The Trail Book by Mary Austin et al

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"It took hold of the wrapped deerskins, ran in sparks like little deer
in the short hair, and bit through to Howkawanda. But no sooner had he
felt the teeth of the flame than the young man came back from the place
where he had been, and sat up in the midst of the burning. He leaped out
of the fire, and the people scattered like embers and put their hands
over their mouths, as is the way with men when they are astonished.
Howkawanda, wrapped as he was, rolled on the damp sand till the fires
were out, while Younger Brother gnawed him free of the death-wrappings,
and the people's hands were still at their mouths. But the first step he
took toward them they caught up sticks and stones to threaten.

"It was a fearful thing to them that he should come back from being
dead. Besides, the hair was burned half off his head, and he was
streaked raw all down one side where the fire had bitten him. He stood
blinking, trying to pick up their meaning with his eyes. His maiden
looked up from her mother's lap where she wept for him, and fled
shrieking.

"'Dead, go back to the dead!' cried the Head Man, but he did not stop to
see whether Howkawanda obeyed him, for by this time the whole pack was
squealing down the creek to Hidden-under-the-Mountain. Howkawanda looked
at his maiden running fast with the strength of the portion he had saved
for her; looked at the empty camp and the bare hillside; looked once at
the high Wall of the Pyweack, and laughed as much as his burns would
let him.

"'If we two be dead men, Brother,' he said, 'it may be we shall have
luck on a Dead Man's Journey.'

"It would have been better if they could have set out at once, for rain
in the Country of Dry Washes means snow on the Mountain. But they had to
wait for the healing of Howkawanda's burns, and to plump themselves
out a little on the meat--none too fat--that came down on its
own feet before the Rains. They lay in the half-ruined huts and
heard, in the intervals of the storm, the beating of tom-toms at
Hidden-under-the-Mountain to keep off the evil influences of one who had
been taken for dead and was alive again.

"By the time they were able to climb to the top of Knife-Cut Canon the
snow lay over the mountains like a fleece, and at every turn of the wind
it shifted. From the Pass they dropped down into a pit between the
ranges, where, long before they came to it, they could hear the wind
beating about like a trapped creature. Here great mountain-heads had run
together like bucks in autumn, digging with shining granite hooves deep
into the floor of the Canon. Into this the winds would drop from the
high places like broken-winged birds, dashing themselves against the
polished walls of the Pyweack, dashing and falling back and crying
woundedly. There was no other way into this Wind Trap than the way
Howkawanda and Younger Brother had come. If there was any way out only
the Four-Footed People knew it.

"But over all their trails snow lay, deepening daily, and great rivers
of water that fell into the Trap in summer stood frozen stiff like ice
vines climbing the Pyweack.

"The two travelers made them a hut in broad branches of a great fir, for
the snow was more than man-deep already, and crusted over. They laid
sticks on the five-branched whorl and cut away the boughs above them
until they could stand. Here they nested, with the snow on the upper
branches like thatch to keep them safe against the wind. They ran on the
surface of the snow, which was packed firm in the bottom of the Trap,
and caught birds and small game wintering in runways under the snow
where the stiff brush arched and upheld it. When the wind, worn out with
its struggles, would lie still in the bottom of the Trap, the two would
race over the snow-crust whose whiteness cut the eye like a knife,
working into every winding of the Canon for some clue to the Dead
Man's Journey.

