The Delight Makers Part 52

In dreary silence they began to move downward. Not a shout, not a whoop, heralded their coming; not a scalp was waved on high in triumph. In dead silence those below watched the sombre forms as they descended slowly, clambering over rocks, rustling through bushes, and coming nearer and nearer. From the caves issued plaintive wails; from the big house moans and subdued crying ascended,--the lament over the dead on the Rito.

More than a week has elapsed since the return of the discomfited war-party to their desolate and ravished homes. It is August, and the rains have fallen abundantly. What little was left of the growing crops, what the torrent has not destroyed and the Navajos did not lay waste, looks promising. But this remainder is slight, and there is anxiety lest the surviving inhabitants may starve in the dreary winter. The formalities of mourning have therefore been performed hastily and superficially. The remaining Koshare have retired into the round grotto, there to fast and to pray for the safe maturity of the scanty crops. But Tyope is not among them. His accomplice, the Naua, has forsaken him. He, too, has become convinced that everything is lost for them, and he has thrown away Tyope like a blunt and useless tool. Hereafter the Naua attends strictly to his official duties, and to nothing beyond his duties. For the Shkuy Chayan is dead, the Shikama Chayan has no love for him, and the old Hishtanyi, who has seen more of the real nature of events than any on the Rito, went over to the cave of the old sinner and spake to him a few words. The "old sinner" comprehended; he has gone back to his duties and attends to them exclusively.

Afterward the Chayan called upon the chief penitent, or Hotshanyi, and spoke to him long and earnestly; after him to the shaykatze and the uishtyaka; lastly with all three yaya together. Then the yaya went into retirement, all three in the same place. They are fasting, doing penance, mercilessly mortifying themselves, in order that Those Above may forgive the tribe and suffer it to prosper again.

All this has taken place in silence and secret, and nothing has come to the surface. The only thing that has become public is a general council, not merely of the delegates of clans with the yaya, but of the tribe.

Hayoue a.s.sisted, with Zashue his brother. Tyope was present also, but he said nothing, and n.o.body requested him to speak. He was not outlawed; no punishment was dealt to him; he was simply suffered to remain on that lower level to which he had naturally dropped.

The princ.i.p.al question agitating the council was the nomination of a maseua, or head war-chief. The caciques intimated that Hayoue would be their choice, and all concurred in the selection. But Hayoue positively declined, insisting that his clan had virtually ceased to exist on the Rito, and that it was his duty to follow his people in their distress.

Zashue also spoke to the same effect. His wife Say Koitza and his children had disappeared, even to the little girl, whose brains were still clinging to the walls of the big house, against which the enemy had dashed her head. However much the people insisted, Hayoue remained firm in his resolve to go after the fugitives and to save them if possible. Most of the people thought them lost, dead, or captives; but both young men were of the opinion that there were too many of them, and that at least some must have escaped. It was consequently the duty of the two youngest survivors to trace them if possible.

The Hishtanyi Chayan was the first to accede to Hayoue's demands, but conditionally. He insisted that when their duties were fulfilled Hayoue and his brother should return to the Rito with the rescued. But Hayoue refused to consent even to this. The grounds given by him were obvious, though hard to listen to. In case they found a few, he promised to return; but should there be many yet alive he was determined upon founding a new settlement. He reproached the council bitterly for having allowed the lack of arable soil to have been taken as a pretext for depriving his own small clan of its allotment in order to give it to a larger one. That small clan should not come back and again be in the way of the others. "Tzitz hanutsh," said he in closing, alluding to his own performances, "has saved the tribe; it has done its duty. Now we will go and see whether our brethren and sisters are still alive; and in case we find them, seek for another spot where there will be sufficient room for all."

Every one present did not understand these words; but the members of the council knew to what the young man was alluding, and they bowed their heads in shame. Even the Hishtanyi Chayan felt the reproach, for he knew that it was partly his fault, since had he followed the hint dropped by Topanashka, and his own first impressions, all might have taken a different turn. He did not therefore insist any longer, and did not even think it advisable to invoke the will of Those Above in aid of his personal desire. His silence determined the people of the Rito, for they took it for granted that the higher powers approved of Hayoue's resolution to leave.

It may seem strange that the Chayan did not insist upon consulting the Shiuana first, for Hayoue would have been compelled to abide by their final decision. Here the question arises how far the Indian shaman is sincere in his oracular utterances,--how much of his decisions is honest error, and how much of his official acts may be deception or mere jugglery.

