The Trail Book Page 7

  VII

  A TELLING OF THE SALT TRAIL, OF TSE-TSE-YOTE AND THE DELIGHT-MAKERS;TOLD BY MOKE-ICHA

  Oliver was so interested in his sister's account of how the corn cameinto the country, that that very evening he dragged out a tattered oldatlas which he had rescued from the Museum waste, and began to look forthe places named by the Corn Woman. They found the old Chihuahua Trailsagging south across the Rio Grande, which, on the atlas map, carriedits ancient name of River of the White Rocks. Then they found the RedRiver, but there was no trace of the Tenasas, unless it might be, asthey suspected from the sound, in the Country of the Tennessee. It wasall very disappointing.. "I suppose," suggested Dorcas Jane, "they don'tput down the interesting places. It's only the ones that are too dull tobe remembered that have to be printed."

  Oliver, who did not believe this was quite the principle on whichatlases were constructed, had made a discovery. Close to the Rio Grande,and not far from the point where the Chihuahua Trail, crossed it, therewas a cluster of triangular dots, marked Cliff Dwellings. "There wascorn there," he insisted. "You can see it in the wall cases, and CliffDwellings are the oldest old places in the United States. If they werehere when the Corn Woman passed, I don't see why she had to go to theStone Houses for seed." And when they had talked it over they decided togo that very night and ask the Buffalo Chief about it.

  "There was always corn, as I remember it," said the old bull, "growingtall about the tipis. But touching the People of the Cliffs--that wouldbe Moke-icha's story."

  The great yellow cat came slipping out from the over-weighted thicketsof wild plum, and settled herself on her boulder with a bound.Stretching forth one of her steel-tipped pads toward the south sheseemed to draw the purple distance as one draws a lady by her scarf. Thethin lilac-tinted haze parted on the gorge of the Rio Grande, betweenthe white ranges. The walls of the canyon were scored with deepperpendicular gashes as though the river had ripped its way through themwith its claws. Yellow pines balanced on the edge of the cliffs, andsmaller, tributary canyons, that opened into it, widened here and thereto let in tall, solitary trees, with patches of sycamore and wild cherryand linked pools for trout.

  "That was a country!" purred Moke-icha. "What was it you wished to knowabout it?"

  "Ever so many things," said Oliver promptly--"if there were peoplethere, and if they had corn--"

  "Queres they were called," said Moke-icha, "and they were already apeople, with corn of four colors for the four corners of the earth, andmany kinds of beans and squashes, when they came to Ty-uonyi."

  "Where were they when the Corn Woman passed? Who were the BlanketPeople, and what--"

  "Softly," said Moke-icha. "Though I slept in the kivas and am calledKabeyde, Chief of the Four-Footed, I did not know _all_ the tales of theQueres. They were a very ancient people. On the Salt Trail, where itpassed by Split Rock, the trail was bitten deep into the granite. Ithink they could not have been more than three or four hundred years inTy-uonyi when I knew them. They came from farther up the river wherethey had cities built into the rock. And before that? How should I know?They said they came from a hole in the ground, from Shipapu. They tradedto the south with salt which they brought from the Crawling Water forgreen stones and a kind of white wool which grew on bushes, from whichthey made their clothes. There were no wandering tribes about except theDine and they were all devils."

  "Devils they may have been," said the Navajo, "but they did not saytheir prayers to a yellow cat, O Kabeyde."

  "I speak but as the People of the Cliffs," said Moke-icha soothingly."If they called to Dine devils, doubtless they had reason; and if theymade prayers and images to me, it was not without a reason: not withoutgood reason." Her tail bristled a little as it curled at the tip like asnake. Deep yellow glints swam at the backs of her half-shut eyes.

  "It was because of the Dine, who were not friendly to the Queres, thatthe towns were built as you see, with the solid outer wall and the doorsall opening on a court, at the foot of the cliff. It was hot and quietthere with always something friendly going on, children tumbling aboutamong the dogs and the turkeys, an old man rattling a gourd and singingthe evil away from his eyes, or the _plump, plump_ of the mealing-stonefrom the doorways. Now and then a maiden going by, with a tray of herbest cooking which she carried to her young man as a sign that she hadaccepted him, would throw me a morsel, and at evenings the priests wouldcome out of the kivas and strike with a clapper of deer's shoulder on aflint gong to call the people to the dancing-places."

