Chapter VII: Part 7

From Cay Verde in the Bahamas to the desert of New Mexico, by the Museum trail, is around a corner and past two windows that look out upon the west. As the children stood waiting for the Road-Runner to notice them, they found the view not very different from the one they had just left. Unending, level sands ran into waves, and strange shapes of rocks loomed through the desert blueness like steep-shored islands. It was vast and terrifying like the sea, and yet a very pleasant furred and feathered life appeared to be going on there between the round-headed cactus, with its cruel fishhook thorns, and the warning, blood-red blossoms that dripped from the ocatilla. Little frisk-tailed things ran up and down the spiney shrubs, and a woodpecker, who had made his nest in its pithy stalk, peered at them from a tall _sahuaro_.

The Road-Runner tilted his long rudder-like tail, flattened his crested head until it reminded them of a wicked snake, and suddenly made up his mind to be friendly.

"Come inside and get your head in the shade," he invited. "There's no harm in the desert sun so long as you keep something between it and your head. I've known Indians to get along for days with only the shade of their arrows."

The children snuggled under the feathery shadow of the mesquite beside him.

"We're looking for the trail of the Iron Shirts," said Oliver. "Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca," added Dorcas Jane, who always remembered names. The Road-Runner ducked once or twice by way of refreshing his memory.

"There was a black man with him, and they went about as Medicine Men to the Indians who believed in them, and at the same time treated them very badly. But that was nearly four hundred years ago, and they never came into this part of the country, only into Texas. And they hadn't any iron shirts either, scarcely anything to put either on their backs or into their stomachs."

"Nevertheless," quavered a voice almost under Oliver's elbow, "they brought the iron shirts, and the long-tailed elk whose hooves are always stumbling among our burrows."

The children had to look close to make out the speckled fluff of feathers hunched at the door of its _hogan_.

"Meet my friend Thla-po-po-ke-a," said the Road-Runner, who had picked up his manners from miners and cowboys as well as from Spanish explorers.

The Burrowing Owl bobbed in her own hurried fashion. "Often and often," she insisted with a whispering _whoo-oo_ running through all the sentences, "I've heard the soldiers say that it was Cabeza de Vaca put it into the head of the King of Spain to send Francisco Coronado to look for the Seven Cities. In my position one hears the best of everything," went on Po-po-ke-a. "That is because all the important things happen next to the ground. Men are born and die on the ground, they spread their maps, they dream dreams."

The children could see how this would be in a country where there was never a house or a tree and scarcely anything that grew more than knee-high to a man. The long sand-swells, and the shimmer of heat-waves in the air looked even more like the sea now that they were level with it. Off to the right what seemed a vast sheet of water spread out like quicksilver on the plain; it moved with a crawling motion, and a coyote that trotted across their line of vision seemed to swim in it, his head just showing above the slight billows.

"It's only mirage," said the Road-Runner; "even Indians are fooled by it if they are strange to the country. But it is quite true about the ground being the place to hear things. All day the Iron Shirts would ride in a kind of doze of sun and weariness. But when they sat at meals, loosening their armor buckles, then there would be news. We used to run with it from one camp to another--I can run faster than a horse can walk--until the whole mesa would hear of it."

"But the night is the time for true talking," insisted Po-po-ke-a. "It was then we heard that when Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain he made one report of his wanderings to the public, and a secret report to the King. Also that the Captain-General asked to be sent on that expedition because he had married a young wife who needed much gold."

"At that time we had not heard of gold," said the Road-Runner; "the Spaniards talked so much of it we thought it must be something good to eat, but it turned out to be only yellow stones. But it was not all Cabeza de Vaca's doing. There was another story by an Indian, Tejo, who told the Governor of Mexico that he remembered going with his father to trade in the Seven Cities, which were as large as the City of Mexico, with whole streets of silver workers, and blue turquoises over the doors."

"If there is a story about it--" began Oliver, looking from one to the other invitingly, and catching them looking at each other in the same fashion.

