The Flute of the Gods Part 7

"We wish that it comes not soon," said the governor, and the others signified their a.s.sent.

"Thanks, thanks that you wish it. I do not speak of it to give sad hearts. I speak because of the days when I may be gone, and another than me will hold the knowledge of a sacred place where the Sun Father hides his symbol. It is good that I hear of the men who let themselves go into ashes, and when if they had said once:--'I know where it is--the metal of the Sun!' all might have gone free and lived long days. My children:--it may be that some day one of you will hold a secret of the sacred place where strong magic lives! If it be so, let that man among you think in his heart of the twenty times ten men who let themselves be burned into ashes by the white men of iron! Guard you the sacred places--and let your ashes go into the sands, or be blown by the winds to the four ways. But from the sacred things of the G.o.ds, lift not the cover for the enemy!"

The old man trembled with the intensity of the thought and the dread of what the unborn years might bring.

After a moment of silence the governor spoke:

"It may be that you live the longest of all! No one knows who will guard the things not to be told. But no Te-hua can uncover that which belongs to the Sun Father, and the Earth Mother."

"It is true:--thanks that it is true!"--said the other men, and Tahn-te knew he was listening to things not told to boys.

"Thanks that you speak so," said the Ruler. "Now we have all spoken of this matter. It is done. But the magic of the white hunters of gold, we have not yet heard spoken. How is it, boy, that you have brought all these signs of it:--what made blind their eyes?"

"Not anything," said Tahn-te. "It was a long time I was with them.

Some men had one book, or two, other men had papers that came in great canoes from their land in Spain. Some had writings from their fathers or their friends. These I heard read and talked of around the camp fire. When they went away some things were thrown aside or given to the padres who were to stay and talk of their G.o.ds. All I found I hid in the earth. The people of Ci-bo-la killed Padre Juan, and I traded a broken sword for his books and his papers. The sword I also had buried. They were afraid of the books, I had learned to read them, and I was not afraid."

"And you came from Ci-bo-la alone?" asked the governor,--"it is a long trail to carry a load."

"All was not carried from there. I came back to Ci-cu-ye to learn more from Padre Luis who meant to live there. He did not live so long, but while he lived he taught me."

"The men of Ci-cu-ye killed him too?"

"They made him die when they said I must not take beans or meal to him where he lived in a cave, and where he made prayers for their shadow spirits."

"You wanted that he should have food?" asked the Ruler.

"I wanted that he should live to teach me all the books before the end came," said the boy simply. "It is not all to be learned in two winters and one summer."

"That is true," said K[=a]-ya-fah the Ruler. "All of a man's life is needed to learn certain things of magic. It is time now that you come back and begin the work of the Orders. You have earned the highest right a boy has yet earned, and no doors will be closed for you on the sacred things given to people."

"We think that is so," said the governor--"no doors will be closed for the son of S[=aa]-hanh-que-ah, the Woman of the Twilight."

This was the hour he had dreamed of through the months which had seemed horrible as the white man's h.e.l.l. One needs only to read the several accounts of Coronado's quest for the golden land of the Gran Quivera in 1540-42 to picture what the life of a little native page must have been with the dissatisfied adventurers, by whom all "Indians" were considered as slaves should their service be required.

Men had died beside him on the trail--and there had been times when he felt he too would die but for the thought of this hour when he could come back, and the council could say--"It is well!"

"I thank you, and my mother will thank you," he said with his eyes on the stones of the kiva lest the men see that his eyes were wet. "My mother said prayers with me always, and that helped me to come back."

"The prayers of the Shadow Woman are high medicine," a.s.sented one of the men. "She brought back my son to live when the breath was gone away."

"As a little child she had a wisdom not to be taught," affirmed the Ruler--"and now it is her son who brings us the magic of the iron men.

Tell us how you left the people of Ci-cu-ye."

"They were having glad dances that the Christians were gone, and that the padres were dead as other men die. So long as they let me I carried food and water to Padre Luis. Then they guarded me in the kiva, and laughed at me, and when they let me go I knew it was because he was no longer alive. No:--they did not harm me. They were too pleased that I could tell them of where their slave whom they called the 'Turk'--led the gold hunters searching for the Quivera of yellow metal and blue stones. They had much delight to hear of the woeful time of the white men. I could stay all my days at Ci-cu-ye and be precious to them, if I would talk of the trouble trail to Quivera, but when I had seen that the Padre was indeed gone to the Lost Others, my work was no more at Ci-cu-ye. I took his books also for my own--and all these things I have brought back at Povi-whah to make good my promise when I went away. Some things in the books, I know, and that I can tell you. Of the rest I will work until I do know, and then I can tell you that."

"That is good," said K[=a]-ye-fah the Ruler. "You shall be as my son and in the long nights of the winter moons we will listen. The time told of in the prophecies of Ki-pah is coming to us. He said also that in each danger time would be born one to mark the way for the people to follow--in each danger time so long as the Te-hua people were true to the G.o.ds!"

Tahn-te breathed on the hand of the old men, and went up from the kiva into the cool night of the early summer.