  The children turned to look once more at the narrow rift of Ty-uonyi asit opened from the canyon of the Rio Grande between two basalt columns toallow the sparkling Rito to pass where barely two men could walkabreast. Back from the stream the pale amber cliffs swept in smooth lapsand folds like ribbons. Crowded against its sheer northern face theirregularly terraced heaps of the communal houses looked little as antheaps at the foot of a garden wall. Tiers and tiers of the T-shapedopenings of the cave dwellings spotted the smooth cliff, but along thesingle two-mile street, except for an occasional obscure doorway, ranthe blank, mud-plastered wall of the kivas.

  Where the floor of the canyon widened, the water of the Rito was led outin tiny dikes and ditches to water the garden patches. A bowshot on theopposite side rose the high south wall, wind and rain washed into tentsand pinnacles, spotted with pale scrub and blood-red flowers of nopal.Trails spidered up its broken steep, and were lost in the cloud-drift ordipped out of sight over the edge of the timbered mesa.

  "We would go over the trail to hunt," said Moke-icha. "There were nobuffaloes, but blacktail and mule deer that fattened on the bunch grass,and bands of pronghorn flashing their white rumps. Quail ran in drovesand rose among the mesas like young thunder.

  "That was my cave," said the Puma, nodding toward a hole high up like aspeck on the five-hundred-foot cliff, close up under the greatceremonial Cave which was painted with the sign of the Morning and theEvening Star, and the round, bright House of the Sun Father. "But atfirst I slept in the kiva with Tse-tse-yote. Speaking of devils--therewas no one who had the making of a livelier devil in him than my youngmaster. Slim as an arrow, he would come up from his morning dip in theRito, glittering like the dark stone of which knives are made, and hishair in the sun gave back the light like a raven. And there was no man'sway of walking or standing, nor any cry of bird or beast, that he couldnot slip into as easily as a snake slips into a shadow. He would nevermock when he was asked, but let him alone, and some evening, when thepeople smoked and rested, he would come stepping across the court in thelikeness of some young man whose maiden had just smiled on him. Or ifsome hunter prided himself too openly on a buck he had killed, the firstthing he knew there would be Tse-tse-yote walking like an ancientspavined wether prodded by a blunt arrow, until the whole court roaredwith laughter.

  "Still, Kokomo should have known better than to try to make him one ofthe Koshare, for though laughter followed my master as ripples follow askipping stone, he laughed little himself.

  "Who were the Koshare? They were the Delight-Makers; one of their secretsocieties. They daubed themselves with mud and white paint to makelaughter by jokes and tumbling. They had their kiva between us and theGourd People, but Tse-tse-yote, who had set his heart on being electedto the Warrior Band, the Uakanyi, made no secret of thinking small ofthe Koshare.

  "There was no war at that time, but the Uakanyi went down with theSalt-Gatherers to Crawling Water, once in every year between thecorn-planting and the first hoeing, and as escort on the trading trips.They would go south till they could see the blue wooded slope below thewhite-veiled mountain, and would make smoke for a trade signal, threesmokes close together and one farther off, till the Men of the Southcame to deal with them. But it was the Salt-Gathering that madeTse-tse-yote prefer the Warrior Band to the Koshare, for all thatcountry through which the trail lay was disputed by the Dine. It is truethere was a treaty, but there was also a saying at Ty-uonyi, 'a sievefor water and a treaty for the Dine.'"
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br />   Tse-tse-yote and Moke-icha]

  The Navajo broke in angrily, "The Tellings were to be of the trails, OKabeyde, and not of the virtues of my ancestors!" The children looked athim, round-eyed.

  "Are you the Dine?" they exclaimed both at once. It seemed to bring theCliff People so much nearer.