[Illustration: "Shot downward to the ledge where Howkawanda and Younger
Brother hugged themselves"]

"On one of these occasions, caught by a sudden storm, they hugged
themselves for three days and ate what food they had, mouthful by
mouthful, while the snow slid past them straight and sodden. It closed
smooth over the tree where their house was, to the middle branches. Two
days more they waited until the sun by day and the cold at night had
made a crust over the fresh fall. On the second day they saw something
moving in the middle of the Canon. Half a dozen wild geese had been
caught in one of the wind currents that race like rivers about the High
Places of the World, and dropped exhausted into the Trap. Now they rose
heavily; but, starved and blinded, they could not pitch their flight to
that great height. Round and round they beat, and back they dropped from
the huge mountain-heads, bewildered. Finally, the leader rose alone
higher and higher in that thin atmosphere until the watchers almost lost
him, and then, exhausted, shot downward to the ledge where Howkawanda
and Younger Brother hugged themselves in the shelter of a wind-driven
drift. They could see the gander's body shaken all over with the pumping
of his heart as Younger Brother took him hungrily by the neck.

"'Nay, Brother,' said Howkawanda, 'but I also have been counted dead,
and it is in my heart that this one shall serve us better living than
dead.' He nursed the great white bird in his bosom and fed it with the
last of their food and a little snow-water melted in his palm. In an
hour, rested and strengthened, the bird rose again, beating a wide
circle slowly and steadily upward, until, with one faint honk of
farewell, it sailed slowly out of sight between the peaks, sure of its
direction.

"'That way,' said Howkawanda, 'lies Dead Man's Journey.'

"When they came back over the same trail a year later, they were
frightened to see what steeps and crevices they had covered. But for
that first trip the snow-crust held firm while they made straight for
the gap in the peaks through which the wild goose had disappeared. They
traveled as long as the light lasted, though their hearts sobbed and
shook with the thin air and the cold.

"The drifts were thinner, and the rocks came through with clusters of
wind-slanted cedars. By nightfall snow began again, and they moved,
touching, for they could not see an arm's length and dared not stop lest
the snow cover them. And the hair along the back of Younger Brother
began to prick.

"'Here I die, indeed,' said Howkawanda at last, for he suffered most
because of his naked skin. He sank down in the soft snow at Younger
Brother's shoulder.

"'Up, Master,' said Younger Brother, 'I hear something.'

"'It is the Storm Spirit singing my death song,' said Howkawanda. But
the coyote took him by the neck of his deerskin shirt and dragged him
a little.

"'Now,' he said, 'I smell something.'

"Presently they stumbled into brush and knew it for red cedar. Patches
of it grew thick on the high ridges, matted close for cover. As the
travelers crept under it they heard the rustle of shoulder against
shoulder, the moving click of horns, and the bleat of yearlings for
their mothers. They had stumbled in the dark on the bedding-place of a
flock of Bighorn.

"'Now we shall also eat,' said Younger Brother, for he was quite empty.

"The hand of Howkawanda came out and took him firmly by the loose skin
between the shoulders.

"'There was a coyote once who became brother to a man,' he said, 'and
men, when they enter a strange house in search of shelter and direction,
do not first think of killing.'

"'One blood we are,' said the First Father of Dogs, remembering how
Howkawanda had marked him,' but we are not of one smell and the rams may
trample me.'

"Howkawanda took off his deerskin and put around the coyote so that he
should have man smell about him, for at that time the Bighorn had not
learned to fear man.

"They could hear little bleats of alarm from the ewes and the huddling
of the flock away from them, and the bunting of the Chief Ram's horns on
the cedars as he came to smell them over. Younger Brother quivered, for
he could think of nothing but the ram's throat, the warm blood and the
tender meat, but the finger of Howkawanda felt along his shoulders for
the scar of the Blood-Mixing, the time they had killed the buck at
Talking Water. Then the First Father of all the Dogs understood that Man
was his Medicine and his spirit leaped up to lick the face of the man's
spirit. He lay still and felt the blowing in and out of Howkawanda's
long hair on the ram's breath, as he nuzzled them from head to heel.
Finally the Bighorn stamped twice with all his four feet together, as a
sign that he had found no harm in the strangers. They could feel the
flock huddling back, and the warmth of the packed fleeces. In the midst
of it the two lay down and slept till morning.