In most cases of importance the shaman is honest. He really believes that what he says is the echo from a higher world. This firm belief is the fruit of training; and the voices he hears, the sights he sees when alone with Those Above are the products of honest hallucination. His training and the long and painful discipline he undergoes in rising from degree of knowledge to degree of knowledge, the constant privations and bodily and mental tortures, prepare him for a dreamy state in which he becomes thoroughly convinced that he really is a medium. As such he speaks in council, and he is most thoroughly satisfied that what he says is the truth. Of course there are among them some who are rogues, who profit by the credulity of others, and who even invent tricks in order to fasten their authority upon the people in an illegitimate manner.

These tricks themselves are not performed in the majority of cases as conscious sleight of hand. They may have been such at their inception, but their origin has been forgotten by subsequent generations, and nothing has remained but the bare wonderful, inexplicable fact of their performance. Thus they have become in course of time hallowed; and the shaman who causes lightning to flash through a dark room, or corn to grow and mature in the course of one day, honestly believes in the supernatural origin of the trick. Such men are often very punctilious, and while they will go to the direst extremity in what they regard as their duties and privileges, will with equal scruple avoid going a single step beyond. Imbued with an idea that they are the mouth-pieces of Those Above, they listen anxiously to everything that is striking and strange, and attribute to inspiration forcible arguments as well as their own speeches and actions. So it was with the Hishtanyi Chayan. The refusal of Hayoue to accept an honourable charge struck him as being an expression of the will of the Shiuana, against which it was his duty not to protest. When the young man brought forward such strong arguments he was still further confirmed in his belief, and bowed to the inevitable in respectful silence.

At the close of the council the Koshare retired to the estufa, the caciques followed their example, and the Chayan came next. But before he withdrew into privacy, the great medicine-man had a long talk with Hayoue, his object being to strengthen the tie which united the young man with the people of the Rito, and to engage him not to forsake altogether the abode of the spirits of his tribe. Hayoue made no definite promise beyond what he had already pledged himself to at the general meeting.

Hayoue and Zashue had taken leave of the invisible ones as well as of the inhabitants of the Tyuonyi, and ascended to the brink of the southern mesa above the Rito. Here they turned around to look back upon the home to which neither of them was any longer strongly attached. The sun was setting, and they wished to improve the night, for fear that Navajos might still be prowling about on the mesas. At the bottom of the gorge there was little life, compared with the bustle that prevailed in former days. On the plateau the evening breeze fanned the trees; in the east, distant lightning played about sombre clouds.

"The corn-plant is good," Zashue remarked to his brother; "the Zaashtesh will not starve this winter. We have called loudly to Those Above."

"It is well," said the other in a tone of authority, which since his achievements he was wont to a.s.sume toward his elder brother; "when the Koshare perform their duty they are precious to the people."

"Without the Cuirana," the elder replied, "the sprouting corn cannot grow." Zashue had conceived a very high opinion of Hayoue, and his weaker mind gladly leaned upon the strong will of the youth. Hayoue started; it was as if a sudden thought struck him. "Look, see how good the Shiuana are! We are leaving the Tyuonyi; and behold, if we find our people there can be no lack of food wherever we dwell. I am Cuirana, you are Koshare. I pray and fast for the growing corn, you do the same for the ripening of the grain. It will be well."

"If Shyuote is alive he will help me." Zashue uttered these words timidly.

"Okoya will help me;" Hayoue spoke with great a.s.surance. "In that case we shall be four already. How often have I told you, satyumishe, that Okoya is good. He is a man; I saw it when he struck Nacaytzusle, the young Moshome."

The elder brother said nothing. He acknowledged the wrong he had done his eldest child. In case Say Koitza, in case Shyuote were still alive, it would be owing to that elder son of his. And his wife, Say Koitza, he longed for now as never before. For her sake he had left everything,--his home, his field. Willingly he abandoned his whole past in order to find her. He regretted all that he had done in that past,--his suspicions, his neglect, his carelessness to her. The fearful visitations of the latter days had changed him completely.

All these thoughts he gathered in one exclamation,--

"If we only find them!"

"Let us go and search," said Hayoue, turning to go. His brother followed him into the woods.

Henceforth we shall have to follow the two adventurers, for a while at least. Therefore we also must take leave of the Rito de los Frijoles. Of its inhabitants nothing striking can hereafter be told. They lived and died in the seclusion of their valley gorge, and neither the Tehuas nor the Navajos molested them in the years following. Tyope continued to vegetate, anxiously taking care to give no occasion for recalling his former conduct. The Naua soon died. The subsequent fate of the tribe is faintly delineated by dim historical traditions, stating that they gradually emigrated from the Rito in various bands, which little by little, in course of time, built the villages inhabited by the Queres Indians of to-day. Long before the advent of the Spaniards, in the sixteenth century of our era, the Rito was deserted and forgotten. The big house, the houses of the Eagles and of the Corn clan, are now reduced to mere heaps of rubbish, overgrown by cactus and bunches of low gra.s.s. Most of the cave-dwellings have crumbled also. But the Rito always remains a beautiful spot, lovely in its solitude, picturesque and grand. About its ruins there hovers a charm which binds man to the place where untold centuries ago man lived, loved, suffered, and died as present generations live, suffer, and die in the course of human history.