  "So we were named, though we were called devils by those who feared us,and Blanket People by the Plainsmen. We were a tree whose roots were inthe desert and whose branches were over all the north, and there is noTelling of the Queres, Cochiti, or Ty-uonyi, O Kebeyde,"--he turned tothe puma,--"which I cannot match with a better of those same Dine."

  "There were Dine in this Telling," purred Moke-icha, "and one puma.There was also Pitahaya, the chief, who was so old that he spent most ofthe time singing the evil out of his eyes. There was Kokomo, who wishedto be chief in his stead, and there was Willow-in-the-Wind, the turkeygirl, who had no one belonging to her. She had a wind-blown way ofwalking, and her long hair, which she washed almost every day in theRito, streamed behind her like the tips of young willows. Finally, therewas Tse-tse-yote. But one must pick up the trail before one settles tothe Telling," said Moke-icha.

  "Tse-tse-yote took me, a nine days' cub, from the lair in Shut Canyon andbrought me up in his mother's house, the fifth one on the right from thegate that was called, because of a great hump of arrow-stone which wasbuilt into it, Rock-Overhanging. When he was old enough to leave hismother and sleep in the kiva of his clan, he took me with him, where Ihave no doubt, we made a great deal of trouble. Nights when the mooncalled me, I would creep out of Tse-tse's arms to the top of the ladder.The kivas opened downward from a hole in the roof in memory of Shipapu.Half-awake, Tse-tse would come groping to find me until he trod on oneof the others by mistake, who would dream that the Dine were after himand wake the kiva with his howls. Or somebody would pinch my tail andTse-tse would hit right and left with his pillows--"

  "Pillows?" said Oliver.

  "Mats of reed or deerskin. They would slap at one another, or snatch atany convenient ankle or hair, until Kokomo, the master of the kiva,would have to come and cuff them apart. Always he made believe thatTse-tse or I had started it, and one night he tried to throw me out bythe skin of my neck, and I turned in his hand--How was I to know thatthe skin of man is so tender?--and his smell was the smell of a man whonurses grudges.

  "After that, even Tse-tse-yote saw that I was too old for the kiva, sohe made me a cave for myself, high up under the House of the Sun Father,and afterward he widened it so that he could sit there tying prayerplumes and feathering his arrows. By day I hunted with Tse-tse-yote onthe mesa, or lay up in a corner of the terrace above the court of theGourd Clan, and by night--to say the truth, by night I did very much asit pleased me. There was a broken place in the wall-plaster by the gateof the Rock-Overhanging, by which I could go up and down, and if I wascaught walking on the terrace, nobody minded me. I was Kabeyde, and thehunters thought I brought them luck."

  Thus having picked up the trail to her satisfaction, Moke-icha tuckedher paws under her comfortably and settled to her story.

  "When Tse-tse-yote took me to sleep with him in the kiva of his clan,Kokomo, who was head of the kiva, objected. So Tse-tse-yote spent thethree nights following in a corner of the terrace with me curled up forwarmth beside him. Tse-tse's father heard of it and carried the matterto Council. Tse-tse had taken me with his own hands from the lair,knowing very well what my mother would have done to him had she comeback and found him there; and Tse-tse's father was afraid, if they tookaway the first fruits of his son's courage, the courage would go withit. The Council agreed with him. Kokomo was furious at having themanagement of his kiva taken out of his hands, and Tse-tse knew it.Later, when even Tse-tse's father agreed that I was too old for thekiva, Tse-tse taught me to curl my tail under my legs and slink on mybelly when I saw Kokomo. Then he would scold me for being afraid of thekind man, and the other boys would giggle, for they knew very well thatTse-tse had to beat me over the head with a firebrand to teach methat trick.

  "It was a day or two after I had learned it, that we metWillow-in-the-Wind feeding her turkey flock by the Rito as we came fromhunting, and she scolded Tse-tse for making fun of Kokomo.

  "'It is plain,' she said, 'that you are trying to get yourself electedto the Delight-Makers.'

  "'You know very well it is no such thing,' he answered her roughly, forit was not permitted a young man to make a choice of the society hewould belong to. He had to wait until he was elected by his elders. Theturkey girl paddled her toes in the Rito.