"Brother, there is a tail to you," said the Burrowing Owl quickly, which seemed to the children an unnecessary remark, since the Road-Runner's long, trim tail was the most conspicuous thing about him. It tipped and tilted and waggled almost like a dog's, and answered every purpose of conversation.

Now he ducked forward on both legs in an absurd way he had. "To you, my sister--" which is the polite method of story asking in that part of the country.

"My word bag is as empty as my stomach," said Po-po-ke-a, who had eaten nothing since the night before and would not eat until night again. "_Sons eso_--to your story."

"_Sons eso, tse-na_," said the Road-Runner, and began.

"First," he said, "to Hawikuh, a city of the Zunis, came Estevan, the black man who had been with Cabeza de Vaca, with a rattle in his hand and very black behavior. Him the Indians killed, and the priest who was with him they frightened away. Then came Coronado, with an army from Mexico, riding up the west coast and turning east from the River of the Brand, the one that is now called Colorado, which is no name at all, for all the rivers hereabout run red after rain. They were a good company of men and captains, and many of those long-tailed elk,--which are called horses, sister," said the Road-Runner aside to Po-po-ke-a,--"and the Indians were not pleased to see them."

"That was because there had been a long-tailed star seen over To-ya-lanne, the sacred mountain, some years before, one of the kind that is called Trouble-Bringer. They thought of it when they looked at the long tails of the new-fashioned elk," said Po-po-ke-a, who had not liked being set right about the horses.

"In any case," went on the Road-Runner, "there was trouble. Hawikuh was one of these little crowded pueblos, looking as if it had been crumpled together and thrown away, and though there were turquoises over the doors, they were poor ones, and there was no gold. And as Hawikuh, so they found all the cities of Cibola, and the cities of the Queres, east to the River of White Rocks."

Dorcas Jane nudged Oliver to remind him of the Corn Woman and Tse-tse-yote. All the stories of that country, like the trails, seemed to run into one another.

"Terrible things happened around Tiguex and at Cicuye, which is now Pecos," said the Road-Runner, "for the Spaniards were furious at finding no gold, and the poor Indians could never make up their minds whether these were gods to be worshiped, or a strange people coming to conquer them, who must be fought. They were not sure whether the iron shirts were to be dreaded as magic, or coveted as something they could use themselves. As for the horses, they both feared and hated them. But there was one man who made up his mind very quickly.

"He was neither Queres nor Zuni, but a plainsman, a captive of their wars. He was taller than our men, leaner and sharp-looking. His god was the Morning Star. He made sacrifices to it. The Spaniards called him the Turk, saying he looked like one. We did not know what that meant, for we had only heard of turkeys which the Queres raised for their feathers, and he was not in the least like one of these. But he knew that the Spaniards were men, and was almost a match for them. He had the Inknowing Thought."

The Road-Runner cocked his head on one side and observed the children, to see if they knew what this meant.

"Is it anything like far-looking?" asked Dorcas.

"It is something none of my people ever had," said the Road-Runner. "The Indian who was called the Turk could look in a bowl of water in the sun, or in the water of the Stone Pond, and he could see things that happened at a distance, or in times past. He proved to the Spaniards that he could do this, but their priests said it was the Devil and would have nothing to do with it, which was a great pity. He could have saved them a great deal."

"_Hoo, hoo_!" said the Burrowing Owl; "he could not even save himself; and none of the things he told to the Spaniards were true."

"He was not thinking for himself," said the Road-Runner, "but for his people. The longer he was away from them the more he thought, and his thoughts were good, even though he did not tell the truth to the Iron Shirts. They, at least, did not deserve it. For when the people of Zuni and Cicuye and Tiguex would not tell them where the sacred gold was hid, there were terrible things done. That winter when the days were cold, the food was low and the soldiers fretful. Many an Indian kept the secret with his life."

"Did the Indians really know where the gold was?" The children knew that, according to the geographies, there are both gold and silver in New Mexico.

