The Trail Book by Mary Austin et al

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"It came the following Sunday, when only Ho-tai and a few old women came
to mass. Sick at the sound of his own voice echoing in the empty chapel,
the Padre went out to the plaza of the town to scold the people into
services. He was met by the Priests of the Rain with their bows. Being
neither a coward nor a fool, he saw what was before him. Kneeling, he
clasped his arms, still holding the crucifix across his bosom, and they
transfixed him with their arrows.

"They went into the church after that and broke up the altar, and burned
the chapel. A party of bowmen followed the trail of Father Martin,
coming up with him after five days. That night with the help of some of
his own converts, they fell upon and killed him. There was a half-breed
among them, both whose hearts were black. He cut off the good Padre's
hand and scalped him."

"Oh," said Oliver, "I think he ought not to have done that!"

The Condor was thoughtful.

"The hand, no. It had been stretched forth only in kindness. But I think
white men do not understand about scalping. I have heard them talk
sometimes, and I know they do not understand. The scalp was taken in
order that they might have the scalp dance. The dance is to pacify the
spirit of the slain. It adopts and initiates him into the tribe of the
dead, and makes him one with them, so that he will not return as a
spirit and work harm on his slayers. Also it is a notice to the gods of
the enemy that theirs is the stronger god, and to beware. The scalp
dance is a protection to the tribe of the slayer; to omit one of its
observances is to put the tribe in peril of the dead. Thus I have heard;
thus the Old Ones have said. Even Two-Hearted, though he was sad for the
killing, danced for the scalp of Father Martin.

"Immediately it was all over, the Hawikuhkwe began to be afraid. They
gathered up their goods and fled to K'iakime, the Place of the Eagles,
on Thunder Mountain, where they had a stronghold. There were Iron Shirts
at Santa Fe and whole cities of them in the direction of the Salt
Containing Waters. Who knew what vengeance they might take for the
killing of the Padres? The Hawikuhkwe intrenched themselves, and for
nearly two years they waited and practiced their own religion in
their own way.

"Only two of them were unhappy. These were Ho-tai of the two hearts, and
his wife, who had been called Flower-of-the-Maguey. But her unhappiness
was not because the Padres had been killed. She had had her hand in that
business, though only among the women, dropping a word here and there
quietly, as one drops a stone into a deep well. She was unhappy because
she saw that the dead hand of Father Letrado was still heavy on her
husband's heart.

"Not that Ho-tai feared what the soldiers from Santa Fe might do to the
slayer, but what the god of the Padre might do to the whole people. For
Padre Letrado had taught him to read in the Sacred Books, and he knew
that whole cities were burned with fire for their sins. He saw doom
hanging over K'iakime, and his wife could not comfort him. After awhile
it came into his mind that it was his own sin for which the people would
be punished, for the one thing he had kept from the Padre was the secret
of the gold.

"It is true," said the Condor, "that after the Indians had forgotten
them, white men rediscovered many of their sacred places, and many
others that were not known even to the Zunis. But there is one place on
Thunder Mountain still where gold lies in the ground in lumps like pine
nuts. If Father Letrado could have found it, he would have hammered it
into cups for his altar, and immediately the land would have been
overrun with the Spaniards. And the more Ho-tai thought of it, the more
convinced he was that he should have told him.

"Toward the end of two years when it began to be rumored that soldiers
and new Padres were coming to K'iakime to deal with the killing of
Father Letrado, Ho-tai began to sleep more quietly at night. Then his
wife knew that he had made up his mind to tell, if it seemed necessary
to reconcile the Spaniards to his people, and it was a knife in
her heart.

"It was her husband's honor, and the honor of her father, Chief Priest
of the Bow; and besides, she knew very well that if Ho-tai told, the
Priests of the Bow would kill him. She said to herself that her husband
was sick with the enchantments of the Padres, and she must do what she
could for him. She gave him seeds of forgetfulness."

"Was that a secret too?" asked Dorcas, for the Condor seemed not to
remember that the children were new to that country.

"It was _peyote_. Many know of it now, but in the days of Our Ancients
it was known only to a few Medicine men and women. It is a seed that
when eaten wipes out the past from a man's mind and gives him visions.
In time its influence will wear away, and it must be eaten anew, but if
eaten too often it steals a man's courage and his strength as well as
his memory.

"When she had given her husband a little in his food,
Flower-of-the-Maguey found that he was like a child in her hands.

"'Sleep,' she would say, 'and dream thus, and so,' and that is the way
it would be with him. She wished him to forget both the secret of the
gold in the ground and the fear of the Padres.