  "'There is only one way,' she said, 'that a man can be kept from makingfun of the Koshare, and that is by electing him a member. Now, _I_thought you would have preferred the Uakanyi,'--just as if she did notknow that there was little else he thought of.

  "Tse-tse pulled up the dry grass and tossed it into the water. 'In theold days,' he said, 'I have heard that Those Above sent theDelight-Makers to make the people laugh so that the way should not seemlong, and the Earth be fruitful. But now the jests of the Koshare arescorpions, each one with a sting in its tail for the enemies of theDelight-Makers. I had sooner strike mine with a knife or an arrow.'

  "'Enemies, yes,' said Willow-in-the-Wind, 'but you cannot use a knife onthose who sit with you in Council. You know very well that Kokomo wishesto be chief in place of Pitahaya.'

  "Tse-tse looked right and left to see who listened. 'Kokomo is a strongman in Ty-uonyi,' he said; 'it was he who made the treaty with the Dine.And Pitahaya is blind.'

  "'Aye,' said the turkey girl; 'when you are a Delight-Maker you can makea fine jest of it.'

  "She had been brought up a foundling in the house of the old chief andwas fond of him. Tse-tse, who had heard and said more than became ayoung man, was both angry and frightened; therefore he boasted.

  "'Kokomo shall not make me a Koshare,' he said; 'it will not be thefirst time I have carried the Council against him.'

  "At that time I did not know so much of the Dine as that they were men.But the day after Willow-in-the-Wind told Tse-tse that Kokomo meant tohave him elected to the Koshare if only to keep him from making a mockof Kokomo, we went up over the south wall hunting.

  "It was all flat country from there to the roots of the mountains; greatpines stood wide apart, with here and there a dwarf cedar steeping inthe strong sun. We hunted all the morning and lay up under a dark oakwatching the young winds stalk one another among the lupins. Liftingmyself to catch the upper scent, I winded a man that was not ofTy-uonyi. A moment later we saw him with a buck on his shoulders,working his way cautiously toward the head of Dripping Spring Canyon.'Dine!' said Tse-tse; 'fighting man.' And he signed to me that we muststalk him.

  "For an hour we slunk and crawled through the black rock that brokethrough the mesa like a twisty root of the mountain. At the head ofDripping Spring we smelled wood smoke. We crept along the canyon rim andsaw our man at the bottom of it. He had hung up his buck at the camp andwas cutting strips from it for his supper.

  "'Look well, Kabeyde,' said my master; 'smell and remember. This man ismy enemy.' I did not like the smell in any case. The Queres smell of theearth in which they dig and house, but the Dine smelled of himself andthe smoke of sagebrush. Tse-tse's hand was on the back of my neck.'Wait,' he said; 'one Dine has not two blankets.' We could see themlying in a little heap not far from the camp. Presently in the duskanother man came up the canyon from the direction of the river andjoined him.

  "We cast back and forth between Dripping Spring and the mouth of theTy-uonyi most of the night, but no more Dine showed themselves. Atsunrise Willow-in-the-Wind met us coming up the Rito.

  "'Feed farther up,' Tse-tse told her; 'the Dine are abroad.'

  "Her face changed, but she did not squeal as the other women did whenthey heard it. Therefore I respected her. That was the way it was withme. Every face I searched, to see if there was fear in it, and if therewas none I myself was a little afraid; but where there was fear the backof my neck bristled. I kno
w that the hair rose on it when we came totell our story to the Council. That was when Kokomo was called; he camerubbing the sleep out of his eyes, pretending that Tse-tse had made atale out of nothing.

  "'We have a treaty with the Dine,' he said. 'Besides, I was outrehearsing with the Koshare last night toward Shut Canyon; if there hadbeen Dine _I_ should have seen them.'

  "It was then that I was aware of Tse-tse's hand creeping along myshoulders to hide the bristling.

  "'He is afraid,' said Tse-tse to me in the cave; 'you saw it. Yet he isnot afraid of the Dine. Sometimes I think he is afraid of me. That iswhy he wished me to join the Koshare, for then he will be my Head, andwithout his leave I can do nothing.'