"They were alone in the cedar shelter when they woke, but the track of
the flock in the fresh-fallen snow led straight over the crest under the
Crooked Horn to protected slopes, where there was still some browse and
open going.

"Toward nightfall they found an ancient wether the weight of whose horns
had sunk him deep in the soft snow, so that he could neither go forward
nor back. Him they took. It was pure kindness, for he would have died
slowly otherwise of starvation. That is the Way Things Are," said the
Coyote; "when one _must_ kill, killing is allowed. But before they
killed him they said certain words.

"Later," the Coyote went on, "they found a deer occasionally and
mountain hares. Their worst trouble was with the cold. Snow lay deep
over the dropped timber and the pine would not burn. Howkawanda would
scrape together moss and a few twigs for a little fire to warm the front
of him and Younger Brother would snuggle at his back, so between two
friends the man saved himself."

The Blackfoot nodded. "Fire is a very old friend of Man," he said; "so
old that the mere sight of it comforts him; they have come a long way
together." "Now I know," said Oliver, "why you called the first dog
Friend-at-the-Back."

"Oh, but there was more to it than that," said the Coyote, "for the next
difficulty they had was to carry their food when they found it.
Howkawanda had never had good use of his shoulder since the fire bit it,
and even a buck's quarter weights a man too much in loose snow. So he
took a bough of fir, thick-set with little twigs, and tied the kill on
that. This he would drag behind him, and it rode lightly over the
surface of the drifts. When the going was bad, Younger Brother would try
to tug a little over his shoulder, so at last Howkawanda made a harness
for him to pull straight ahead. Hours when they would lie storm-bound
under the cedars, he whittled at the bough and platted the twigs
together till it rode easily.

"In the moon of Tender Leaves, the people of the Buffalo Country, when
they came up the hills for the spring kill, met a very curious
procession coming down. They saw a man with no clothes but a few tatters
of deerskin, all scarred down one side of his body, and following at his
back a coyote who dragged a curiously plaited platform, by means of two
poles harnessed across his shoulders. It was the first travoise. The men
of the Buffalo Country put their hands over their mouths, for they had
never seen anything like it."

The Coyote waited for the deep "huh-huh" of approval which circled the
attentive audience at the end of the story.

"Fire and a dog!" said the Blackfoot, adding a little pinch
of sweet-grass to his smoke as a sign of thankfulness,--
"Friend-on-the-Hearth and Friend-at-the-Back! Man may go far with them."

Moke-icha turned her long flanks to the sun. "Now I thought the tale
began with a mention of a Talking Skin--"

"Oh, that!" The Coyote recalled himself. "After he had been a year in
the Buffalo Country, Howkawanda went back to carry news of the trail to
the Dry Washes. All that summer he worked over it while his dogs hunted
for him--for Friend-at-the-Back had taken a mate and there were four
cubs to run with them. Every day, as Howkawanda worked out the trail, he
marked it with stone and tree-blazes. With colored earth he marked it on
a buffalo skin; from the Wind Trap to the Buffalo Country.

"When he came to Hidden-under-the-Mountain he left his dogs behind, for
he said, 'Howkawanda is a dead man to them.' In the Buffalo Country he
was known as Two-Friended, and that was his name afterward. He was
dressed after the fashion of that country, with a great buffalo robe
that covered him, and his face was painted. So he came to
Hidden-under-the-Mountain as a stranger and made signs to them. And when
they had fed him, and sat him in the chief place as was the custom with
strangers, he took the writing from under his robe to give it to the
People of the Dry Washes. There was a young woman near by nursing her
child, and she gave a sudden sharp cry, for she was the one that had
been his maiden, and under the edge of his robe she saw his scars. But
when Howkawanda looked hard at her she pretended that the child had
bitten her."