"From the time that she heard that the Spaniards were on their way to
K'iakime, she fed him a little _peyote_ every day. To the others it
seemed that his mind walked with Those Above, and they were respectful
of him. That is how Zunis think of any kind of madness. They were not
sure that the madness had not been sent for just this occasion when they
had need of the gods, and so, as it seemed to them, it proved.

"The Spaniards asked for parley, and the Caciques permitted the Padres
to come up into the council chambers, for they knew that the long gowns
covered no weapons. The Spaniards had learned wisdom, perhaps, and
perhaps they thought Father Letrado somewhat to blame. They asked
nothing but permission to reestablish their missions, and to have the
man who had scalped Father Martin handed over to them for
Spanish justice.

"They sat around the wall of the kiva, with Ho-tai in his place, hearing
and seeing very little. But the parley was long, and, little by little,
the vision of his own gods which the _peyote_ had given him began to
wear away. One of the Padres rose in his place and began a long speech
about the sin of killing, and especially of killing priests. He quoted
his Sacred Books and talked of the sin in their hearts, and, little by
little, the talk laid hold on the wandering mind of Ho-tai. 'Thus, in
this killing, has the secret evil of your hearts come forth,' said the
Padre, and 'True, He speaks true,' said Ho-tai, upon which the Priests
of the Hawikuhkwe were astonished. They thought their gods spoke through
his madness.

"Then the Padre began to exhort them to give up this evil man in their
midst and rid themselves of the consequences of sin, which he assured
them were most certain and as terrible as they were sure. Then the white
heart of Ho-tai remembered his own anguish, and spoke thickly, as a man
drunk with _peyote_ speaks.

"'He must be given up,' he said. It seemed to them that his voice came
from the under world.

"But there was a great difficulty. The half-breed who had done the
scalping had, at the first rumor of the soldiers coming, taken himself
away. If the Hawikuhkwe said this to the Spaniards, they knew very well
they would not be believed. But the mind of Ho-tai had begun to come
back to him, feebly as from a far journey.

"He remembered that he had done something displeasing to the Padre,
though he did not remember what, and on account of it there was doom
over the valley of the Shiwina. He rose staggering in his place.

"'Evil has been done, and the evil man must be cast out,' he said, and
for the first time the Padres noticed that he was half white. Not one of
them had ever seen the man who scalped Father Letrado, but it was known
that his father had been a soldier. This man was altogether such a one
as they expected. His cheeks were drawn, his hair hung matted over his
reddened eyes, as a man's might, tormented of the spirit. 'I am that
man,' said Ho-tai of the Two Hearts, and the Caciques put their hands
over their mouths with astonishment."

"But they never," cried Oliver,--"they never let him be taken?"

"A life for a life," said the Condor, "that is the law. It was necessary
that the Spaniards be pacified, and the slayer could not be found.
Besides, the people of Hawikuh thought Ho-tai's offer to go in his place
was from the gods. It agrees with all religions that a man may lay down
his life for his people."

"Couldn't his wife do anything?"

"What could she? He went of his own will and by consent of the Caciques.
But she tried what she could. She could give him _peyote_ enough so that
he should remember nothing and feel nothing of what the Spaniards should
do to him. But to do that she had to make friends with one of the
soldiers. She chose one Lujan, who had written his name on the Rock on
the way to K'iakime. By him she sent a cake to Ho-tai, and promised to
meet Lujan when she could slip away from the village unnoticed.

"Between here and Acoma," said the Condor, "is a short cut which may be
traveled on foot, but not on horseback. Returning with Ho-tai, manacled
and fast between two soldiers, the Spaniards meant to take that trail,
and it was there the wife of Ho-tai promised to meet Lujan at the end of
the second day's travel.

"She came in the twilight, hurrying as a puma, for her woman's heart was
too sore to endure her woman's body. Lujan had walked apart from the
camp to wait for her; smiling, he waited. She was still very beautiful,
and he thought she was in love with him. Therefore, when he saw the
long, hurrying stride of a puma in the trail, he thought it a pity so
beautiful a woman should be frightened. The arrow that he sped from his
cross-bow struck in the yellow flanks. 'Well shot,' said Lujan
cheerfully, but his voice was drowned by a scream that was strangely
like a woman's. He remembered it afterward in telling of the
extraordinary thing that had happened to him, for when he went to look,
where the great beast had leaped in air and fallen, there was nothing to
be found there. Nothing.

