The Basket Woman Part 4

"I have heard something of her and I have bought her baskets. Why do you ask?"

"It is nothing," said the man, "but I hear strange stories of her, that she a.s.sociates with coyote-spirits and such creatures," for he wanted to see what his wife would say to that.

"If that is the case," said she, "the less we see of her the better. One cannot be too careful in such matters."

After that, when the man who had been a coyote and his wife visited the campoodie, they turned out of the stony wash before they reached the wickiup, and came in to the camp by another trail. But I have not heard whether the Weaving Woman noticed it.

THE CHEERFUL GLACIER

Very many years ago, at the foot of a nameless peak between Mount Ritter and Togobah, after three successive years of deep snow there was a glacier born. It crept out fanwise from a furrow on the mountain-side, very high up, above the limit of the white-barked pines, and its upper end was lost under the drift of loose snow that trailed down the slope.

For three successive winters the gray veil of storms hung month-long about the crest of the Sierras, while the snow came falling, falling, and the wind kept heaping, heaping, until the drifts sagged and slipped of their own weight down the long groove of the mountain; and since it lay on the sunless northern slope, and as it happened the summers that came between fell cool and rainy, there, when the spring thaw had cleared the loose snow, spread out on a little stony flat lay the rim of the glacier. Yet it was a very little one, a rod or two of clear shining ice that ran into deep blue and gray sludge under a drift of coa.r.s.e, whitish granules, and very high up, fine dry particles of snow like powdered gla.s.s. So it lay at the time of year when the mountain sheep began to come back to their summer feeding-grounds.

When the thaw had cleared the heather and warmed the lichened rocks, they loosed their hold of the ice, and the great weight of it began to crawl down the mountain. At the first slow thrill of motion the little glacier creaked with delight.

"Ah," it said, "it is evident that I am not a mere snow bank, for in that case I should remain in one place. Now I know myself truly a glacier." For up to that time it had been in some doubt.

By the end of the summer it had advanced more than a span in the shadow of the peak. Then the snows began, deep and heavy, but the glacier did not complain; it hugged the floor of the rift where it lay, and thought of the time when it should start on its travels again. So, because of thinking about it so much, or because the snows were deeper and the summers not so warm, the glacier increased and went forward until it had quite crossed the stony flat, and began to believe it might make its mark in the world. There were any number of reasons for thinking so. To begin with, all that neighborhood was deeply scarred and scoured by the trail of old glaciers, and the high peaks glittered with the keen polish of ice floes. All down the slope shone gla.s.sy bosses of clear granite succeeding to beds of ca.s.siope and blue heather, polished slips of granite, pentstemon and more heather, smooth granite that the feet could take no hold upon, then saxifrage and meadowsweet, and so down to the stream border, where the water quarreled with the stones. And by the time the little glacier had settled that it would leave such a mark on the mountain-side, shining and softened by small blossomy things, it had come quite to the farthest border of the flat, and looked over the edge of a sharp descent. It was much too far to bend over, for though the glacier was all of brittle ice, it could bend a little.

"But it is really nothing," said the glacier. "I have only to grind down the cliff until it is the proper height;" and it took a firmer hold on the sharp fragments of stones it had gathered on its way down the ravine. The pressure of the sodden snow above kept on, however, and before the glacier had fairly begun its grinding the ice rim was pushed out beyond the bluff, broke off, and lay at the foot in a shining heap.

"So much the better," said the cheerful glacier. "What with grinding above and filling with broken ice below, the work will be accomplished in half the time."

But that never really happened, for this was the last season the ice reached to the far edge of the flat. The next year there was less snow and more sun. The long slope of bare rocks gathered up the heat and held it so that the ice began to melt underneath, and a stream ran from it and fell over the cliff in a fine silvery veil.

"How very fortunate," said the glacier, "to become the head of a river so early in my career. Besides, this is a much easier way of getting over the falls."

Then the water began to purr in sheer content where it went among the stones; it increased and went down the canon toward the white torrent of the creek that flowed from Togobah, and the next summer a water ousel found it. She came whirling up the course of the stream like a thrown pebble, plump and slaty blue, scattering a spray of sound as clear and round as the trickle of ice water that went over the falls. The ousel sat on the edge of the ice rim to finish her song, and it timed with the running of the stream.

"You should understand," said the glacier, "that I started in life with the intention of cutting my way down the mountain. But now I am become a river I am quite as well pleased."

"Everything is the best," said the ousel; "that has been the motto of my family for a long time, and I am sure I have proved it." And if one listened close as she flew in and out of the falls and sought in the white torrent for her food, one understood that it was the burden of her song. "Everything is the best," she sang, and kept on singing it when the glacier had grown so small by running that it was quite hollowed out under the roof of granulated snow, and the light came through it softly and wonderfully blue. Then the ousel would go far up into this ice cave until the sound of her singing came out wild and sweet, mixed with the water and the tinkle of the ice. As for the words of her song, the glacier never disagreed with her, though by now it had retreated clear across its stony flat. But the wind brought in the seeds of dwarf willow that sprouted and took root, and bright little b.u.t.tercups began to come up and shiver in the flood of ice water.

