The Trail Book Page 11

  XI

  THE PEARLS OF COFACHIQUE: HOW LUCAS DE AYLLON CAME TO LOOK FOR THEM ANDWHAT THE CACICA FAR-LOOKING DID TO HIM; TOLD BY THE PELICAN

  One morning toward the end of February the children were sitting on thelast bench at the far end of the Bird Gallery, which is the nicest sortof place to sit on a raw, slushy day. You can look out from it on oneside over the flamingo colony of the Bahamas, and on the other straightinto the heart of the Cuthbert Rookery in Florida. Just opposite is thegreen and silver coral islet of Cay Verde, with the Man-of-War Birdsnesting among the flat leaves of the sea-grape.

  If you sit there long enough and nobody comes by to interrupt, you cantaste the salt of the spindrift over the banks of Cay Verde, and watchthe palmetto leaves begin to wave like swords in the sea wind. That iswhat happened to Oliver and Dorcas Jane. The water stirred and shimmeredand the long flock of flamingoes settled down, each to its own mudhummock on the crowded summer beaches. All at once Oliver thought ofsomething.

  "I wonder," he said, "if there are trails on the water and through theair?"

  "Why, of course," said the Man-of-War Bird; "how else would we find ourislet among so many? North along the banks till we sight the heads ofNassau, then east of Stirrup Cay, keeping the scent of the land flowersto windward, to the Great Bahama, and west by north to where blue waterruns between the Biscayne Keys to the mouth of the Miami. That is how wereach the mainland in season, and back again to Cay Verde."

  "It sounds like a long way," said Oliver.

  "That's nothing," said the tallest Flamingo. "We go often as far east asthe Windward Islands, and west to the Isthmus. But the ships go farther.We have never been to the place where the ships come from."

  It was plain that the Flamingo was thinking of a ship as another andmore mysterious bird. The Man-of-War Bird seemed to know better. Thechildren could see, when he stretched out his seven-foot spread of wing,that he was a great traveler.

  "What _I_ should like to know," he said, "is how the ships find theirway. With us we simply rise higher and higher, above the fogs, until wesee the islands scattered like green nests and the banks and shoalswhich from that height make always the same pattern in the water, brownstreaks of weed, gray shallows, and deep water blue. But the ships,though they never seem to leave the surface of the water, can make ashorter course than we in any kind of weather."

  Oliver was considering how he could explain a ship's compass to thebirds, but only the tail end of his thinking slipped out. "They callsome of them men-of-war, too," he chuckled.

  "You must have thought it funny the first time you saw one," said DorcasJane.

  "Not me, but my ancestors," said the Man-of-War Bird; "_they_ saw theGreat Admiral when he first sailed in these waters. They saw the threetall galleons looming out of a purple mist on the eve of discovery,their topsails rosy with the sunset fire. The Admiral kept pacing,pacing; watching, on the one hand, lest his men surprise him with amutiny, and on the other, glancing overside for a green bough or afloating log, anything that would be a sign of land. We saw him come inpride and wonder, and we saw him go in chains."

  Like all the Museum people, the Man-of-War Bird said "we" when he spokeof his ancestors.

  "There were others," said the Flamingo. "I remember an old man lookingfor a fountain."

  "Ponce de Leon," supplied Dorcas Jane, proud that she could pronounceit.

  "There is no harm in a fountain," said a Brown Pelican that had comesailing into Cuthbert Rookery with her wings sloped downward like aparachute. "It was the gold-seekers who filled the islands with thethunder of their guns and the smoke of burning huts."

  The children turned toward the Pelican among the mangrove trees, crowdedwith nests of egret and heron and rosy hornbill.

  The shallow water of the lagoon ran into gold-tipped ripples. In everyone the low sun laid a tiny flake of azure. Over the far shore there wasa continual flick and flash of wings, like a whirlwind playing with aheap of waste paper. Crooked flights of flamingoes made a movingreflection on the water like a scarlet snake, but among the queermangrove stems, that did not seem to know whether they were roots orbranches, there was a lovely morning stillness. It was just the placeand hour for a story, and while the Brown Pelican opened her well-filledmaw to her two hungry nestlings, the Snowy Egret went on withthe subject.

  "They were a gallant and cruel and heroic and stupid lot, the Spanishgold-seekers," she said. "They thought nothing of danger and hunger, butthey could not find their way without a guide any further than theireyes could see, and they behaved very badly toward the poor Indians."