"If she had been in her form as a woman when he shot her," said the
Condor, "that is what he would have found. But she was a Passing Being,
not taking form from without as we do, of the outward touchings of
things, and her shape of a puma was as mist which vanishes in death as
mist does in the sun. Thus shortens my story."

"Come," said the Road-Runner, understanding that there would be no more
to the Telling. "The Seven Persons are out, and the trail is darkling."

The children looked up and saw the constellation which they knew as the
Dipper, shining in a deep blue heaven. The glow was gone from the high
cliffs of El Morro, and the junipers seemed to draw secretly together.
Without a word they took hands and began to run along the trail after
the Road-Runner.

[Illustration]

XV

HOW THE MEDICINE OF THE ARROWS WAS BROKEN AT REPUBLICAN RIVER; TOLD BY
THE CHIEF OFFICER OF THE DOG SOLDIERS

This is the story the Dog Soldier told Oliver one evening in April, just
after school let out, while the sun was still warm and bright on the
young grass, and yet one somehow did not care about playing. Oliver had
slipped into the Indian room by the west entrance to look at the Dog
Dancers, for the teacher had just told them that our country was to join
the big war which had been going on so long on the other side of the
Atlantic, and the boy was feeling rather excited about it, and
yet solemn.

The teacher had told them about the brave Frenchmen, who had stood up in
the way of the enemy saying, "They shall not pass," and they hadn't. It
made Oliver think of what he had read on the Dog Dancer's card--how in a
desperate fight the officer would stick an arrow or a lance through his
long scarf, where it trailed upon the ground, pinning himself to the
earth until he was dead or his side had won the victory.

Oliver thought that that was exactly the sort of thing that he would do
himself if he were a soldier, and when he read the card over again, he
sat on a bench with his back to the light looking at the Dog Dancers,
and feeling very friendly toward them. It had just occurred to him that
they, too, were Americans, and he liked to think of them as brave and
first-class fighters.

From where he sat he could see quite to the end of the east corridor
which was all of a quarter of a mile away. Nobody moved in it but a
solitary guard, looking small and flat like a toy man at that distance,
and the low sun made black and yellow bars across the floor. In a moment
more, while Oliver was wondering where that woodsy, smoky smell came
from, they were all around him, all the Dog Warriors, of the four
degrees, with their skin-covered lances curved like the beak of the
Thunder Bird, and the rattles of dew-claws that clashed pleasantly
together. Some of them were painted red all over, and some wore tall
headdresses of eagle feathers, and every officer had his trailing scarf
of buckskin worked in patterns of the Sacred Four. Around every neck was
the whistle made of the wing-bone of a turkey, and every man's forehead
glistened with the sweat of his dancing. The smell that Oliver had
noticed was the smoke of their fire and the spring scent of the young
sage. It grew knee-high, pale green along the level tops, stretching
away west to the Backbone-of-the-World, whose snowy tops seemed to float
upon the evening air. Off to the right there was a river dark with
cottonwoods and willows.

"But where are we?" Oliver wished to know, seeing them all pause in
their dancing to notice him in a friendly fashion.

"Cheyenne Country," said one of the oldest Indians. "Over there"--he
pointed to a white thread that dipped and sidled along the easy roll of
the hills--"is the Taos Trail. It joins the Santa Fe at the Rio Grande
and goes north to the Big Muddy. It crosses all the east-flowing rivers
near their source and skirts the Pawnee Country."

"And who are you--Cheyennes or Arapahoes?" Oliver could not be sure,
though their faces and their costumes were familiar.

"Cheyennes _and_ Arapahoes," said the oldest Dog Dancer, easing himself
down to the buffalo robe which one of the rank and file of the warriors
had spread for him. "Camp-mates and allies, though we do not call
ourselves Cheyennes, you know. That is a Sioux name for us,--Red Words,
it means;--what you call foreign-speaking, for the Sioux cannot speak
any language but their own. We call ourselves Tsis-tsis-tas, Our Folk."
He reached back for his pipe which a young man brought him and loosened
his tobacco pouch from his belt, smiling across at Oliver, "Have you
earned your smoke, my son?"

"I'm not allowed," said Oliver, eyeing the great pipe which he was
certain he had seen a few moments before in the Museum case.

"Good, good," said the old Cheyenne; "a youth should not smoke until he
has gathered the bark of the oak."

Oliver looked puzzled and the Dog Warrior smiled broadly, for gathering
oak bark is a poetic Indian way of speaking of a young warrior's
first scalping.