"Some of them did, but gold was sacred to them. They called it the stone of the Sun, which they worshiped, and the places where it was found were holy and secret. They let themselves be burned rather than tell. Besides, they thought that if the Spaniards were convinced there was no gold, they would go away the sooner. One thing they were sure of: gods or men, it would be better for the people of the pueblos if they went away. Day and night the _tombes_ would be sounding in the kivas, and prayer plumes planted in all the sacred places. Then it was that the Turk went to the Caciques sitting in council.

"'If the strangers should hear that there is gold in my country, there is nothing would keep them from going there.'

"'That is so,' said the Caciques.

"'And if they went to my country,' said the Turk, 'who but I could guide them?'

"'And how long,' said the Caciques, 'do you think a guide would live after they discovered that he had lied?' For they knew very well there was no gold in the Turk's country.

"'I should at least have seen my own land,' said the Turk, 'and here I am a slave to you.'

"The Caciques considered. Said they, 'It is nothing to us where and how you die.'

"So the Turk caused himself to be taken prisoner by the Spaniards, and talked among them, until it was finally brought to the Captain-General's ears that in the Turk's country of Quivira, the people ate off plates of gold, and the Chief of that country took his afternoon nap under a tree hung with golden bells that rung him to sleep. Also that there was a river there, two leagues wide, and that the boats carried twenty rowers to a side with the Chief under the awning." "That at least was true," said the Burrowing Owl; "there were towns on the Missi-sippu where the Chiefs sat in balconies on high mounds and the women fanned them with great fans."

"Not in Quivira, which the Turk claimed for his own country. But it all worked together, for when the Spaniards learned that the one thing was true, they were the more ready to believe the other. It was always easy to get them to believe any tale which had gold in it. They were so eager to set out for Quivira that they could scarcely be persuaded to take food enough, saying they would have all the more room on their horses for the gold.

"They forded the Rio Grande near Tiguex, traveled east to Cicuye on the Pecos River, and turned south looking for the Turk's country, which is not in that direction."

"But why--" began Oliver.

"Look!" said the Road-Runner.

The children saw the plains of Texas stretching under the heat haze, stark sand in wind-blown dunes, tall stakes of _sahuaro_ marching wide apart, hot, trackless sand in which a horse's foot sinks to the fetlock, and here and there raw gashes in the earth for rivers that did not run, except now and then in fierce and ungovernable floods. Northward the plains passed out of sight in trackless, grass-covered prairies, day's journey upon day's journey.

"It was the Caciques' idea that the Turk was to lose the strangers there, or to weaken them beyond resistance by thirst and hunger and hostile tribes. But the buffalo had come south that winter for the early grass. They were so thick they looked like trees walking, to the Spaniards as they lay on the ground and saw the sky between their huge bodies and the flat plain. And the wandering bands of Querechos that the Expedition met proved friendly. They were the same who had known Cabeza de Vaca, and they had a high opinion of white men. They gave the Spaniards food and proved to them that it was much farther to the cities of the Missisippu than the Turk had said.

"By that time Coronado had himself begun to suspect that he should never find the golden bells of Quivira, but with the King and Dona Beatris behind him, there was nothing for him to do but go forward. He sent the army back to Tiguex, and, with thirty men and all the best horses, turned north in as straight a track as the land permitted, to the Turk's country. And all that journey he kept the Turk in chains.

"Even though he had not succeeded in getting rid of the Iron Shirts, the Turk was not so disappointed as he might have been. The Caciques did not know it, but killing the strangers or losing them had been only a part of his plan.

"All that winter at Tiguex the Turk had seen the horses die, or grow sick and well again; some of them had had colts, and he had come to the conclusion that they were simply animals like elk or deer, only more useful.

"The Turk was a Pawnee, one of those roving bands that build grass houses and follow the buffalo for food. They ran the herds into a _piskune_ below a bluff, over which they rushed and were killed. Sometimes the hunters themselves were caught in the rush and trampled. It came into the Turk's mind, as he watched the Spaniards going to hunt on horseback, that the Morning Star, to whom he made sacrifices for his return from captivity, had sent him into Zuni to learn about horses, and take them back to his people. Whatever happened to the Iron Shirts on that journey, he had not meant to lose the horses. Even though suspected and in chains he might still do a great service to his people.

