Kitabı oku: «The Flute of the Gods», sayfa 6
“A truly delectable neighbor for a help to pleasant fancy,” said Don Ruy and laughed. “If the amiable devil should be moved to sacrifice now, I would be the nearest to his hand–think you he would make ill use of my youth and tenderness?”
“His Sanctity, the padre was indeed wise that no word of this was breathed in the viceregal ears of Mexico,” said Don Diego with a testiness not yet subdued over the question of utter damnation for the souls unregenerate. “Piety would carry me far–but no warrant is mine to follow even the Highest where cannibals do wait for unholy sustenance!” and he arose and bowed to Don Ruy.
“Oh–Name of the Devil!” said his noble ward, and laughed and stretched his legs. “I may not be so unholy as your words would suggest. Give not a dog a bad name in the days of his youth!”
And at this the scandalized and pious dignitary multiplied words to make clear how far from such meaning were his devoted intentions. But if wild tribes must be fed ere their souls could be reached,–victims could be found other than the heir of a duchess!
At which outburst Don Ruy suggested that he save his pious breath and devote it to prayers, and to take some of his own medicine by remembrance that soul of king and soul of peasant weighed the same before high God.
“After which devout exhortation from your servant, good father, we again give ear to the tale of that devil’s disciple–the Greek Teo,” he said, “Did they find him in the sand? And did the merciful dame hide in the sand also?–if so the prison might not be without hope. Holy Saint Damien!–to think that the man walked these same stony heights–and drank from that pool!”
“They never found him in the sand.” The priest ignored the other frivolous comment. “They never found him anywhere, and a slave from the Navahu people was made a sacrifice in his stead. The strange girl was a Te-hua medicine maid or magic learner of things from the wise men of Ah-ko. Her prayers were very many, and very long, and she made a shrine for prayer on the sand beside the stone wall where he was hidden. Their men set watch on her, she knew it, but not anything did they find but a girl who made her prayers, and gave no heed to their shadowings.
“When were ended her days of devotion to the false gods–then she ate, and drank, and took the way to her own people; with moderate pace she took that trail north, but when night came, she ran like the wild thing she was, again to the south, crept unseen again into this fortress, and led the rescued man as far to the west as might be until the dawn came. With the coming of the sun, came also a sand storm of great stress, and all trace of their steps were covered, and the medicine maid saw in that a mystic meaning.
“To Turk and Spaniard the refugee might be only Teo the Greek, a fugitive from all high courts. But to the Indian he was a lost God of the Great Star for whom even the desert winds did duty. When with moistened yucca root he rubbed his hands that the white skin showed, she bent her head to the sand, and was his slave until … the end!”
“It moves well, and beautifully smooth:–this tale of the outlaw,” agreed Don Ruy–“but it is that end we are eager for–and the how it was compassed–that she turned slave–or mistress–or both in one, as alas!–has chanced to men ere our day!–was the doom expected from the earliest mention of the pitiful and most devout lady–devout to her devils! But of the end–the end?”
“The end came to him long after they parted, and for one winter and one summer were their wanderings to the west. Of the Firebrand river deep between rock walls he had heard, and of the ocean far beyond, and of Mexico to the south. To reach the river they crossed dry leagues of desert and lived as other wild things lived. But the river was not a thing for boats or journeys, and they went on beyond it seeking the sea. Strange things and strange lives they passed on the way. His skin had been stained many times and his beard was plucked out as it grew. Enough of Indian words he learned to echo her own tale to the brown savages, and the tale was, that they were medicine people of Te-hua in the land of P[=o] – s[=o]n-gé, and that they travelled to the shores of the sea for dances and prayers to the gods there. And sometimes food was given them–and some times prayers were sent in their keeping. Thus was their journey, until in the south, in the heart of a desert they found the place of the palms where the fruit was ripe, and the water comes from warm springs, and looks a paradise–but is as a hell when the sand storms come:–and human devils live to the South and by the Sea of Cortez.
“They knew nothing of that, it was a place for rest, and a place of food, and they rested there because of that, and gathered food for the further journey.
“All medicine people of the tribes carry on their neck or in a pouch at the belt, some sacred things of their magic practices, and under the palms, when other amusement was not to be found, it pleased him to see what his brown girl carried hidden even from her master. It took much persuasions, for she felt that evil would happen if it was shown except it be a matter of ceremony. Then she at last took from the pouch, salt from a sacred lake, feather and claw and beak of a yellow bird, a blade of sharpest flint, and–this!”
He again held the piece of gold that they might see it. Even the Indians leaned forward and looked at it and then eyed the white men and each other in silence. To them it was “medicine” as the priest told the adventurers it had been to the Te-hua girl.