  "We saw them all," said the Flamingo,--"Cortez and Balboa and Pizarro.We saw Panfilo Narvaez put in at Tampa Bay, full of zeal and goldhunger, and a year later we saw him at Appalache, beating his stirrupirons into nails to make boats to carry him back to Havana. We aloneknow why he never reached there."

  The Pelican by this time had got rid of her load of fish and settledherself for conversation. "Whatever happened to them," she said, "theycame back,--Spanish, Portuguese, and English,--back they came. Iremember how Lucas de Ayllon came to look for the pearls ofCofachique--"

  "Pearls!" said the children both at once.

  "Very good ones," said the Pelican, nodding her pouched beak; "as largeas hazel nuts and with a luster like a wet beach at evening. The bestwere along the Savannah River where some of my people had had a rookerysince any of them could remember. Ayllon discovered the pearls when hecame up from Hispaniola looking for slaves, but it was an evil day forhim when he came again to fill his pockets with them, for by that timethe lady of Cofachique was looking for Ayllon."

  "For Soto, you mean," said the Snowy Egret,--

  "Hernando de Soto, the Adelantado of Florida, and that is _my_ story."

  "It is all one story," insisted the Pelican. "Ayllon began it. His shipput in at the Savannah at the time of the pearling, when the best of ouryoung men were there, and among them Young Pine, son of Far-Looking, theChief Woman.

  "The Indians had heard of ships by this time, but they still believedthe Spaniards were Children of the Sun, and trusted them. They had notyet learned what a Spaniard will do for gold. They did not even knowwhat gold was, for there was none of it at Cofachique. The Cacique camedown to the sea to greet the ships, with fifty of his best fighting menbehind him, and when the Spaniard invited them aboard for a feast, helet Young Pine go with them. He was as straight as a pine, the youngCacique, keen and strong-breasted, and about his neck he wore a twist ofpearls of three strands, white as sea foam. Ayllon's eyes glistened ashe looked at them, and he gave word that the boy was not to bemishandled. For as soon as he had made the visiting Indians drunk withwine, which they had never tasted before and drank only for politeness,the Spaniard hoisted sail for Hispaniola.

  "Young Pine stood on the deck and heard his father calling to him fromthe shore, and saw his friends shot as they jumped overboard, or weredragged below in chains, and did not know what to do at such treachery.The wine foamed in his head and he hung sick against the rail untilAyllon came sidling and fidgeting to find out where the pearls camefrom. He fingered the strand on Young Pine's neck, making signs offriendship.

  "The ship was making way fast, and the shore of Cofachique was darkagainst the sun. Ayllon had sent his men to the other side of the shipwhile he talked with Young Pine, for he did not care to have them learnabout the pearls.

  "Young Pine lifted the strand from his neck, for by Ayllon's orders hewas not yet in chains. While the Spaniard looked it over greedily, theboy saw his opportunity. He gave a shout to the sea-birds that wheeledand darted about the galleon, the shout the fishers give when they throwoffal to the gulls, and as the wings gathered and thickened to hide himfrom the guns, he dived straight away over the ship's side into thedarkling water.

  "All night he swam, steering by the death-fires which the pearlers hadbuilt along the beaches, and just as the dawn came up behind him to turnthe white-topped breakers into green fire, the land swell caught him.Four days la
ter a search party looking for those who had jumpedoverboard, found his body tumbled among the weeds along the outer shoalsand carried it to his mother, the Cacica, at Talimeco.

  "She could see the thoughts of a man while they werestill in his heart"]

  "She was a wonderful woman, the Chief Woman of Cofachique, andterrible," said the Pelican. "It was not for nothing she was calledFar-Looking. She could see the thoughts of a man while they were stillin his heart, and the doings of men who were far distant. When shewished to know what nobody could tell her, she would go into theSilence; she would sit as still as a brooding pelican; her limbs wouldstiffen and her eyes would stare--

  "That is what she did the moment she saw that the twist of pearls wasgone from her son's neck. She went silent with her hand on his deadbreast and looked across the seas into the cruel heart of the Spaniardand saw what would happen. 'He will come back,' she said; 'he will comeback to get what I shall give him for _this_.'

  "She meant the body of Young Pine, who was her only son," said thePelican, tucking her own gawky young under her breast, "and that issomething a mother never forgets. She spent the rest of her timeplanning what she would do to Lucas de Ayllon when he came back.