"When the Querechos were driving buffalo, some of the horses were caught up in the 'surround,' carried away with the rush of the stampeding herd, and never recovered. Others that broke away in a terrible hailstorm succeeded in getting out of the ravine where the army had taken shelter, and no one noticed that it was always at the point where the Turk was helping to herd them, that the horses escaped. Even after he was put in chains and kept under the General's eye on the way to Quivira, now and then there would be a horse, usually a mare with a colt, who slipped her stake-rope. Little gray coyotes came in the night and gnawed them. But coyotes will not gnaw a rope unless it has been well rubbed with buffalo fat," said the Road-Runner.

"I should have thought the Spaniards would have caught him at it," said Oliver.

"White men, when they are thinking of gold," said the Road-Runner, "are particularly stupid about other things. There was a man of the Wichitas, a painted Indian called Ysopete, who told them from the beginning that the Turk lied about the gold. But the Spaniards preferred to believe that the Indians were trying to keep the gold for themselves. They did not see that the Turk was losing their horses one by one; no more did they see, as they neared Quivira, that every day he called his people.

"There are many things an Indian can do and a white man not catch him at it. The Turk would sit and feed the fire at evening, now a bundle of dry brush and then a handful of wet grass, smoke and smudge, such as hunters use to signal the movements of the quarry. He would stand listening to the captains scold him, and push small stones together with his foot for a sign. He could slip in the trail and break twigs so that Pawnees could read. When strange Indians were brought into camp, though he could only speak to them in the language of signs, he asked for a Pawnee called Running Elk, who had been his friend before he was carried captive into Zuni Land. They had mingled their blood after the custom of friendship and were more than brothers to one another. And though the Iron Shirts looked at him with more suspicion every day, he was almost happy. He smelled sweet-grass and the dust of his own country, and spoke face to face with the Morning Star.

"I do not understand about stars," said the Road-Runner. "It seems that some of them travel about and do not look the same from different places. In Zuni Land where there are mountains, the Turk was not always sure of his god, but in the Pawnee country it is easily seen that he is the Captain of the Sky. You can lie on the ground there and lose sight of the earth altogether. Mornings the Turk would look up from his chains to see his Star, white against the rosy stain, and was comforted. It was the Star, I suppose, that brought him his friend.

"For four or five days after Running Elk discovered that the Turk was captive to the Iron Shirts, he would lurk in the tall grass and the river growth, making smoke signals. Like a coyote he would call at night, and though the Turk heard him, he dared not answer. Finally he hit upon the idea of making songs. He would sing and nobody could understand him but Running Elk, who lay in the grass, and finally had courage to come into the camp in broad day, selling buffalo meat and wild plums.

"There was a bay mare with twin colts that the Turk wished him to loose from her rope and drive away, but Running Elk was afraid. Cold mornings the Indian could see the smoke of the horses' nostrils and thought that they breathed fire. But the Turk made his friend believe at last that the horse is a great gift to man, by the same means that he had made the Spaniards think him evil, by the In-knowing Thought.

"'It is as true,' said the Turk, 'that the horse is only another sort of elk, as that my wife is married again and my son died fighting the Ho-he.' All of which was exactly as it had happened, for his wife had never expected that he would come back from captivity. 'It is also true,' the Turk told him, 'that very soon I shall join my son.'

"For he was sure by this time that when the Spaniards had to give up the hope of gold, they would kill him. He told Running Elk all the care of horses as he had learned it, and where he thought those that had been lost from Coronado's band might be found. Of the Iron Shirts, he said that they were great Medicine, and the Pawnees were by all means to get one or two of them.

"By this time the Expedition had reached the country of the Wichitas, which is Quivira, and there was no gold, no metal of any sort but a copper gorget around the Chief's neck, and a few armbands. The night that Coronada bought the Chief's gorget to send to his king, as proof that he had found no gold, Running Elk heard the Turk singing. It was no song of secret meaning; it was his own song, such as a man makes to sing when he sees his death facing him.