“Your Greek pirate of the good luck went close to madness at the certain fact that for months he had been walking steadily away from the place where this was found. To the girl it was a sacred thing hidden in the earth of her land by the sun–and only to be used for ceremonies. The place where it grew was a special hidden place of prayer offering.”
“Faith!–we all must learn prayers enough to get our share!–if prayer will do the work!” said Don Ruy.–“Chico, it means that you get an Indian primer,–and that you find for me a brown enchantress. His reverence will grant us all a special indulgence for hours of the schooling!”
Señor Don Brancadori sat up very straight and shook his head at the priest:–so well assured was he that enough liberties would be taken without the indulgences of holy church. Moreover it was not well to put the deviltries of camp in the mind of so good a lad as Chico.
“And the girl gave to him the gold and told him its hiding place?” he asked.
“We may say she gave it–thought in truth she declared it could not be given–it could only be made a barter of for other medicine, but it must be strong medicine. The blade of flint was to guard her magic symbols if need be, and the man, her master, saw in that moment that the mind he had to deal with in this matter was an Indian mind, in which there is not reason. And to find a ‘medicine’ potent for charms was a task set for a man in the place of the palms.”
“Then a forgotten thing came into his mind. It had been a vow made to an enticing creature of San Lucar. She was also devout as a young nun. The vow was of a return–and no doubt of other meetings. The end of it was that she gave him a rosary–(his first captors coveted that and took care of it). But also they ate together of fruit, and as both ladies and gallants do strange things at strange times, the lady divided the seeds, and counted them seeking a lucky number or some such freakish quest. And by the rosary, and by his mother, she made him swear that when he had found fortune and a plantation in the new world, he would plant with his own hands the seeds there, and send for the lady to come by ship as chatelaine! Failing the plantation, he was to return, and her own relatives would find on land or sea an office fit for his talents:–only he was to faithfully guard the seed of the fruit eaten in a happy hour, and her prayers would meet his own across the waters.
“It may be that women with prayers for him had not been plentiful–whatever the vow was it was made and sealed with the prayer of the lady. When the savages took her rosary they gave no heed to some brown seeds in a leather pouch–no more of them than you could count on your fingers! A man alone for long in a wilderness gives meaning to things he would not remember at happier times. And the training of the Holy Church returns to even the most gardened men in their hours of stress! So it was that the prayer of the willing dame kept him company, as he looked on the seeds. They had become his rosary–and were the last evidence of the nightly prayers promised by the lady.
“Thus:–because of their smallness had they been unnoted of his several captors. Having slipped between the lining and the cover of the pouch he had ceased to remember them after the Indian maid lessened his loneliness. But he went searching for them now–even one peach seed was still with them–and some grains of the bearded wheat–that by a special grace had fallen into a pocket on ship board while handling grains, and as a jest on himself he had added it to the others for the plantation to be made for the waiting dame.
“He could truly say they were ‘medicine’ given with prayers. But with forgetfulness of truth, he also added much as to their divine origin–and the wondrous power they held.
“Gladly the Indian girl let go the gold for the unknown seeds! She further signified that now she could know always that he was a God, for the gift of the seeds fitted some myth of her own land–some thing of one of their false gods who brought seeds and fruits and great good to the people.
“In that way was made the exchange of medicine for medicine beside some pool by the palms, and well it was it was made that day, else never would we have this golden guide! For:–it fell out that a day later as he was hunting to the south, he was surrounded and taken prisoner by the savages who range by the inland sea of California. The gold had a hole as you see, he pulled hair from his head, tied the nugget in the braid, and thus hid it for the next two years of his life. The girl he never again heard of. She would die of a certainty alone in the desert.
“A missionary of our order found the man in the wilderness. They were exiles, the two for the length of a winter, and the Greek listened to the tales of the lost fleet on which Don Teo sought the new world, and also of the royal order for his arrest following on the next ship. For a prisoner of Solyman the Magnificent had escaped from the galleys of the Turk, and wild tales were told of princes of the North who gave aid to the traffic in Christian slaves. Don Teo was by all means to be taken back to Spain that the Holy Office learn through him the names and numbers of the offenders!”
“Good it is to hear that the varlet was not let sleep sound all the night!” decided Don Ruy.
“It appears there were many nights when sleep kept from him–to judge by his confessions!” said the priest. But to go into deeper hell while he was yet alive did not march with his wishes, and while he half inclined to the desert again, that he might die quietly there as any other starved wild thing does die:–a thing came which he had not thought:–the padre died of a serpent’s sting, and he, Teo the Greek, was alone, and apart from the world again!
