasped the charm that hung about his neck. They started and shivered, hearing a stone crash far away as it rolled down the mountain-side, and the wind began to move among the pines.

"Joe," said Walter, "I am sorry I said that you were afraid."

"It is nothing," said the Paiute. "Besides, I am afraid."

"So am I," whispered the other. "Joe," he said again after a long silence, "if he comes after us, what shall we do?"

"We will stay by each other."

"Like the two brothers, whatever happens," said the white boy, "forever and ever."

"We are two brothers," said Joe.

"Will you swear it?"

"On my elk's tooth."

Then they each took the elk's tooth in his hand and made a vow that whether Winnedumah came down from his rock, or whether the Shoshones found them, come what would, they would stand together. Then they were comforted, and lay down, holding each other's hands.

"I hear some one walking," said Walter.

"It is the wind among the pines," said Joe.

A twig snapped. "What is that?" said the one boy.

"It is a fox or a coyote pa.s.sing," said the other, but he knew better.

They lay still, scarcely breathing, and throbbed with fear. They felt a sense of a presence approaching in the night, the whisper of a moccasin on the gravelly soil, the swish of displaced bushes springing back to place. They saw a bulk shape itself out of the dark; it came and stood over them, and they saw that it was an Indian looking larger in the gloom. He spoke to them, and whether he spoke in a strange tongue, or they were too frightened to understand, they could not tell.

"Do not kill us!" cried Walter, but the Indian boy made no sound. The man took Walter by the shoulders and lifted him up.

"White," said he.

"We are brothers," said Joe; "we have sworn it."

"So," said the man, and it seemed as if he smiled.

"Until we die," said both the boys. The Indian gave a grunt.

"A white man," he said, "is--white." It did not seem as if that was what he meant to say.

"Come, I will take you to your people. They search for you about the foot of Waban. These three hours I have watched you and them." The boys clutched at each other in the dark. They were sure now who spoke to them, and between fear and fatigue and the cramp of cold they staggered and stumbled as they walked. The Indian stopped and considered them.

"I cannot carry both," he said.

"I am the older," said Joe; "I can walk." Without any more words the man picked up Walter, who trembled, and walked off down the slope. They went a long way through the scrub and under the tamarack pines. The man was naked to the waist, and had a quiver full of arrows on his shoulder.

The buckthorn branches whipped and sc.r.a.ped against his skin, but he did not seem to mind. At last they came to a place where they could see a dull red spark across an open flat.