  "This was a true saying. Only a few days after that, I found one oftheir little wooden images, painted and feathered like a Delight-Maker,in my cave. It was an invitation. It smelled of Kokomo and I scratcheddirt on it. Then came Tse-tse, and as he turned the little Koshare overin his hand, I saw that there were many things had come into his headwhich would never come into mine. Presently I heard him laugh as he didwhen he had hit upon some new trick for splitting the people's sides,like the bubble of a wicker bottle held under water. He took my chin inhis hand. 'Without doubt,' he said, 'this is Kokomo's; he would be verypleased if you returned it to him.' I understood it as an order.

  "I carried the little Delight-Maker to Kokomo that night in the innercourt, when the evening meal was over and the old men smoked while theyounger sat on the housetops and moaned together melodiously. Tse-tselooked up from a game of cherry stones. 'Hey, Kokomo, have you beeninviting Kabeyde to join the Koshare? A good shot!' he said, and beforeKokomo could answer it, he began putting me through my tricks."

  "Tricks?" cried the children.

  "Jumping over a stick, you know, and showing what I would do if I metthe Dine." The great cat flattened herself along the ground to spring,put back her ears, and showed her teeth with a snarly whine, almost toowicked to be pretended. "I was very good at that," said Moke-icha.

  "'The Delight-Maker was for you, Tse-tse,' said the turkey girl nextmorning. 'Kokomo cannot prove that you gave it to Kabeyde, but he willnever forgive you.'

  "True enough, at the next festival the Koshare set the whole of Ty-uonyishouting with a sort of play that showed Tse-tse scared by rabbits inthe brush, and thinking the Dine were after them. Tse-tse was furiousand the turkey girl was so angry on his account that she scolded _him_,which is the way with women.

  "You see," explained Moke-icha to the children, "if he wanted to be madea member of the Warrior Band, it wouldn't help him any to be proved abad scout, and a bringer of false alarms. And if he could be elected tothe Uakanyi that spring, he would probably be allowed to go on the saltexpedition between corn-planting and the first hoeing. But after I hadcarried back the little Delight-Maker to Kokomo, there were no signs ofthe four-colored arrow, which was the invitation to the Uakanyi, andyoung men whom Tse-tse had mimicked too often went about pretending todiscover Dine wherever a rabbit ran or the leaves rustled.

  "Tse-tse behaved very badly. He was sharp with the turkey girl becauseshe had warned him, and when we hunted on the mesa he would forget mealtogether, running like a man afraid of himself until I was too windedto keep up with him. I am not built for running," said Moke-icha, "mypart was to pick up the trail of the game, and then to lie up whileTse-tse drove it past and spring for the throat and shoulder. But when Ifound myself neglected I went back to Willow-in-the-Wind who wovewreaths for my neck, which tickled my chin, and made Tse-tse furious.

  "The day that the names of those who would go on the Salt Trail weregiven out--Tse-tse's was not among them--was two or three before thefeast of the corn-planting and the last of the winter rains.Tse-tse-yote was off on one of his wild runnings, but I lay in the backof the cave and heard the myriad-footed Rain on the mesa. Betweenshowers there was a soft foot on the ladder outside, andWillow-in-the-Wind pushed a tray of her best cooking into the door ofthe cave and ran away without looking. That was the fashion of alove-giving. I was much pleased with it."

  "Oh!--" Dorcas Jane began to say and broke off. "Tell us what it was!"she finished.

  Moke-icha considered.

  "Breast of turkey roasted, and rabbit stew with pieces of squash andchia, and beans cooked in fat,--very good eating; and of course thin,folded cakes of maize; though I do not care much for corn cakes unlessthey are well greased. But because it was a love-gift I ate all of itand was licking the basket-tray when Tse-tse came back. He knew thefashion of her weaving,--every woman's baskets had her own mark,--and ashe took it from me his face changed as though something inside him hadturned to water. Without a word he went down the hill to the chief'shouse and I after him.

  "'Moke-icha liked your cooking so well,' he said to the turkey girl,'that she was eating the basket also. I have brought it back to you.'There he stood shifting from one foot to another and Willow-in-the-Windturned taut as a bowstring.