“It was the gown for which the savages had reverence–and he took the consecrated robe from the dead padre and wore it–he had been driven by misfortune back to Holy Church!
“He lived under the name of the padre as a priest in holy orders. His reports to his superior were well counterfeited as the writing of the man he had buried. He held that mission as the extreme outpost for three years. He died there of a fever, but not until I had found him, and confessed him. The gold and the tale of his wanderings he gave to me. Much of it he told me more than once, for when men are exiles as he was for those several years, the things of the old life loom up big with significance. He felt that he was the finder of the way, and that mayhaps, Mother Church, so long forgotten by him, would be the richer that he had lived. Masses were said for the girl dead in the desert. She had saved him, and for a little while of life–he had given her love!”
“He may have made a most righteous end–since it was no longer in his power to do evil!” commented Don Ruy–“But your pirate priest would never have let go the nugget for masses if the breath of life had kept him company.”
“Who knows!–the high God does not give us to see in the heart of the other man,” said Padre Vicente–“In the years of his trial he was made to feel his sins against Holy Church–and when the girl died in the desert, another life died with her. Even men of sin do give thought to such matters.”
But Juan Gonzalvo who hated him, swore at the ill luck of his escape by death, and no one felt any pity for that first white pilgrim across the Indian lands. All of them however gave speech of praise to the priest’s telling of the story. Don Ruy gave him leave to tell romances in future rather than preach sermons.
The men were vastly interested to learn at last the exact region of their destination–and that the province where the yellow metal had been hidden by the sun was but a matter now of a few days more of journeying–since the people of Ah-ko had brother Queres in settlements adjoining the settlements of the Te-huas.
So, seeing that the guard was good, and that each arquebus was near, and in readiness if need be for dusky visitors, the company fell asleep well content. Only Don Ruy strolled over the path through the sand and tried to fancy how the girl and the Greek had managed the hiding there. A little of the story had been told him in the monastery when the great plan had been made, but no names were given, and the telling of it this night had been a very different matter–he had so lately crossed the desert where those two refugees had wandered, that the story had now a life unknown before. Even the sand billows and the rock walls of the mesa spoke as with tongues. The mate to this wonderful Ah-ko could not, he thought, be in the world any where, and the romance of the young priestess and the Greek adventurer fitted the place well and he felt that the priest of the wild places had chosen rightly in keeping the story until they had climbed to this place where the story of the gold had its beginning.
As he retraced his steps, they took him past the sleeping place of José and his wife of Mexico. Beside them was spread the blankets of Chico, but the lad was not there,–he was standing apart, at the edge of the sheer cliff, looking out over the desert reaches where the sand was blue grey in the star light.
“Hollo!”–said Don Ruy and halted in surprise, “do you select sentry duty when you might sleep soft on the sand? Must I send you another blanket to woo you to a bed?”
“Your Excellency has been most generous in the matter of the blanket–one has been enough to keep record of your kindly heart.”
“Then why not enjoy your sleep as a hearty lad should? Has this place of wonder bewitched you–or has the story of the Greek and the gold stirred you into ambitions beyond repose?”
The lad might have retorted by reminding Don Ruy that he also was abroad while his company slept,–usually a glib pertness would have answered his employer, but the answer came not readily, and when it did,–his excellency saw in a surprised moment that the boy was not such a child as the careless company fancied him.
“I have thought nothing of the Greek–and little of the gold,” he said. “But the woman who followed the love and the man across the deserts–and who died alone somewhere in the sands like a starved dog–of her I was thinking! All the magic she had learned could not save her from hell when that one man came in her path!”
“But–you are only a lad and may not understand these things,”–said Don Ruy–“The girl may have died like that, it is true, but the hell in the life she perhaps never got glimpse of,–since she loved the man!”
“But if the dead do know, would not a sort of hell be hers when she learned she had given the magic medicine of her God for the idle gift–bestowed by another mistress?”
Then the lad marched to his blankets and wrapped himself in them, leaving Don Ruy the question to ponder.
CHAPTER IX
YAHN, THE APACHE
“Brothers:–you of the life
– Of also the fire divine!
You of the mountains
Of also the Mother Mist!
Out of the mist is a voice.
It is not the voice afraid!
Out of the shadows,
Out of the forests,
Out of the deserts
It is born!
In a good hour it is born.
The wind of the Sun sends it breath!
Brothers:–the Dawn drives the Darkness
And in the mountain strong
No one sings fear!