"It seems I am to have a meadow of my own," said the glacier, by the time there was stone-crop and purple pentstemon blowing in the damp crevices about its border. "I do not believe there is a prettier ice garden on this side of the mountain. And to think that all I once wished was to leave a track of bare and shining stones! The ousel is right, everything is for the best."

The ousel always went downstream at the beginning of the winter, when the running waters were shut under snow bridges and the pools were puddles of gray sludge, down and down to the foothill borders, and at the turn of the year followed up again in the wake of the thaw. So it was not often that the ousel and the glacier saw each other between October and June.

"But of course," said the glacier, "the longer you are away, the more we have to say to each other when you come."

"And anyway it cannot be helped," said the ousel. For though she did not mind the storms and cold weather, one cannot really exist without eating.

After one of these winter trips, the ousel noticed that the stream that came over the fall had quite failed, ran only a slender trickle that dripped among the shivering fern and was lost in the rock crevices, and though she was such a cheerful little body, she did not like to be the first to speak of it. It seemed as if the glacier could not last much longer at that rate. So she flitted about in the lace-work caverns of the ice, and sang airily and sweet, and the words of her song were what they had always been.

"That is quite true," said the glacier. "You see how it is with me; once I was very proud to run over the fall with a splashing sound, but now I find it better to keep all the water for my meadow."

In fact, there was quite a border of sod all about where the ice had been, and a great mat of white-belled ca.s.siope in the middle. It grew greener and more blossomy every year. The ousel grew so used to finding it there, and so pleased with the society of the glacier, which was quite after her own heart, that it was a great grief to her as she came whirling up the stream in the flood tide of the year to find that they had both, the meadow and the ice, wholly disappeared.

That had been a winter of long, thunderous storms, and a great splinter of granite had fallen away from the mountain peaks and slid down in a heap of rubble over the place where the glacier had been. There was now no trace of it under sharp, broken stones.

But because they had been friends, the ousel could not keep quite away from the place, but came again and again and flew chirruping around the foot of the hill. One of those days when the sun was strong and the heather white on the wild headlands, she saw a slender rill of water creeping out at the bottom of the rubbish heap, and knew at once by the cheerful sound of it that it must be her friend the glacier, or what was left of it.

"Yes, indeed," bubbled the spring, "it is really surprising what good luck I have. As a glacier, I suppose I should have quite melted away in a few summers; but with all this protection of loose stones, I shouldn't wonder if I became a perennial spring."

And in fact that is exactly what occurred, for with the snow that sifted down between the broken boulders, and the snow water that collected in the hollow where the meadow had been, the spring has never gone quite dry. Every summer, when the heather and pentstemon and saxifrage on the glacier slip are at their best, the cheerful water comes out of the foot of the nameless peak and the ousel comes up from the white torrent and sits upon the stones. Then they sing together, and their voices blend perfectly; but if you listen carefully, you will observe that the words of their song are always the same.

THE MERRY-GO-ROUND

The Basket Woman was washing for the homesteader's wife at the spring, and Alan, by this time very good friends with her, was pulling up sagebrush for the fire, when the coyote came by. It was a clear, wide morning, warm and sweet, with gusty flaws of cooler air moving down from Pine Mountain. There was a lake of purple lupins in the swale, and the last faint flush of wild almonds burning on the slope. The grapevines at the spring were full of bloom and tender leaf. Eastward, above the high tilted mesa under the open sky, the buzzards were making a merry-go-round. That was the way Alan always thought of their performance when he saw them circling slantwise under the sun. Round and round they went, now so low that he could see how the shabby wing feathers frayed out at the edges, now so high that they became mere specks against the sky.

"What makes them go round and round?" asked Alan of the mahala.

"They go about to wait for their dinner, but the table is not yet spread," said she. The Basket Woman did not use quite such good English; but though Alan understood her broken talk, you probably would not. The little boy could not imagine, though he tried, what a buzzard's dinner might be like. The high mesa, with the water of mirage rolling over it, was a kind of enchanted land to him where almost anything might happen.

He would lie contentedly for hours with his head pillowed on the hillocks of blown sand about the roots of the sage, and look up at the merry-go-round. He noticed that, although others joined them from the invisible upper sky, none ever seemed to go away, but hung and circled and faded into the thin blue deeps of air. Often he saw them settle flockwise below the rim of the mesa and beyond his sight, wondering greatly what they might be about.

The morning at the spring he watched them in the intervals of tending the sagebrush fire, and then it was that the coyote came by, going in that direction. His head was c.o.c.ked to one side, and he seemed to watch the merry-go-round out of the corner of his eye as he went.

Alan thought the little gray beast had not seen them at the spring, but in that he was mistaken. A quarter of an hour before, as he came up out of the gully that hid his lair, the coyote had sighted the boy and the Basket Woman and made sure in his own mind that they had no gun. So, as it lay in his way, he came quite close to them; opposite the spring he paused a moment with one foot lifted, and eyed them with a wise and secret look. He went on toward the mesa, stopped again, looked back and then up at the whirling buzzards, and went on again.

"Where does that one go?" asked Alan.