  "'Oh,' she said, 'Moke-icha has eaten it! I am very glad to hear it.'And with that she marched into an inner room and did not come out againall that evening, and Tse-tse went hunting next day without me.

  "The next night, which was the third before the feast of planting, beinglonely, I went out for a walk on the mesa. It was a clear night of windand moving shadow; I went on a little way and smelled man. Two men Ismelled, Dine and Queresan, and the Queresan was Kokomo. They weretogether in the shadow of a juniper where no man could have seen them.Where I stood no man could have heard them.

  "'It is settled, then,' said Kokomo. 'You send the old man to Shipapu,for which he has long been ready, and take the girl for your trouble.'

  "'Good,' said the Dine. 'But will not the Ko-share know if an extra mangoes in with them?'

  "'We go in three bands, and we have taken in so many new members that noone knows exactly.'

  "'It is a risk,' said the Dine.

  "And as he moved into the wind I knew the smell of him, and it was theman we had seen at Dripping Spring; not the hunter, but the one who hadjoined him.

  "'Not so much risk as the chance of not finding the right house in thedark,' said Kokomo; 'and the girl has no one belonging to her. Who shallsay that she did not go of her own accord?'

  "'At any rate,' the Dine laughed, 'I know she must be as beautiful asyou say she is, since you are willing to run the risk of my seeing her.'

  "They moved off, and the wind walking on the pine needles covered whatthey said, but I remembered what I had heard because they smelledof mischief.

  "Two nights later I remembered it again when the Delight-Makers came outof the dark in three bands and split the people's sides with laughter.They were disguised in black-and-white paint and daubings of mud andfeathers, but there was a Dine among them. By the smell I knew him. Hewas a tall man who tumbled well and kept close to Kokomo. But a Dine isan enemy. Tse-tse-yote had told me. Therefore I kept close at his heelsas they worked around toward the house of Pitahaya, and my neckbristled. I could see that the Dine had noticed me. He grew a littlefrightened, I think, and whipped at me with the whip of feathers whichthe Koshare carried to tickle the tribesmen. I laid back my ears--I amKabeyde, and it is not for the Dine to flick whips at me. All at oncethere rose a shouting for Tse-tse, who came running and beat me over thehead with his bow-case.

  "'They will think I set you on to threaten the Koshare because theymocked me,' he said. 'Have you not done me mischief enough already?'

  "That was when we were back in the cave, where he penned me tillmorning. There was no way I could tell him that there was a Dine amongthe Koshare."

  "But I thought--" began Oliver, he looked over to where Arrumpa stooddrawing young boughs of maple through his mouth like a boy strippingcurrants. "Couldn't you just have told him?"

  "In the old days," said Moke-icha, "men spoke with beasts as brothers.The Queres had come too far on the Man Trail. I had no words, but Iremembered the trick he had taught me, about what to do when I met aDine. I laid back my ears and snarled at him.r />
  "'What!' he said; 'will you make a Dine of _me_?' I saw him frown, andsuddenly he slapped his thigh as a man does when thought overtakes him.Being but a lad he would not have dared say what he thought, but he tookto spending the night on top of the kiva. I would look out of my caveand see him there curled up in a corner, or pacing to and fro with thedew on his blanket and his face turned to the souls of the prayer plumesdrifting in a wide band across the middle heaven.

  "I would have been glad to keep him company, but as neither Tse-tse norWillow-in-the-Wind paid any attention to me in those days, I decidedthat I might as well go with the men and see for myself what lay at theother end of the Salt Trail.

  "I gave them a day's start, so that I might not be turned back; but itwas not necessary, since no man looked back or turned around on thatjourney, and no one spoke except those who had been over the trail atleast two times. They ate little,--fine meal of parched corn mixed withwater,--and what was left in the cup was put into the earth for a thankoffering. No one drank except as the leader said they could, and atnight they made prayers and songs.

  "The trail leaves the mesa at the Place of the Gap, a dry gully snakingits way between puma-colored hills and boulders big as kivas. LastingWater is at the end of the second day's journey; rainwater that slipsdown into a black basin with rock overhanging, cool as an olla. Therocks in that place when struck give out a pleasant sound. Beyond theGap there is white sand in waves like water, wild hills and raw, redcanyons. Around a split rock the trail dips suddenly to Sacred Water,shallow and white-bordered like a great dead eye."