Out from far worlds it comes,
With the strong Dawn it comes
Brothers:–be mountain strong
Sing not of fear!”
The rising sun tipped the terraces with gold and rose, and the nude brown men, and the men children, faced the east with hands lifted to greet the coming of the Great Power. This was as it had been since the time of most ancient days.
But the song chanted from the terrace by the Woman of the Twilight was a new song, and the men made their prayers, and wondered at the singer singing thus on the roof of her dwelling.
The dew of the hills was on her clothing and on her hair. She had dreamed a dream and walked in the night until the words of the dream had come to her lips, and when they came she sang them aloud and the people listened, and the men went from their prayers and thought about it.
Many were conscious of secret thoughts of dread at the coming of the strangers. The priestess had spoken of the thing no one had given voice to.
From the day when her son had been honored as Po-Ahtun-ho, the strife of existence seemed ended for S[=aa] – hanh-que-ah. The thing she had lived to see was now accomplished. Her days were now the gray days of rest and of mystery. She made many prayers alone in the hills, and forgot to eat.
She was not old, yet to Tahn-té she said, “It is over:–The time is come when you stand alone to be strong. Your work is now the work of the strong man, and I go to make prayers in the hills.”
When she stayed over long, he sought her out lest ill should come to her, and more than once he had walked into the village with his mother in his arms as other people carried the little children. It was the Woman of the Twilight, and no one laughed. At any other woman they would have laughed to see her carried in the arms of a man.
And so, when she stood on her terrace and spoke of the voice of the Dawn and the Mountain Mists, all listened. The men talked of it in the kivas of each clan, and the women talked all together, and were glad. They did not know quite what their fear had been, but it was no longer with them since the woman of the God Thoughts said the voices sang no fear.
Only Yahn Tsyn-deh on the terrace opposite, strung together claws of birds for a necklace, and scoffed warily.
“Only if you are mountain strong need you have no fear,” she said. “The promise that her son is maybe the Voice and the Dawn is a good promise–but the wise woman of the hill caves is double wise! Her song has double thoughts. Be you all mountain strong, as gods are strong, and no fear will come! But if the mountain strength waits not at your door–what then happens?”
No one knew, and the women looked at each other in question. The peace of the wise woman’s words was killed by the bitter laugh of Apache Yahn.
When the bitter mood touched the girl, the Te-hua people remembered that her mother was of that wild Apache people–enemy to all. At times she could be a maid like other maids–with charm and laughter–a very bewitching Yahn who made herself a beauty barbaric with strings of gay berries of the rose, or flat girdles of feathers dyed like the rainbow. Her bare arms had bracelets of little shells. Into the weaving of her garments she had put threads of crimson in strange patterns–they were often the symbols of the Apache gods or spirit people, and when she chose she made the other women feel fear with them. Her own mother who told her of them, would not have worn them thus–but Yahn was more Apache than her mother.
One woman shelling corn for the meal, suggested that if the Te-hua people had not mountain strength it might mean war as the people to the South had endured that other time–when the men at Tiguex were burned to ashes by the strangers.
“Oh, wise Säh-pah!” and Yahn laughed at the late thought,–“Has the thing at last come to the mind of one of you?”
“I thought of it also,” said one of the other women sulkily.
“Ai:–you all thought–but none of you dared say words while the new Ruler and the wise governor kept silent to the people!” she taunted them. “Of all the women I only can speak in the speech of the strangers.”
“Think you we will see them?” asked one girl doubtfully–“will we not all be sent to the hills the days when they come?”
“In other villages they did so in that long ago day–some men never let their women be seen of the white men who wore the iron.”
“I will not be sent to the hills,” decided Yahn. “From Ke-yemo and from Tahn-té I know their words. I will talk for the strangers. I will learn many things!”
“When was it you learn so much?” asked Säh-pah jealously.
“A little–little at a time all these years!” declared Yahn in triumph. “Tahn-té wanted not to forget it–so he said to me the words–now they are mine.”
The women regarded her with a wonder that was almost awe,–there might be something infernal and unlucky in talking two ways.
“If it be war, think you Ka-yemo will be the war chief as he has been made?” queried Säh-pah. “He will be made second if there is fighting,–think you not so?”
Yahn apparently did not think, but she did listen.
“We know how it was with his father Awh-we–” said one. “In that day of trial he failed that once in the battle with the Yutah. The old men let him pull weeds in the corn when the next war came.”
The strong fingers of Yahn broke the bird’s claw, and she tossed it from the terrace edge, and selected another.
