The Trail Book Part 6

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-gra.s.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

VI

DORCAS JANE HEARS HOW THE CORN CAME TO THE VALLEY OF THE MISSI-SIPPU; TOLD BY THE CORN WOMAN

It was one of those holidays, when there isn't any school and the Museum is only opened for a few hours in the afternoon, that Dorcas Jane had come into the north gallery of the Indian room where her father was at work mending the radiators. This was about a week after the children's first adventure on the Buffalo Trail, but it was before the holes had been cut in the Museum wall to let you look straight across the bend in the Colorado and into the Hopi pueblo. Dorcas looked at all the wall cases and wondered how it was the Indians seemed to have so much corn and so many kinds of it, for she had always thought of corn as a civilized sort of thing to have. She sat on a bench against the wall wondering, for the lovely clean stillness of the room encouraged thinking, and the clink of her father's hammers on the pipes fell presently into the regular _tink-tink-a-tink_ of tortoise-sh.e.l.l rattles, keeping time to the shuffle and beat of bare feet on the dancing-place by the river. The path to it led across a clearing between little hillocks of freshly turned earth, and the high forest overhead was bursting into tiny green darts of growth like flame. The rattles were sewed to the leggings of the women--little yellow and black land-tortoise sh.e.l.ls filled with pebbles--who sang as they danced and cut themselves with flints until they bled.

"Oh," said Dorcas, without waiting to be introduced, "what makes you do that?"

"To make the corn grow," said the tallest and the handsomest of the women, motioning to the others to leave off their dancing while she answered. "Listen! You can hear the men doing their part."

From the forest came a sudden wild whoop, followed by the sound of a drum, little and far off like a heart beating. "They are scaring off the enemies of the corn," said the Corn Woman, for Dorcas could see by her headdress, which was of dried corn ta.s.sels dyed in colors, and by a kind of kilt she wore, woven of corn husks, that that was what she represented.

"Oh!" said Dorcas; and then, after a moment, "It sounds as if you were sorry, you know."

"When the seed corn goes into the ground it dies," said the Corn Woman; "the tribe might die also if it never came alive again. Also we lament for the Giver-of-the-Corn who died giving."

"I thought corn just grew," said Dorcas; "I didn't know it came from any place."

"From the People of the Seed, from the Country of Stone Houses. It was bought for us by Given-to-the-Sun. Our people came from the East, from the place where the Earth opened, from the place where the Noise was, where the Mountain thundered.... This is what I have heard; this is what the Old Ones have said," finished the Corn Woman, as though it were some sort of song.

She looked about to the others as if asking their consent to tell the story. As they nodded, sitting down to loosen their heavy leggings, Dorcas could see that what she had taken to be a shock of last year's cornstalks, standing in the middle of the dancing-place, was really tied into a rude resemblance to a woman. Around its neck was one of the Indian's sacred bundles; Dorcas thought it might have something to do with the story, but decided to wait and see.

"There was a trail in those days," said the Corn Woman, "from the buffalo pastures to the Country of the Stone House. We used to travel it as far as the ledge where there was red earth for face-painting, and to trade with the Blanket People for salt.

"But no farther. Hunting-parties that crossed into Chihuahua returned sometimes; more often they were given to the Sun.--On the tops of the hills where their G.o.d-houses were," explained the Corn Woman seeing that Dorcas was puzzled. "The Sun was their G.o.d to them. Every year they gave captives on the hills they built to the Sun."

Dorcas had heard the guard explaining to visitors in the Aztec room.

"Teocales," she suggested.

"That was one of their words," agreed the Corn Woman. "They called themselves Children of the Sun. This much we knew; that there was a Seed. The People of the Cliffs, who came to the edge of the Windswept Plain to trade, would give us cakes sometimes for dried buffalo tongues.

This we understood was _mahiz_, but it was not until Given-to-the-Sun came to us that we thought of having it for ours. Our men were hunters.

They thought it shame to dig in the ground.

"Shungakela, of the Three Feather band, found her at the fork of the Turtle River, half starved and as fierce as she was hungry, but _he_ called her 'Waits-by-the-Fire' when he brought her back to his tipi, and it was a long time before we knew that she had any other name. She belonged to one of the mountain tribes whose villages were raided by the People of the Sun, and because she had been a child at the time, she was made a servant. But in the end, when she had shot up like a red lily and her mistress had grown fond of her, she was taken by the priests of the Sun.

"At first the girl did not know what to make of being dressed so handsomely and fed upon the best of everything, but when they painted her with the sign of the Sun she knew. Over her heart they painted it.

Then they put about her neck the Eye of the Sun, and the same day the woman who had been her mistress and was fond of her, slipped her a seed which she said should be eaten as she went up the Hill of the Sun, so she would feel nothing. Given-to-the-Sun hid it in her bosom.