"He means you must not smoke until you have done something to prove you
are a man," explained one of the Arapahoes, who was painted bright red
all over and wore a fringe of scalps under his ceremonial belt. Pipes
came out all around the circle and some one threw a handful of
sweet-grass on the fire.

"What I should like to know," said Oliver, "is why you are called Dog
Dancer?"

The painted man shook his head.

"All I know is that we are picked men, ripe with battles, and the Dog is
our totem. So it has been since the Fathers' Fathers." He blew two puffs
from his pipe straight up, murmuring, "O God, remember us on earth,"
after the fashion of ceremonial smoking.

"God and us," said the Cheyenne, pointing up with his pipe-stem; and
then to Oliver, "The Tsis-tsis-tas were saved by a dog once in the
country of the Ho-He. That is Assiniboine," he explained, following it
with a strong grunt of disgust which ran all around the circle as the
Dog Chief struck out with his foot and started a little spurt of dust
with his toe, throwing dirt on the name of his enemy. "They are called
Assiniboine, stone cookers, because they cook in holes in the ground
with hot stones, but to us they were the Ho-He. The first time we met we
fought them. That was in the old time, before we had guns or bows
either, but clubs and pointed sticks. That was by the Lake of the Woods
where we first met them."

"Lake of the Woods," said Oliver; "that's farther north than the
headwater of the Mississippi."

"We came from farther and from older time," said the Dog Soldier. "We
thought the guns were magic at first and fell upon our faces.
Nevertheless, we fought the Ho-He and took their guns away from them."

"So," said the officer of the Yellow Rope, as the long buckskin badge of
rank was called. "We fought with Blackfoot and Sioux. We fought with
Comanches and Crows, and expelled them from the Land. With Kiowas we
fought; we crossed the Big Muddy and long and bitter wars we had with
Shoshones and Pawnees. Later we fought the Utes. We are the Fighting
Cheyennes.

"That is how it is when a peaceful people are turned fighters. For we
are peaceful. We came from the East, for one of our wise men had
foretold that one day we should meet White Men and be conquered by them.
Therefore, we came away, seeking peace, and we did not know what to do
when the Ho-He fell upon us. At last we said, 'Evidently it is the
fashion of this country to fight. Now, let us fight everybody we meet,
so we shall become great.' That is what has happened. Is it not so?"

"It is so!" said the Dog Dancers. "Hi-hi-yi," breaking out all at once
in the long-drawn wolf howl which is the war-cry of the Cheyennes.
Oliver would have been frightened by it, but quite as suddenly they
returned to their pipes, and he saw the old Dog Chief looking at him
with a kindly twinkle.

"You were going to tell me why you are called Dog Soldiers," Oliver
reminded him.

"Dog is a good name among us," said the old Cheyenne, "but it is
forbidden to speak of the Mysteries. Perhaps when you have been admitted
to the Kit Foxes and have seen fighting--"

"We've got a war of our own, now," said Oliver hopefully.

The Indians were all greatly interested. The painted Arapahoe blew him a
puff from his pipe. "Send you good enemies," he said, trailing the smoke
about in whatever direction enemies might come from. "And a good fight!"
said the Yellow Rope Officer; "for men grow soft where there is no
fighting."

"And in all cases," said the Dog Chief, "respect the Mysteries.
Otherwise, though you come safely through yourself, you may bring evil
on the Tribe. ... I remember a Telling ... No," he said, following the
little pause that always precedes a story; "since you are truly at war I
will tell a true tale. A tale of my own youth and the failure that came
on Our Folks because certain of our young men forgot that they were
fighting for the Tribe and thought only of themselves and their
own glory."

He stuffed his pipe again with fine tobacco and bark of red willow and
began.

"Of one mystery of the Cheyennes every man may speak a little--of the
Mystery of the Sacred Medicine Arrows. Four arrows there are with stone
heads painted in the four colors, four feathered with eagle plumes. They
give power to men and victory in battle. It is a man mystery; no woman
may so much as look at it. When we go out as a Tribe to war, the Arrows
go with us tied to the lance of the Arrow-Keeper.

"The Medicine of the Arrows depended on the Mysteries which are made in
the camp before the Arrows go out. But if any one goes out from the camp
toward the enemy before the Mysteries are completed, the protection of
the Arrows is destroyed. Thus it happened when the Potawatami helped the
Kitkahhahki, and the Cheyennes were defeated. This was my doing, mine
and Red Morning and a boy of the Suh-tai who had nobody belonging
to him.