  "There was a lookout built in the palmetto scrub below the pearlingplace, and every day canoes scouted far to seaward, with runners readyin case ships were sighted. Talimeco was inland about a hundred miles upthe river and the Cacica herself seldom left it.

  "And after four or five years Ayllon, with the three-plied rope ofpearls under his doublet, came back.

  "The Cacica was ready for him. She was really the Chief Woman ofCofachique,--the Cacique was only her husband,--and she was obeyed as noordinary woman," said the Brown Pelican.

  "She was not an ordinary woman," said the Snowy Egret, fluffing herwhite spray of plumes. "If she so much as looked at you and her glancecaught your eye, then you had to do what she said, whether you liked itor not. But most of her people liked obeying her, for she was as wise asshe was terrible. That was why she did not kill Lucas de Ayllon at thepearling place as the Cacique wished her to do. 'If we kill him,' saidthe Chief Woman, 'others will come to avenge him. We must send him homewith such a report that no others of his kind will visit this coastagain.' She had everything arranged for that."

  The Egret settled to her nest again and the Pelican went on with thestory.

  "In the spring of the year Ayllon came loafing up the Florida coast withtwo brigantines and a crew of rascally adventurers, looking for slavesand gold. At least Ayllon said he was looking for slaves, though most ofthose he had carried away the first time had either jumped overboard orrefused their food and died. But he had not been willing to tell anybodyabout the pearls, and he had to have some sort of excuse for returningto a place where he couldn't be expected to be welcomed.

  "And that was the first surprise he had when he put to shore on thebluff where the city of Savannah now stands, with four small boats,every man armed with a gun or a crossbow.

  "The Indians, who were fishing between the shoals, received theSpaniards kindly; sold them fish and fresh fruit for glass beads, andshowed themselves quite willing to guide them in their search for slavesand gold. Only there was no gold: nothing but a little copper andstinging swarms of flies, gray clouds of midges and black ooze thatsucked the Spaniards to their thighs, and the clatter of scrub palmettoleaves on their iron shirts like the sound of wooden swords, as theIndians wound them in and out of trails that began in swamps and arrivednowhere. Never once did they come any nearer to the towns than a fewpoor fisher huts, and never a pearl showed in any Indian's necklace orearring. The Chief Woman had arranged for that!

  "All this time she sat at Talimeco in her house on the temple mound--"

  "Mounds!" interrupted the children both at once. "Were theyMound-Builders?"

  "They built mounds," said the Pelican, "for the Cacique's house and theGod-House, and for burial, with graded ways and embankments. The one atTalimeco was as tall as three men on horseback, as the Spaniardsdiscovered later--Soto's men, not Ayllon's. _They_ never came withinsound of the towns nor in sight of the league-long fields of corn northe groves of mulberry trees. They lay with their goods spread out alongthe beach without any particular order and without any fear of the fewpoor Indians they saw.

  "That was the way the Chief Woman had arranged it. All the men who camedown to the ships were poorly dressed and the women wrinkled, though shewas the richest Cacica in the country, and had four bearers with featherfans to accompany her. All this time she sat in the Silences and senther thoughts among the Spaniards so that they bickered among themselves,for they were so greedy for gold that no half-dozen of them would trustanother half-dozen out of their sight. They would lie loafing about thebeaches and all of a sudden anger would run among them like thin fire inthe savannahs, which runs up the sap wood of the pines, winding, andtaking flight from the top like a bird. Then they would stab one anotherin their rages, or roast an Indian because he would not tell them wheregold was. For they could not get it out of their heads that there wasgold. They were looking for another Peru.

  "Toward the last, Ayllon had to sleep in his ship at night so jealoushis captains were of him. He had a touch of the swamp fever which takesthe heart out of a man, and finally he was obliged to show them thethree-plied rope of pearls to hold them. To just a few of his captainshe showed it, but the Indian boy he had taken to be his servant saw themfingering it in the ship's cabin and sent word to the Chief Woman."

  The sun rose high on the lagoon as the Pelican paused in her story, andbeyond the rookery the children could see blue water and a line of surf,with the high-pooped Spanish ships rising and falling. Beyond that werethe low shore and the dark wood of pines and the shining leaves of thepalmettoes like a lake spattered with the light--split by their needlepoints. They could see the dark bodies of the Indian runners workingtheir way through it to Talimeco. The Pelican went on with the story.