"All that night the Turk waited in his chains for the rising of his Star. There was something about which he must talk to it. He had made a gift of the horse to his people, but there was no sacrifice to wash away all that was evil in the giving and make it wholly blessed. All night the creatures of the earth heard the Turk whisper at his praying, asking for a sacrifice.

"And when the Star flared white before the morning, a voice was in the air saying that he himself was to be the sacrifice. It was the voice of the Morning Star walking between the hills, and the Turk was happy. The doves by the water-courses heard him with the first flush of the dawn waking the Expedition with his death song. Loudly the Spaniards swore at him, but he sang on steadily till they came to take him before the General, whose custom it was to settle all complaints the first thing in the morning. The soldiers thought that since it was evident the Turk had purposely misled them about the gold and other things, he ought to die for it. The General was in a bad humor. One of his best mares with her colts had frayed her stake-rope on a stone that night and escaped. Nevertheless, being a just man, he asked the Turk if he had anything to say. Upon which the Turk told them all that the Caciques had said, and what he himself had done, all except about the horses, and especially about the bay mare and Running Elk. About that he was silent. He kept his eyes upon the Star, where it burned white on the horizon. It was at its last wink, paling before the sun, when they killed him."

The children drew a long breath that could hardly be distinguished from the soft whispering _whoo-hoo_ of the Burrowing Owl.

"So in spite of his in-knowing he could not save himself," Dorcas Jane insisted, "and his Star could not save him. If he had looked in the earth instead of the heavens he would have found gold and the Spaniards would have given him all the horses he wanted."

"You forget," said the Road-Runner, "that he knew no more than the Iron Shirts did, where the gold was to be found. There were not more than two or three in any one of the Seven Cities that ever knew. Ho-tai of Matsaki was the last of those, and his own wife let him be killed rather than betray the secret of the Holy Places."

"Oh, if you please--" began the children.

"It is a town story," said the Road-Runner, "but the Condor that has his nest on El Morro, he might tell you. He was captive once in a cage at Zuni." The Road-Runner balanced on his slender legs and cocked his head trailwise. Any kind of inactivity bored him dreadfully. The burrowing owls were all out at the doors of their _hogans_, their heads turning with lightning swiftness from side to side; the shadows were long in the low sun. "It is directly in the trail from the Rio Grande to Acoma, the old trail to Zuni," said the Road-Runner, and without waiting to see whether or not the children followed him, he set off.

XIV

HOW THE MAN OF TWO HEARTS KEPT THE SECRET OF THE HOLY PLACES; TOLD BY THE CONDOR

"In the days of our Ancients," said the Road-Runner between short skimming runs, "this was the only trail from the river to the Middle Ant Hill of the World. The eastern end of it changed like the tip of a wild gourd vine as the towns moved up and down the river or the Queres crossed from Katzimo to the rock of Acoma; but always Zuni was the root, and the end of the first day's journey was the Rock."

Each time he took his runs afresh, like a kicking stick in a race, and waited for the children to catch up. The sands as they went changed from gray to gleaming pearl; on either side great islands of stone thinned and swelled like sails and took on rosy lights and lilac shadows.

They crossed a high plateau with somber cones of extinct volcanoes, crowding between rivers of block rock along its rim. Northward a wilderness of pines guarded the mesa; dark junipers, each one with a secret look, browsed wide apart. They thickened in the canyons from which arose the white bastions of the Rock.

Closer up, El Morro showed as the wedge-shaped end of a high mesa, soaring into cliffs and pinnacles, on the very tip of which they could just make out the hunched figure of the great Condor.

"El Morro, 'the Castle,' the Spaniards called it," said the Road-Runner, casting himself along the laps of the trail like a feathered dart. "But to our Ancients it was always 'The Rock.' On winter journeys they camped on the south side to get the sun, and in summers they took the shade on the north. They carved names and messages for those that were to come after, with flint knives, with swords and Spanish daggers. Men are all very much alike," said the Road-Runner.