CHAPTER XX.

Sunshine and showers! A dingy blue sky is traversed by white, fleecy clouds, long mares' tails, on whose border giant thunderclouds loom up, sometimes drifting majestically along the horizon, or crowding upward to spread, dissolve, and disappear in the zenith.

It is the rainy season in New Mexico, with its sporadic showers, its peculiar sunlight, moments of scorching heat, and blasts of cool winds, with thunder overhead. To the right and left rain falls in streaks, but without sultriness, and with no danger from violent wind-storms or cyclones. We are in the beginning of the month of September. It is warm, but not oppressive, and the spot from which we view the scenery around is high, open, and commands a wide extent of country.

We stand on a barren plateau. Lava-blocks are scattered about in confusion, while tall arborescent cacti rise between them like skeletons, and bunches of gra.s.s point upward here and there. North of us the mesa expands in monotonous risings and swellings to the foot of a tall, exceedingly graceful cone, whose slopes are dotted with bushes of cedar and juniper. Beyond it are dark humps, denoting by their shape that they are extinct craters. In the distance, west of that beautiful cone, which to-day is called, and very appropriately, the Tetilla, the sinuous profile of a mountain-chain just peeps over the bleak line formed by the mesa and its various corrugations. Nestling within its bosom rests the Rito de los Frijoles.

In the south, dense thunderclouds overhang ma.s.sive peaks. Only the base of the Sierra de Sandia, of the Old Placeres, and the numerous ranges beyond, is visible, for a heavy shower falls in that direction. In the east a plain sweeps into view, dotted by black specks looming up from a reddish soil. This plain rises gently to the eastward, and abuts against a tall mountain-range whose summits also are shrouded in ma.s.sive clouds.

We stand on the bleak and wide mesa that interposes itself between the town of Santa Fe and the valley of the Rio Grande. Not a living object, with the exception of wasps and beetles, can be seen; everything appears dull and dead. The thunder roars in the distance.

And yet there is life of a higher order. Two ravens stalk about in an earnest, dignified manner. The birds look exceedingly and comically serious. Their plumage glistens in the subdued light of the sun. They look out for themselves, and care nothing for the remainder of creation.

So deeply are they imbued with a sentiment of their own exceptional position in the realm of nature, that they pay no attention to another phase of life that shows itself near by, though not conspicuously.

Over the surface of the mesa are seen here and there almost imperceptible elevations dest.i.tute of vegetation. In these slight swellings, apertures are visible. Out of the latter the head of a small animal occasionally protrudes, disappears again, or rises displaying a pair of shovel-like front teeth. Then a worm-like body pushes up from below, and a yellowish figure, half squirrel, half marmot, stands erect on the hillock, and utters a sharp, squealing bark. This barking is answered from a neighbouring protuberance. From each hillock one of these little animals crawls down; and meeting one another half-way, they stand up facing each other, scratch and bite for a moment, then separate and return to their respective cave-dwellings. Other similar creatures wriggle about in the vicinity; the shrill barking sounds far and near. A colony of so-called prairie dogs dwells in the neighbourhood.

To this exhibition of animal life the ravens pay no attention whatever.

It is beneath their notice; their aims are of a higher order than those of beings who live upon roots and who burrow for their abode. They live on prey that is far above the simple products of animal industry.

Carrion is what they aspire to. Therefore they aspire with a lofty mien, prying and peering in every direction for something fallen. They are not far from the eastern brink of the mesa, where the volcanic flow breaks off suddenly in short, abrupt palisades. Who knows what their keen eyes may have espied along that brink?

Another actor appears upon the scene, a prairie wolf, or coyote; consequently a rival, a compet.i.tor of the ravens; for he is in the same business. But he belongs to a higher order; for while the ravens are scavengers, the coyote is a hunter as well. He would even prey upon the birds themselves. As he approaches, with tail drooping and ears erect, and stops to sniff the air and glance about slyly, the ravens hop off sidewise away from the dangerous neighbour. Still they are loath to go, for the wolf may discover something the leavings of which they may perhaps enjoy. But the coyote lies down, with his head between his forepaws, and in this att.i.tude pushes his body forward, almost imperceptibly. Such motions are very suspicious; the scavengers flap their wings, rise into the air, and soar away to some more secure spot.