"We three were like brothers, but I was the elder and leader. I waited
on War Bonnet when he went to the hunt, and learned war-craft from him.
That was how it was with us as we grew up,--we attached ourselves to
some warrior we admired; we brought back his arrows and rounded up his
ponies for him, or washed off the Medicine paint after battle, or
carried his pipe.

"War Bonnet I loved for the risks he would take. Red Morning followed
Mad Wolf, who was the best of the scouts; and where we two went the
Suh-tai was not missing. This was long after we had learned all the
tricks of the Ho-He by fighting them, after the Iron Shirts brought the
horse to us, and we had crossed the Big Muddy into this country.

"We were at war with the Pawnees that year. Not," said the Dog Chief
with a grin, "that we were ever at peace with them, but the year before
they had killed our man Alights-on-the-Cloud and taken our iron shirt."

"Had the Cheyennes iron shirts?" Oliver was astonished.

"Alights-on-the-Cloud had one. When he rode up and down in front of the
enemy with it under his blanket, they thought it great Medicine. There
were others I have heard of; they came into the country with the men who
had the first horses, but this was ours. It was all fine rings of iron
that came down to the knees and covered the arms and the head so that
his long hair was inside.

"It was the summer before we broke the Medicine of the Arrows that the
Tsis-tsis-tas had gone out against the Pawnees. Arapahoes, Sioux,
Kiowas, and Apaches, they went out with us.

"Twice in the year the Pawnees hunted the buffaloes, once in the winter
when the robes were good and the buffaloes fat, and once in the summer
for food. All the day before we had seen a great dust rising and all
night the ground shook with the buffaloes running. There was a mist on
the prairie, and when it rose our scouts found themselves almost in the
midst of the Pawnees who were riding about killing buffaloes.

"It was a running fight; from noon till level sun they fought, and in
the middle of it, Alights-on-the-Cloud came riding on a roan horse along
the enemy line, flashing a saber. As he rode the Pawnees gave back, for
the iron shirt came up over his head and their arrows did him no harm.
So he rode down our own line, and returning charged the Pawnees, but
this time there was one man who did not give back.

"Carrying-the-Shield-in-Front said to those around him: 'Let him come on,
and do you move away from me so he can come close. If he possesses great
Medicine, I shall not be able to kill him; but if he does not possess
it, perhaps I shall kill him.'

"So the others fell back, and when Alights-on-the-Cloud rode near enough
so that Carrying-the-Shield-in-Front could hear the clinking of the iron
rings, he loosed his arrow and struck Alights-on-the-Cloud in the eye.

"Our men charged the Pawnees, trying to get the body back, but in the
end they succeeded in cutting the iron shirt into little pieces, and
carrying it away. This was a shame to us, for Alights-on-the-Cloud was
well liked, and for a year there was very little talked of but how he
might be avenged.

"Early the next spring a pipe was carried. Little Robe carried it along
the Old North Trail to Crows and the Burnt Thigh Sioux and the Northern
Cheyennes. South also it went to Apaches and Arapahoes. And when the
grape was in leaf we came together at Republican River and swore that we
would drive out the Pawnees.

"As it turned out both Mad Wolf and War Bonnet were among the first
scouts chosen to go and locate the enemy, and though we had no business
there, we three, and two other young men of the Kiowas, slipped out of
the camp and followed. They should have turned us back as soon as we
were discovered, but Mad Wolf was good-natured, and they were pleased to
see us so keen for war.

"There was a young moon, and the buffalo bulls were running and fighting
in the brush. I remember one old bull with long streamers of grapevines
dragging from his horns who charged and scattered us. We killed a young
cow for meat, and along the next morning we saw wolves running away from
a freshly killed carcass. So we knew the Pawnees were out.

"Yellow Bear, an Arapahoe Dog Soldier, who was one of the scouts, began
to ride about in circles and sing his war-song, saying that we ought not
to go back without taking some scalps, or counting coup, and we
youngsters agreed with him. We were disappointed when the others decided
to go back at once and report. I remember how Mad Wolf, who was the
scout leader, sent the others all in to notify the camp, and how, as
they rode, from time to time they howled like wolves, then stopped and
turned their heads from side to side.

"There was a great ceremonial march when we came in, the Dog Soldiers,
the Crooked Lances, the Fox Soldiers, and all the societies. First there
were two men--the most brave in the society leading, and then all the
others in single file and two to close. The women, too--all the bright
blankets and the tall war bonnets--the war-cries and the songs and the
drums going like a man's heart in battle.

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