On the smooth sandstone cliffs the children could make out strange, weathered picture-writings, and twisty inscriptions in much abbreviated Spanish which they could not read.

The white sand at the foot of the Rock was strewn with flakes of charcoal from the fires of ancient camps. A little to the south of the cliff, that towered two hundred feet and more above them, shallow footholds were cut into the sandstone.

"There were pueblos at the top in the old days," said the Road-Runner, "facing across a deep divide, but nobody goes there now except owls that have their nests in the ruins, and the last of the Condors, who since old time have made their home in the pinnacles of the Rock. He'll have seen us coming." The children looked up as a sailing shadow began to circle about them on the evening-colored sands. "You can see by the frayed edges of his wing feathers that he has a long time for remembering," said the Road-Runner.

The great bird came slowly to earth, close by the lone pine that tasseled out against the south side of El Morro and the Road-Runner ducked several times politely.

"My children, how is it with you these days?" asked the Condor with great dignity.

"Happy, happy, Grandfather. And you?"

The Condor assured them that he was very happy, and seeing that no one made any other remark, he added, after an interval, looking pointedly at the children, "It is not thinking of nothing that strangers come to the house of a stranger."

"True, Grandfather," said the Road-Runner; "we are thinking of the gold, the seed of the Sun, that the Spaniards did not find. Is there left to you any of the remembrance of these things?"

"_Hai, hai_!" The Condor stretched his broad wings and settled himself comfortably on a nubbin of sandstone. "Of which of these who passed will you hear?" He indicated the inscriptions on the rock, and then by way of explanation he said to the children, "I am town-hatched myself. Lads of Zuni took my egg and hatched it under a turkey hen, at the Ant Hill. They kept my wings clipped, but once they forgot, so I came away to the ancient home of my people. But in the days of my captivity I learned many tales and the best manner of telling them. Also the Tellings of my own people who kept the Rock. They fit into one another like the arrow point to the shaft. Look!"--he pointed to an inscription protected by a little brow of sandstone, near the lone pine. "Juan de Onate did that when he passed to the discovery of the Sea of the South. He it was who built the towns, even the chief town of Santa Fe.

"There signed with his sword, Vargas, who reconquered the pueblos after the rebellion--yes, they rebelled again and again. On the other side of the Rock you can read how Governor Nieto carried the faith to them. They came and went, the Iron Shirts, through two hundred years. You can see the marks of their iron hats on some of the rafters of Zuni town to this day, but small was the mark they left on the hearts of the Zunis."

"Is that so!" said the Road-Runner, which is a polite way of saying that you think the story worth going on with; and then cocking his eye at the inscription, he hinted, "I have heard that the Long Gowns, the Padres who came with them, were master-workers in hearts."

"It is so," said the Condor. "I remember the first of them who managed to build a church here, Padre Francisco Letrado. Here!" He drew their attention to an inscription almost weathered away, and looking more like the native picture-writings than the signature of a Spanish gentleman. He read:--

"They passed on the 23d of March of 1832 years to the avenging of the death of Father Letrado." It was signed simply "Lujan."

"There is a Telling of that passing and of that soldier which has to do with the gold that was never found."

_"Sons eso,"_ said the Road-Runner, and they settled themselves to listen.

"About the third of a man's life would have passed between the time when Onate came to the founding of Santa Fe, and the building of the first church by Father Letrado. There were Padres before that, and many baptizings. The Zunis were always glad to learn new ways of persuading the gods to be on their side, and they thought the prayers and ceremonies of the Padres very good Medicine indeed. They thought the Iron Shirts were gods themselves, and when they came received them with sprinklings of sacred meal. But it was not until Father Letrado's time that it began to be understood that the new religion was to take the place of their own, for to the Indians there is but one spirit in things, as there is one life in man. They thought their own prayers as good as any that were taught them.

"But Father Letrado was zealous and he was old. He made a rule that all should come to the service of his church and that they should obey him and reverence him when they met, with bowings and kissings of his robe. It is not easy to teach reverence to a free people, and the men of the Ant Hill had been always free. But the worst of Father Letrado's rulings was that there were to be no more prayers in the kivas, no dancings to the gods nor scatterings of sacred pollen and planting of plumes. Also--this is not known, I think--that the sacred places where the Sun had planted the seed of itself should be told to the Padres."