  "'Now it is time,' said the Cacica, and the Cacique's Own--that was aband of picked fighting men--took down their great shields of woven canefrom the god-house and left Talimeco by night. And from every seacoasttown of Cofachique went bowmen and spearsmen. They would be sitting bytheir hearth-fires at evening, and in the morning they would be gone. Atthe same time there went a delegation from Talimeco to Lucas de Ayllonto say that the time of one of the Indian feasts was near, and to invitehim and his men to take part in it. The Spaniards were delighted, fornow they thought they should see some women, and maybe learn about gold.But though scores of Indians went down, with venison and maize cakes inbaskets, no women went at all, and if the Spaniards had not been threefourths drunk, that would have warned them.

  "When Indians mean fighting they leave the women behind," explained thePelican, and the children nodded.

  "The Spaniards sat about the fires where the venison was roasting, andtalked openly of pearls. They had a cask of wine out from the ship, andsome of their men made great laughter trying to dance with the young menof Cofachique. But one of the tame Indians that Ayllon had brought fromHispaniola with him, went privately to his master. 'I know this dance,'he said; 'it is a dance of death.' But Ayllon dared do nothing excepthave a small cannon on the ship shot off, as he said, for thecelebration, but really to scare the Indians."

  "And they were scared?"

  "When they have danced the dance of death and vengeance there is nothingcan scare Indians," said the Brown Pelican, and the whole rookeryagreed with her.

  "At a signal," she went on, "when the Spaniards were lolling afterdinner with their iron shirts half off, and the guns stacked on thesand, the Indians fell upon them with terrible slaughter. Ayllon gotaway to his ships with a few of his men, but there were not boats enoughfor all of them, and they could not swim in their armor. Some of themtried it, but the Indians swam after them, stabbing and pulling themunder. That night Ayllon saw from his ships the great fires the Indiansmade to celebrate their victory, and the moment the day popped suddenlyout of the sea, as
it does at that latitude, he set sail and put theships about for Hispaniola, without stopping to look for survivors.

  "But even there, I think, the Cacica's thought followed him. A stormcame up out of the Gulf, black with thunder and flashing green fire. Theships were undermanned, for the sailors, too, had been ashore feasting.One of the brigantines--but not the one which carried Ayllon--staggeredawhile in the huge seas and went under."

  "And the pearls, the young chief's necklace, what became of that?" askedDorcas.

  "It went back to Talimeco with the old chief's body and was buried withhim. You see, that had been the signal. Ayllon had the necklace with himin the slack of his doublet. He thought it would be a good time afterthe feast to show it to the Cacique and inquire where pearls could befound. He had no idea that it had belonged to the Cacique's son; allIndians looked very much alike to him. But when the Cacique saw YoungPine's necklace in the Spaniard's hand, he raised the enemy shout thatwas the signal for his men, who lay in the scrub, to begin the battle.Ayllon struck down the Cacique with his own sword as the nearest athand. But the Cacique had the pearls, and after the fighting began therewas no time for the Spaniard to think of getting them back again. So thepearls went back to Talimeco, with axes and Spanish arms, to be laid upin the god-house for a trophy. It was there, ten years later, thatHernando de Soto found them. As for Ayllon, his pride and his heart werebroken. He died of that and the fever he had brought back fromCofachique, but you may be sure he never told exactly what happened tohim on that unlucky voyage. Nobody had any ear in those days for voyagesthat failed; they were all for gold and the high adventure."

  "What I want to know," said Dorcas, "is what became of the Cacica, andwhether she saw Mr. de Soto coming and why, if she could look people inthe eye and make them do what she wanted, she didn't just see Mr. deAyllon herself and tell him to go home again."

  "It was only to her own people she could do that," said the Pelican."She could send her dream to them too, if it pleased her, but she neverdared to put her powers to the test with the strangers. If she had triedand failed, then the Indians would have been certain of the one thingthey were never quite sure of, that the Spaniards were the Children ofthe Sun. As for the horses, they never did get it out of their mindsthat they might be eaten by them. I think the Cacica felt in her heartthat the strangers were only men, but it was too important to her to befeared by her own people to take any chances of showing herself afraidof the Spaniards. That was why she never saw Ayllon, and when it was atlast necessary that Soto should be met, she left that part of thebusiness to the young Princess."