It was too wonderful a night for aught but to reach up in thought to the height of the warm stars. They came so close he could feel their radiance in his heart.

Twice had his name in council been linked to the prophecies of the wise and mysterious prophet of the ancient days! Always he had known that the Woman of the Twilight and he were not to live the life of the others. He had not known why they were set apart for unusual experiences, but to-night he dared to think. With the words of the wise men still in his ears--the rulers who could make and unmake--he knew that no other boy had ever heard the praise and promise he had heard. He knew they thought they were giving words to one who would be a leader in the years to come--and this first night under the peace of the stars, he was filled with a triumph and an exaltation for which there were no words.

He would be a leader--not of war--not of government for the daily duties of village life, but of the Things of the Spirit which seemed calling within him to highest endeavor. He knew as yet nothing of Te-hua ceremonies--he had all to learn, yet he felt inspired to invent some expression for the joy which was his.

The new moon seemed to rest on the very edge of the mesa above him:--the uplifted horn looked like a white flame rising from purple shadows.

A white flame!--a _white_ flame!

To the Indian mind all signs are symbolic,--and the flame was exactly above the point where the light was set ceremonially and regularly to light the Indian G.o.d back to his own people!

A point of white flame above that shrine of centuries!

No eyes but his saw it at exactly that angle--of course it was not meant for other eyes. It was meant that it should be seen by him alone on his first night with the people he meant to work for! With the memory of the prophecies in his ears had he seen it. It could mean only that the G.o.d himself set it there as a proof that the devotion of Tahn-te was acceptable--and that he had been born of his mother that the prophecies might be fulfilled at the right time--and that the light of the moon on his face had meant----

His thought came so quickly that all the air of the night appeared alive with the unseen--and the unseen murmured in his ears, and his memories--and in his heart!

Suddenly he stretched his open hands high to the stars, and then ran across the level to the foot of the bluff. It was high and very steep, but wings seemed his--his heart was on the summit, and his body must follow--must get there before the white flame sank into the west--must send his greeting to answer the greeting of the G.o.d!

In the pouch at his girdle was the fire flint, and a wisp of the silky wild flax of tinder. Two sticks of dead scrub pinon was there; he broke them in equal lengths and laid them in the cross which is the symbol of the four ways, and of the four winds from which the sacred breath is drawn for all that lives--the symbol also of union by which all human life is perpetuated. All fires of sacrifices,--or of magic power, must commemorate these things which are sacred things, and Tahn-te placed them and breathed upon them, and touched them with the spark from the white flint, and then arose in joy and faced the moon yet visible, knowing that the G.o.d had seen his answering flame on the shrine--and that it meant a dedication to the Things of the Spirit.

And as he stood there on the mesa's edge, exalted at the wonder of the night, he did not speak, yet he heard the echo of words in his own voice:--"_No one but Tahn-te shall gather the woods for the fire to light Po-se-yemo back;--and when he sees the blaze, and comes back, you will tell him it was his son who kept the fire!_"

Like a flash came the memory of that other time at the edge of that other mesa in Hopi-land! He had said those words to his mother--and had forgotten them. He could never forget them again, for the G.o.d had sent them back to him to remember. And Tahn-te trembled at the wondrous signs given him this night, and sprinkled meal to the four ways, and held prayer thoughts of exaltation in his heart.

And this was the last day of the boy years of Tahn-te.

He began then the years of the work for which his Other Self told him he had been born on earth.

CHAPTER VI

TAHN-Te--THE RULER

Summers of the Sun, and winters when the stars danced for the snow, had pa.s.sed over the valley of Povi-whah. New people had been born into the world, and old people had died, but the oldest man in the council, K[=a]-ye-fah--the Ruler of Things from the Beginning, had lived many years after the time when he thought the shadow life must come to him.

And to the Woman of the Twilight he had said that it was her son who kept him living--her son to whom he taught the ancient things of his own youth. In the keen enthusiasms he had found such a son as he had longed for. The lost daughter, K[=a]-ye-povi, he had never found--and never forgotten. To Tahn-te he had talked of her until she almost lived in their lives. The face of the G.o.d-maid on the south mesa had for K[=a]-ye-fah the outline of chin and backward sweep of hair strangely akin to the face of the lost child. He liked to think the G.o.d-maid belonged more to his clan of Towa Toan--the High Mesa clan--than to another.

"If she had not gone into the shadow land, her face would have looked that way," he said.

"And we could gather bright flowers for her hair,"--said the boy--"they would be sweeter than the cold, far brightness of the stars where the G.o.d-maid waits," and he pointed to where Antares gleamed from the heart of the Scorpion above the dusk profile,--"I think of K[=a]-ye-povi as the dream maid. She will be my always young sweetheart--my only one."

"That is good," said K[=a]-ye-fah--"very good for the work of the unborn years."

For the youth was to carry on the tribal prayers to the G.o.ds when K[=a]-ye-fah no longer walked on earth. And his teaching must be greater than all other teaching, for the Ruler was planning for the work of the days to come.