Dorcas Jane and Oliver drew a long breath when they saw that, so far as
the rest of the audience was concerned, the story was finished. There
were a great many questions they wished to ask,--as to what became of
Howkawanda after that, and whether the People of the Dry Washes ever
found their way into the Buffalo Country,--but before they could begin
on them, the Bull Buffalo stamped twice with his fore-foot for a sign of
danger. Far down at the other end of the gallery they could hear the
watchman coming.

[Illustration]

VI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dorcas had heard the guard explaining to visitors in the Aztec room.
"Teocales," she suggested.

"That was one of their words," agreed the Corn Woman. "They called
themselves Children of the Sun. This much we knew; that there was a
Seed. The People of the Cliffs, who came to the edge of the Windswept
Plain to trade, would give us cakes sometimes for dried buffalo tongues.
This we understood was _mahiz_, but it was not until Given-to-the-Sun
came to us that we thought of having it for ours. Our men were hunters.
They thought it shame to dig in the ground.

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

"At first the girl did not know what to make of being dressed so
handsomely and fed upon the best of everything, but when they painted
her with the sign of the Sun she knew. Over her heart they painted it.
Then they put about her neck the Eye of the Sun, and the same day the
woman who had been her mistress and was fond of her, slipped her a seed
which she said should be eaten as she went up the Hill of the Sun, so
she would feel nothing. Given-to-the-Sun hid it in her bosom.

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

The Corn Woman stooped and traced in the dust the ancient sign of the
intertwined four corners of the Earth with the Sun in the middle.
"Around her neck in a buckskin bag was the charm that is known as the
Eye of the Sun. She never showed it to any of us, but when she was in
trouble or doubt, she would put her hand over it. It was her Medicine."

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

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

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

"It was the fight we had with the Tenasas that decided us. That was a
year of great scarcity and the Tenasas took to sending their young men,
two or three at a time, creeping into our hunting-grounds to start the
game, and turn it in the direction of their own country. When our young
men were sure of this, they went in force and killed inside the borders
of the Tenasas. They had surprised a herd of buffaloes at Two Kettle
Licks and were cutting up the meat when the Tenasas fell upon them.
Waits-by-the-Fire lost her last son by that battle. One she had lost in
the fight at Red Buttes and one in a year of Hunger while he was little.
This one was swift of foot and was called Last Arrow, for Shungakela had
said, 'Once I had a quiver full.' Waits-by-the-Fire brought him back on
her shoulders from the place where the fight was. She walked with him
into the Council.

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

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

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

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

"Not so far, but they had to stay from planting to harvest. Of what use
was the seed without knowledge. Traveling hard they crossed the River of
the White Rocks and reached, by the end of that moon, the mountain
overlooking the Country of Stone Houses. Here the men stayed.
Waits-by-the-Fire arranged everything. She thought the people of the
towns might hesitate to admit so many men strangers. Also she had the
women put on worn moccasins with holes, and old food from the year
before in their food bags."

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

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

The Corn Woman had forgotten that she was telling a story older than the
oaks they sat under. When she came to the exciting parts she said "we"
and "us" as though it were something that had happened to them all
yesterday.

"It was a high white range that looked on the Country of Stone Houses,"
she said, "with peaks that glittered, dropping down ridge by ridge to
where the trees left off at the edge of a wide, basket-colored valley.
It hollowed like a meal basket and had a green pattern woven through it
by a river. Shungakela went with the women to the foot of the mountain,
and then, all at once, he would not let them go until Waits-by-the-Fire
promised to come back to the foot of the mountain once in every moon to
tell him how things went with us. We thought it very childish of him,
but afterward we were glad we had not made any objection.

"It was mid-morning when the Seven walked between the fields, with
little food in their bags and none whatever in their stomachs, all in
rags except Waits-by-the-Fire, who had put on her Shaman's dress, and
around her neck, tied in a bag with feathers, the Medicine of the Sun.
People stood up in the fields to stare, and we would have stared back
again, but we were afraid. Behind the stone house we saw the Hill of the
Sun and the priests moving up and down as Waits-by-the-Fire had
described it.

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