  "That," said the Snowy Egret, "should be my story! The egrets weresacred at Cofachique," she explained to the children; "only the chieffamily wore our plumes. Our rookery was in the middle swamp a day inlandfrom Talimeco, safe and secret. But we used to go past the town everyday fishing in the river. That is how we knew the whole story of whathappened there and at Tuscaloosa."

  Dorcas remembered her geography. "Tuscaloosa is in Alabama," she said;"that's a long way from Savannah."

  "Not too long for the Far-Looking. She and the Black Warrior--that'swhat Tuscaloosa means--were of one spirit. In the ten or twelve yearsafter the Cacique, her husband, was killed, she put the fear ofCofachique on all the surrounding tribes, as far as Tuscaloosa River.

  "There was an open trail between the two chief cities of Cofachique andMobila, which was called the Tribute Road because of the tribes thattraveled it, bringing tribute to one or another of the two Great Ones.But not any more after the Princess who was called the Pearl ofCofachique walked in it."

  "Oh, Princesses!" sighed Dorcas Jane, "if we could just see one!"

  The Snowy Egret considered. "If the Pelicans would dance for you--"

  "Have the Pelicans a _dance_?"

  "Of all the dances that the Indians have," said the Egret, "the firstand the best they learned from the Wing People. Some they learned fromthe Cranes by the water-courses, and some from the bucks prancing beforethe does on the high ridges; old, old dances of the great elk and thewapiti. In the new of the year everything dances in some fashion, and bydancing everything is made one, sky and sea, and bird and dancing leaf.Old time is present, and all old feelings are as the times and feelingsthat will be. These are the things men learned in the days of theUnforgotten, dancing to make the world work well together by times andseasons. But the Pelicans can always dance a little; anywhere in theirrookeries you might see them bowing and balancing. Watch, now, in theclear foreshore."

  True enough, on the bare, ripple-packed sand that glimmered like theinside of a shell, several of the great birds were making absurd dipsand courtesies toward one another; they spread their wings like flowingdraperies and began to sway with movements of strange dignity. The highsun filmed with silver fog, and along the heated air there crept aneerie feel of noon.

  "When half a dozen of them begin to circle together," said the SnowyEgret, "turn round and look toward the wood."

  At the right moment the children turned, and between the gray and sombershadows of the cypress they saw her come. All in white she was--whitecloth of the middle bark of mulberries, soft as linen, with a cloak oforiole feathers black and yellow, edged with sables. On her head was theroyal circlet of egret plumes nodding above the yellow circlet of theSun. When she walked, it made them think of the young wind stirring inthe corn. Around her neck she wore, in the fashion of Cofachique, threestrands of pearls reaching to the waist, in which she rested herleft arm.

  "That was how the Spaniards saw her for the first time, and found her solovely that they forgot to ask her name; they called her 'The Lady ofCofachique,' and swore there was not a lovelier lady in Europe nor onemore a princess.

  "Which might easily be true," said the Egret, "for she was brought up tobe Cacica in Far-Looking's place, after the death of her sonYoung Pine."

  The Princess smiled on the children as she came down the cypress trail.One of her women, who moved unobtrusively beside her, arranged cushionsof woven cane, and another held a fan of painted skin and feather workbetween her and the sun. A tame egret ruffled her white plumes at thePrincess's shoulder.

  "I was telling them about the pearls of Cofachique," said the Egret whohad first spoken to the children, "and of how Hernando de Soto came tolook for them."

  "Came and looked," said the Princess. One of her women brought a casketcarved from a solid lump of cypress, on her knee. Around the sides ofthe casket and on the two ends ran a decoration of woodpeckers' headsand the mingled sign of the sun and the four quarters which the CornWoman had drawn for Dorcas on the dust of the dancing-floor.

  The Princess lifted the lid and ran her fine dark fingers through a heapof gleaming pearls. "There were many mule loads such as these in thegod-house at Talimeco," she said; "we filled the caskets of our deadCaciques with them. What is gold that he should have left all these forthe mere rumor of it?"

  She was sad for a moment and then stern. "Nevertheless, I think my aunt,the Cacica, should have met him. She would have seen that he was a manand would have used men's reasons with him. She made Medicine againsthim as though he were a god, and in the end his medicine was strongerthan ours."

  "If you could tell us about it--" invited Dorcas Jane.