The coyote, however, seems in no wise disappointed at the departure of the ravens. He pays no attention to their flight, but moves on toward the lava-blocks that indicate the rim of the plateau. There he has noticed something; an object that lies motionless like a corpse. It may be a corpse, and therefore something to prey upon. Nearer the coyote glides. The object is long or elongated. Its colour is lighter than that of the lava-blocks surrounding it, but its farther end is dark. Now that end moves, and the head of an Indian, a village Indian of New Mexico, looms up above the boulders. The coyote has seen enough, for the man is alive, and not carrion. Away the beast trots, with drooping tail and ears.

The Indian, who has been lying there with his face turned to the east, rises to his knees and faces about. His features are those of a man on the threshold of mature age. We know this man! We have seen him before!

And yet it cannot be, for how thin, how wan, how hollow the cheeks, how sunken the eyes! The face, notwithstanding the red paint, appears sallow. Still it is an old acquaintance, although since we saw him last he has sadly changed. Now he turns his face to the south, and we catch a glimpse of his profile. It is Zashue Tihua, the Indian from the Rito de los Frijoles, husband of Say Koitza, and father to Okoya and Shyuote.

What is he doing here? It is now more than three weeks since he and his brother Hayoue took leave of the Tyuonyi in order to search for their lost people. They went forth into that limited, yet for the Indian immensely vast, world to-day called central New Mexico. In a month a travelling Indian may easily be hundreds of miles away if unimpeded in his march. But we find him here, barely a day's journey from the Rito. A strong man cannot have spent all this time in going such a little distance. He must have wandered far, strayed back and forth, up and down, perhaps into the western mountains, where the Navajos lurk,--the bad men who frightened his wife and children away from their homes, or who perhaps captured or killed them. Or he may have gone to the south, where the black cloud is hanging, and where it thunders, and the rain-streaks hang like long black veils of mourning. He has perchance tramped down the Rio Grande valley, through sand, by groves of poplar-trees, and where the sand-storms howl and wail. Now he comes back, unrequited for all his labour and sufferings, for those whom he sought are not with him!

His gaze was not directed to the north when the wolf espied him, but to the east. He may be on the homeward stretch, but he has not given up all hope. His eyes look for those whom he has lost; he is loath to give up the search, loath to return alone to the home which the enemy has soiled with the lifeblood of his youngest child. He is changed in appearance, lean, and with hollow burning eyes he gazes at the clouds as if there he might find his missing wife and children.

As he kneels and gazes, another Indian rises from amidst the s.h.a.ggy blocks of lava a short distance off, stands up, and then sits down upon a rock. He turns his head to the east. He too is gaunt and thin, his features are pale, and his eyes lie deep in their sockets. On his back hangs a shield; but it is soiled, beaten, and perforated. To his arm is fastened a war-club, and the quiver on his back is half-filled with newly made arrows. As this Indian turns his face to the north we recognize him also. It is Hayoue, Hayoue as emaciated and careworn as his brother Zashue. They are alone. Neither has found anything yet.

Zashue rises to go where his brother is sitting. As the latter perceives him he points with his arm to the east. There at the farthest end of the plain, at the foot of the high cloud-veiled mountains, a long row of foot-hills recedes in an angle. To this angle Hayoue is pointing. An untrained eye would have seen nothing but cedar-clad hills and the lower end of slopes dark and frowning, above which seething clouds occasionally disclose higher folds of mountains whose tops are shrouded in mist. But Zashue has no untrained eye; he gazes and gazes; at last he turns around to his brother with an approving nod and says,--

"Fire."

"Puyatye Zaashtesh," Hayoue replies; and each looks at the other inquiringly.

Where we might have seen but the usual dim haze veiling distant objects, they have discovered a bluish tint capping the hills like a pale streak.

It denotes the presence of smoke, therefore fire. Not a burning forest, for there is no high timber on that range of foot-hills, but smoke arising from a place where people are dwelling. The roaming mountain Indians, the Apaches or Navajos, settle nowhere permanently. The smoke has not been produced by their straggling camp-fires; it indicates the location of a permanent village. Those village Indians that dwell east of the Rio Grande are Tanos, and the Queres call them Puyatye. There must be a Tano village in that corner far away where the bluish film hovers. Hayoue is right, a Puyatye Zaashtesh stands where to-day lies the capital of New Mexico,--the old Spanish settlement of Santa Fe.

The brothers cast their eyes to the ground; both seem to be in doubt, Zashue is the first to speak.

"Do you suppose that our people might be at that Zaashtesh?"

Hayoue shrugged his shoulders.