  "I know that place," said the Navajo, "and I think this must be true,for there is a trail there which bites deep into the granite."

  "It was deep and polished even in my day," said Moke-icha, "but that didnot interest me. There was no kill there larger than rabbits, and when Ihad seen the men cast prayer plumes on the Sacred Water and begin toscrape up the salt for their packs, I went back to Ty-uonyi. It was notuntil I got back to Lasting Water that I picked up the trail of theDine. I followed it half a day before it occurred to me that they weregoing to Ty-uonyi. One of the smells--there were three of them--was theDine who had come in with the Koshare. I remembered the broken plasteron the wall and Tse-tse asleep on the housetops. _Then_ I hurried.

  "It was blue midnight and the scent fresh on the grass as I came up theRito. I heard a dog bark behind the first kiva, and, as I came oppositeRock-Overhanging, the sound of feet running. I smelled Dine going up thewall and slipped back in my hurry, but as I came over the roof of thekiva a tumult broke out in the direction of Pitahaya's house. There wasa scream and a scuffle. I saw Tse-tse running and sent him the puma cryat which does asleep with their fawns tremble. Down in the long passagebetween Pitahaya's court and the gate of Rock-Overhanging, Tse-tseanswered with the hunting-whistle.

  "There was a fight going on in the passage. I could feel the cooldraught from the open gate,--they must have opened it from the insideafter scaling the wall by the broken plaster,--and smelled rather thansaw that one man held the passage against Tse-tse. He was armed with astone hammer, which is no sort of weapon for a narrow passage. Tse-tsehad caught bow and quiver from the arms that hung always at the innerentrance of the passage, but made no attempt to draw. He was crouchedagainst the wall, knife in hand, watching for an opening, when he heardme padding up behind him in the darkness.

  "'Good! Kabeyde,' he cried softly; 'go for him.'

  "I sprang straight for the opening I could see behind the Dine, and felthim go down as I cleared the entrance. Tse-tse panted behindme,--'Follow, follow!' I could hear the men my cry had waked, pouringout of the kivas, and knew that the Dine we had knocked over would betaken care of. We picked up the trail of those who had escaped, straightacross the Rito and over the south wall, but it was an hour before Irealized that they had taken Willow-in-the-Wind with them. Old Pitahayawas dead without doubt, and the man who had taken Willow-in-the-Windwas, by the smell, the same that had come in with Kokomo andthe Koshare.

  "We were hot on their trail, and by afternoon of the next day I wascertain that they were making for Lasting Water. So I took Tse-tse overthe rim of the Gap by a short cut which I had discovered, which woulddrop us back into the trail before they had done drinking. Tse-tse, whotrusted me to keep the scent, was watching ahead for a sight of thequarry. Thus he saw the Dine before I winded them. I don't know whetherthey were just a hunting-party, or friends of those we followed. Wedropped behind a boulder and Tse-tse counted while I lifted every scent.

  "'Five,' he said, 'and the Finisher of the Paths of Our Lives knows howmany more between us and Lasting Water!'

  "We did not know yet whether they had seen us, but as we began to moveagain cautiously, a fox barked in the scrub that was not a fox. Off toour left another answered him. So now we were no longer hunters,but hunted.

  "Tse-tse slipped his tunic down to his middle and, unbinding his queue,wound his long hair about his head to make himself look as much like aDine as possible. I could see thought rippling in him as he worked, likewind on water. We began to snake between the cactus and the black rocktoward the place where the fox had last barked."

  "But _toward_ them---" Oliver began.

  "They were between us and Lasting Water,"--Moke-icha looked about thelistening circle and the Indians nodded, agreeing. "When a fox barkedagain, Tse-tse answered with the impudent folly of a young kit talkingback to his betters. Evidently the man on our left was fooled by it, forhe sheered off, but within a bowshot they began to close on us again.