"Eh," said the Basket Woman, "he goes also to the dinner. It is good eating they have out there on the mesa together."

Alan looked after him, and the coyote paused and looked back over his shoulder as one who expects to be followed, and quite suddenly it came into the boy's mind to go up on the mesa and see what it was all about.

The Basket Woman was bent above her tubs and did not see him go; when she missed him she supposed he had gone back to the house. Alan trotted on after the coyote until he lost him in a sunken place full of boulders and black sage; but he had been headed still toward that spot above which the black wings beat dizzily, and that way Alan went, climbing by the help of stout shrubs to the mesa, which here fell off steeply to the valley, and then on until he saw his coyote or another one, going steadily toward the merry-go-round.

The mesa was very warm, and swam in misty blueness although the day was clear. Dim shapes of mountains stood up on the far edge, and near by a procession of lonely, low hills rounded like the backs of dolphins appearing out of the sea. Stubby shrubs as tall as Alan's shoulder covered the mesa sparingly, and in wide s.p.a.ces there were beds of yellow-flowered p.r.i.c.kly-pear; singly and far stood up tall stems of white-belled yucca, called in that country Candles of Our Lord. Alan could not follow the coyote close among the scrub, but dropped presently into a cattle trail that ran toward the place where he supposed the coyote's dinner must be, and so trudged on in it while the sun wheeled high in the heavens and the whole air of the mesa quivered with the heat.

It is certain that in his wanderings Alan must have traveled that day and the next as much as twenty miles from the spring, though he might easily have been lost in less time, for his head hardly came above the tops of the scrub, and there were no landmarks to guide by, other than the low hills which seemed to alter nothing whichever way one looked at them. As for the buzzards, they rose higher and higher into the dim, quivering air. Alan began to be thirsty, next tired, and then hungry. He tried to turn toward home, but got no nearer, and finally understood that he might be lost, so he ran about wildly for a time, which made matters no better. He began to cry and to run eagerly at the same time until, blind and breathless, he would fall and lie sobbing, and wish that he might see his mother or the Basket Woman come walking across the mesa with her basket on her back. By this time it was hot and close and he had come where the scant-leaved shrubs were far between, and with heat and running the tears were dried out of him. He sobbed in his breath and his lips were cracked and dry. It fell cooler as night drew on, but he grew sick with hunger, and shuddered with the fear of darkness. Far off across the mesa the coyotes began to howl.

Down in the homesteader's cabin n.o.body slept that night. When they first missed Alan, which was at noon, no one had the least idea where he was.

His mother had supposed him at the spring, and the Basket Woman thought he had gone to his mother. It was all open ground about the cabin from the mesa and the foot of the hills, and below it toward the valley bare stretches of moon-white sands.

The homesteader thought that the boy might have gone to the campoodie; but there they found he had not been, and none of the Indians had seen him; but by three of the clock they were all out beating about the spring to pick up the light trail of his feet, and there they were when the quick dark came on and stopped them.

By the earliest light of the next morning the Basket Woman, who was really very fond of him, had come out of her hut to ask for news, but when she had looked up to the sky for a token of what the day was to be, she saw the buzzards come slantwise out of s.p.a.ce and begin the merry-go-round. All at once she remembered Alan's question of the day before, and though she could not reasonably expect any one to take any notice of it, an idea came into her head and a gleam into her beady eyes. She caught her pony from the corral, riding him astride as Indian women ride, with the wicker water bottle slung across her shoulder and a parcel of food hid in her bosom. She went up the mesa rim toward the spot where the buzzards swung circling in the sky.

When Alan awoke that morning under the creosote bush, he thought he must have come nearly to the place he had meant to find the day before.

There was the coyote skulking out in the cactus scrub, and the buzzards wheeling low and large. It was a hot, smoky morning, the soil was all of coa.r.s.e gravel, loose and white. Over to the right of him lay a still blue pool, and a broad river flowed into it in soft billows without sound. The coyote went toward it, looking back over his shoulder, and Allan followed, for his tongue was swollen in his mouth with thirst. The little boy was quite clear in his mind; he knew that he was lost, that he was very hungry, and that it was necessary to find his father and mother very soon. As he had come toward the mountains the day before, he thought that he should start directly away from them. He thought he could not be far from the campoodie, for it came to him dimly that he had heard the Indians singing the coyote song in the night, but he meant to have a drink in the soft still billows of the stream. A little ahead of him the coyote seemed to have gone into it, his head just cleared the surface, and the water heaved to the movements of his shoulders. But somehow Alan got no nearer to it. The stream seemed to loop and curve away from him, and presently he saw the lake behind him and could not think how that could be, for he did not understand that it was a lake and river of mirage. He saw the trees stand up on its borders, and fancied that the air which came from it was moist and cool. Always the coyote went before and showed him the way, and at last he lifted up his long thin muzzle and made a doleful cry. Mostly it seemed to Alan that the coyotes howled like dogs, but a little crazily; now it appeared that this one spoke in words that he could understand. When he told his mother of it afterwards, she said it was only the fever of his thirst and fatigue, but the Basket Woman believed him.

"Ho, ho!" cried the coyote, "come, come, my brothers, to the hunting!

Come!"