"There was a custom that, in the last days, those who were to go up the Hill of the Sun could have anything they asked for. So the girl asked to walk by the river and hear the birds sing. When they had walked out of sight of the Stone Houses, she gave her watchers the seed in their food and floated down the river on a piece of bark until she came ash.o.r.e in the thick woods and escaped. She came north, avoiding the trails, and after a year Shungakela found her. Between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s there was the sign of the Sun."

The Corn Woman stooped and traced in the dust the ancient sign of the intertwined four corners of the Earth with the Sun in the middle.

"Around her neck in a buckskin bag was the charm that is known as the Eye of the Sun. She never showed it to any of us, but when she was in trouble or doubt, she would put her hand over it. It was her Medicine."

"It was good Medicine, too," spoke up the oldest of the dancing women.

"We had need of it," agreed the Corn Woman. "In those days the Earth was too full of people. The tribes swarmed, new chiefs arose, kin hunted against kin. Many hunters made the game shy, and it removed to new pastures. Strong people drove out weaker and took away their hunting-grounds. We had our share of both fighting and starving, but our tribe fared better than most because of the Medicine of Waits-by-the-Fire, the Medicine of the Sun. She was a wise woman. She was made Shaman. When she spoke, even the chiefs listened. But what could the chiefs do except hunt farther and fight harder? So Waits-by-the-Fire talked to the women. She talked of corn, how it was planted and harvested, with what rites and festivals.

"There was a G.o.d of the Seed, a woman G.o.d who was served by women. When the women of our tribe heard that, they took heart. The men had been afraid that the G.o.d of the Corn would not be friendly to us. I think, too, they did not like the idea of leaving off the long season of hunting and roving, for corn is a town-maker. For the tending and harvesting there must be one place, and for the guarding of the winter stores there must be a safe place. So said Waits-by-the-Fire to the women digging roots or boiling old bones in the long winter. She was a wise woman.

"It was the fight we had with the Tenasas that decided us. That was a year of great scarcity and the Tenasas took to sending their young men, two or three at a time, creeping into our hunting-grounds to start the game, and turn it in the direction of their own country. When our young men were sure of this, they went in force and killed inside the borders of the Tenasas. They had surprised a herd of buffaloes at Two Kettle Licks and were cutting up the meat when the Tenasas fell upon them.

Waits-by-the-Fire lost her last son by that battle. One she had lost in the fight at Red b.u.t.tes and one in a year of Hunger while he was little.

This one was swift of foot and was called Last Arrow, for Shungakela had said, 'Once I had a quiver full.' Waits-by-the-Fire brought him back on her shoulders from the place where the fight was. She walked with him into the Council.

"'The quiver is empty,' she said; 'the food bags, also; will you wait for us to fill one again before you fill the other?'

"Mad Wolf, who was chief at the time, threw up his hand as a man does when he is down and craves a mercy he is too proud to ask for. 'We have fought the Tenasas,' he said; 'shall we fight our women also?'

"Waits-by-the-Fire did not wait after that for long speeches in the Council. She gathered her company quickly, seven women well seasoned and not comely,--'The G.o.d of the Corn is a woman G.o.d,' she said, sharp smiling,--and seven men, keen and hard runners. The rest she appointed to meet her at Painted Rock ten moons from their going."

"So long as that!" said Dorcas Jane. "Was it so far from where you lived to Mex--to the Country of Stone Houses?"

"Not so far, but they had to stay from planting to harvest. Of what use was the seed without knowledge. Traveling hard they crossed the River of the White Rocks and reached, by the end of that moon, the mountain overlooking the Country of Stone Houses. Here the men stayed.

Waits-by-the-Fire arranged everything. She thought the people of the towns might hesitate to admit so many men strangers. Also she had the women put on worn moccasins with holes, and old food from the year before in their food bags."

"I should think," began Dorcas Jane, "they would have wanted to put on the best they had to make a good impression."

"She was a wise woman," said the Corn Woman; "she said that if they came from near, the people of the towns might take them for spies, but they would not fear travelers from so far off that their moccasins had holes in them."

The Corn Woman had forgotten that she was telling a story older than the oaks they sat under. When she came to the exciting parts she said "we"

and "us" as though it were something that had happened to them all yesterday.

"It was a high white range that looked on the Country of Stone Houses,"

she said, "with peaks that glittered, dropping down ridge by ridge to where the trees left off at the edge of a wide, basket-colored valley.

It hollowed like a meal basket and had a green pattern woven through it by a river. Shungakela went with the women to the foot of the mountain, and then, all at once, he would not let them go until Waits-by-the-Fire promised to come back to the foot of the mountain once in every moon to tell him how things went with us. We thought it very childish of him, but afterward we were glad we had not made any objection.

"It was mid-morning when the Seven walked between the fields, with little food in their bags and none whatever in their stomachs, all in rags except Waits-by-the-Fire, who had put on her Shaman's dress, and around her neck, tied in a bag with feathers, the Medicine of the Sun.

People stood up in the fields to stare, and we would have stared back again, but we were afraid. Behind the stone house we saw the Hill of the Sun and the priests moving up and down as Waits-by-the-Fire had described it.