  "We had come to a thicket of mesquite from which a man might slipunnoticed to the head of the gully, provided no one watched thatparticular spot too steadily. There we lay among the thorns and theshadows were long in the low sun. Close on our right a twig snapped andI began to gather myself for the spring. The ground sloped a littlebefore us and gave the advantage. The hand of Tse-tse-yote came alongthe back of my neck and rested there. 'If a puma lay up here during thesun,' he whispered, 'this is the hour he would go forth to his hunting.He would go stretching himself after sleep and having no fear of man,for where Kabeyde lies up, who expects to find man also.' His hand cameunder my chin as his custom was in giving orders. This was how Iunderstood it; this I did--"

  The great cat bounded lightly to the ground, took two or three stretchysteps, shaking the sleep from her flanks, yawned prodigiously, andtrotted off toward a thicket of wild plums into which she slipped like abeam of yellow light into water. A moment later she reappeared on theopposite side, bounded back and settled herself on the boulder. Aroundthe circle ran the short "Huh! Huh!" of Indian approval. The Navajoshifted his blanket.

  "A Dine could have done no more for a friend," he admitted.

  "I see," said Oliver. "When the Dine saw you coming out of the mesquitethey would have been perfectly sure there was no man there. But anyway,they might have taken a shot at you."

  "And the twang of the bowstring and the thrashing about of the kill inthe thicket would have told Tse-tse exactly where _they_ were," said theNavajo. "The Dine when they hunt man do not turn aside for a puma."

  "The hardest part of it all," said Moke-icha, "was to keep from showingI winded him. I heard the Dine move off, fox-calling to one another, andat last I smelled Tse-tse working down the gully. He paid no attentionto me whatever; his eyes were fixed on the Dine who stood by the springwith his back to him looking down on the turkey girl who was huddledagainst the rocks with her hands tied behind her. The Dine looked downwith his arms folded, evil-smiling. She looked up and I saw her spit athim. The man took her by the shoulder, laughing still, and spun her upstanding. Half a bowshot away I heard Tse-tse-yote. 'Down! Down!' heshouted. The girl dropped like a quail. The Dine, whirling on his heel,met the arrow with his throat, and pitched choking. I came as fast as Icould between the boulders--I am not built for running--Tse-tse hadunbound the girl's hands and she leaned against him.

  "Breathing myself before drinking, I caught a new scent up the Gap wherethe wind cam
e from, but before I had placed it there came a littlescrape on the rocks under the roof of Lasting Water, small, like therasp of a snake coiling. I had forgot there were three Dine at Ty-uonyi;the third had been under the rock drinking. He came crawling now withhis knife in his teeth toward Tse-tse. Me he had not seen until he cameround the singing rock, face to face with me...

  "When it was over," said Moke-icha, "I climbed up the black roof ofLasting Water to lick a knife cut in my shoulder. Tse-tse talked to thegirl, of all things, about the love-gift she had put in the cave for me.'Moke-icha had eaten it before I found her,' he insisted, which wasunnecessary. I lay looking at the Dine I had killed and licking my woundtill I heard, around the bend of the Gap, the travel song of the Queres.

  "It was the Salt Pack coming back, every man with his load on hisshoulders. They put their hands in their mouths when they saw Tse-tse.There was talk; Willow-in-the-Wind told them something. Tse-tse turnedthe man he had shot face upward. There was black-and-white paint on hisbody; the stripes of the Koshare do not come off easily. I saw Tse-tselook from the man to Kokomo and the face of the Koshare turned grayish.I had lived with man, and man-thoughts came to me. I had tasted blood ofmy master's enemies; also Kokomo was afraid, and that is an offense tome. I dropped from where I lay ... I had come to my full weight ... Ithink his back was broken.

  "It is the Way Things Are," said Moke-icha. "Kokomo had let in the Dineto kill Pitahaya to make himself chief, and he would have killed Tse-tsefor finding out about it. That I saw and smelled in him. But I did notwait this time to be beaten with my master's bow-case. I went back toShut Canyon, for now that I had killed one of them, it was not good forme to live with the Queres. Nevertheless, in the rocks above Ty-uonyiyou can still see the image they made of me."