“But the new young wife Koh-pé may make the son of his father brave for all that,” and Säh-pah who was not young and not winsome, watched Yahn, and felt content when she saw the Apache eyes grow narrow and the teeth set. “A wife with many robes and many strings of shells and blue stones, makes a man strong to fight for them. Ka-yemo will be a strong man now.”
“He is of my clan–Ka-yemo!” said Yahn panting with pent up fury, “he can fight,–all of our blood can fight!–if the war is here we can show you of the Panyoo clan how the Tain-tsain clan can fight with the new enemy!”
They all knew that Yahn Tsyn-deh could indeed fight, she wore eagle feathers and had a right to wear them since a season of the hunt on the Navahu border when a young warrior had stolen her for his lodge, and with his own club set with flint blades, had she let his spirit go on the shadow trail, and to her own village had she brought the scalp and the club, also his robe and beads of blue and of green stone–and she made the other women remember it at times.
“Ho!–and will it be you who bears a spear and a shield and a club on that day?” asked Säh-pah the skeptic.
“I fight that day–or any day, as strong as the fight any man of yours can ever make!” This retort of Yahn was met with half frightened giggles by the other women. Säh-pah had been unlucky in the matter of men. Yet, her list of favorites had not been limited, and the sarcasm of Yahn was understood.
“It is good there is some one brave to meet the strangers!” and the smile of Säh-pah was not nice. “Maybe you go to ask for a man–maybe it is why you learn their words–maybe the Tain-tsain clan will ask for a white man for you!”
“When I ask–I will not be made a laugh, and sent home with a gift,”–and the other women squealed with shrill laughter and had great joy over the quarrel. The eyes of Säh-pah blazed. She tried to speak but her fury gave voice only in throaty growls, and an older woman than all of them stepped between them in protest.
“To your own houses–all you who would fight!” she decided–“go fight your own men if they send you away with gifts, but by my door I do not want panthers who scream!”
Säh-pah sulkily obeyed, and Yahn laughed and continued her work.
“It is not good to laugh when the bad fortune comes to any one,” said the old woman, but Yahn refused to be subdued.
“It is true, mother–” she insisted–(all elderly women are mothers or aunts to village folk)–“it is true. When the dance of the corn was here and the women made choice of their favorites–it is well known that Säh-pah did follow Phen-tza a long ways. He laughed at her.” Yahn herself laughed as she told it,–“he laughed and he asked why she comes so far alone–and he gives her his blanket and goes away! That is how he takes her for favorite that day!–he only laughs and let go his blanket to Säh-pah!”
The old woman put up her hand that her laugh be not heard. The humor of primitive people is not a delicate thing, and that the blandishments of Säh-pah had been of no use–as was witness the blanket!–had made many laugh around the night fires. Yet the old “mother” thought it not good that quarrels should grow out of it.
“Is your heart so bright with happiness that you understand nothing of the shame another woman may know, Yahn Tsyn-deh?”–she asked seriously. “Säh-pah is of the free woman–and we are not of her clan to make judgement.”
“Speak no words to me of a bright heart!” said Yahn, and arose, and went away. Across the roofs she went to the stairway of her dwelling, where she had lived alone since the death of her mother. It was a good room she entered, very white on the walls, and the floor white also, with the works of her own fingers on the smoothness of it. In a niche of the thick wall stood a bronze god, and a medicine bowl with serrated edges, and a serpent winged and crowned painted in fine lines to encircle it. On the wall was a deerskin of intricate ornamentation, good and soft in the dressing, it was painted in many symbols of the Apache gods and the prayer thoughts. From her mother Yahn had learned them and had painted them in ceremonial colors. The great goddess of the white shell things–and white flowers–and white clouds–was there, and the sun god was also there, and the curve of the moon with the germ of life in its heart. The morning star was there–and also the symbol of the messengers from the gods. Circling all these sacred things was the blue zig-zag of the sky lightening by which Those Above send their decrees to earth children who know the signs, and at each corner the symbols of the Spirit People were on guard.
Säh-pah had said once that they might be devil things, and not god things, and Yahn had watched her chance, and emptied a jar of dirty water on her head for that, and no more women said things of the walls of Yahn Tsyn-deh’s house. But whether she deemed them holy or not holy, she hung the necklace of birds’ claws under the symbol of the Goddess Stenaht-lihan, and then prostrated herself and lay in silence.
After a long time she spoke.
“All this that the Apache blood be not lost in the flood of a shame! All this that no Te-hua woman ever again sees that my heart has been sick–all this that a double curse of–”
But in the midst of her words of whispered prayer speech failed her–and tears choked her until she sobbed for breath. With all her will she wished to curse some one whom all her woman’s heart forbade her harm!