"He means the places where the gold is found mixed with the earth and the sand," explained the Road-Runner to Dorcas Jane and Oliver.

"In the days of the Ancients," said the Condor, "when such a place was found, it was told to the Priests of the Bow, and kept in reverence by the whole people. But since the Zunis had discovered what things white men will do for gold, there had been fewer and fewer who held the secret. The Spaniards had burnt too many of those who were suspected of knowing, for one thing, and they had a drink which, when they gave to the Indians, let the truth out of their mouths as it would not have gone when they were sober.

"At the time Father Letrado built his first chapel there was but one man in Hawikuh who knew.

"He was a man of two natures. His mother had been a woman of the Matsaki, and his father one of the Onate's men, so that he was half of the Sun and half of the Moon, as we say,--for the Zunis called the first half-white children, Moon-children,--and his heart was pulled two ways, as I have heard the World Encompassing Water is pulled two ways by the Sun and the Moon. Therefore, he was called Ho-tai the Two-Hearted.

"What finally pulled his heart out of his bosom was the love he had for his wife. Flower-of-the-Maguey, she was called, and she was beautiful beyond all naming. She was daughter to the Chief Priest of the Bow, and young men from all the seven towns courted her. But though she was lovely and quiet she was not as she seemed to be. She was a Passing Being." The Condor thoughtfully stretched his wings as he considered how to explain this to the children.

"Such there are," he said. "They are shaped from within outward by their own wills. They have the power to take the human form and leave it. But it was not until she had been with her mother to To-yalanne, the sacred Thunder Mountain, as is the custom when maidens reach the marriageable age, that her power came to her. She was weary with gathering the sacred flower pollen; she lay under a maguey in the warm sun and felt the light airs play over her. Her breath came evenly and the wind lifted her long hair as it lay along her sides.

"Strangely she felt the pull of the wind on her hair, all along her body. She looked and saw it turn short and tawny in the sun, and the shape of her limbs fitted to the sandy hollows. Thus she understood that she was become another being, Moke-iche, the puma. She bounded about in the sun and chased the blue and yellow butterflies. After a time she heard the voice of her mother calling, and it pulled at her heart. She let her heart have way and became a maid again. But often she would steal out after that, when the wind brought her the smell of the maguey, or at night when the moon walked low over To-yalanne, and play as puma. Her parents saw that she had power more than is common to maidens, but she was wise and modest, and they loved her and said nothing.

"'Let her have a husband and children,' they said, 'and her strangeness will pass.' But they were very much disappointed at what happened to all the young men who came a-courting.

"This is the fashion of a Zuni courting: The young man says to his Old Ones, 'I have seen the daughter of the Priest of the Bow at the Middle Ant Hill, what think ye?' And if they said, 'Be it well!' he gathered his presents into a bundle and went to knock at the sky-hole of her father's house.

"'_She_!' he said, and '_Hai_!' they answered from within. 'Help me down,' he would say, which was to tell them that he had a bundle with him and it was a large one. Then the mother of the girl would know what was afoot. She would rise and pull the bundle down through the sky-hole--all pueblo houses are entered from the top, did you not know?" asked the Condor.

The children nodded, not to interrupt; they had seen as they came along the trail the high terraced houses with the ladders sticking out of the door-holes.

"Then there was much politeness on both sides, politeness of food offered and eaten and questions asked, until the girl's parents were satisfied that the match would be a good one. Finally, the Old Ones would stretch themselves out in their corners and begin to scrape their nostrils with their breath--thus," said the Condor, making a gentle sound of snoring; "for it was thought proper for the young people to have a word or two together. The girl would set the young man a task, so as not to seem too easily won, and to prove if he were the sort of man she wished for a husband.

"'Only possibly you love me,' said the daughter of the Chief Priest of the Bow. 'Go out with the light to-morrow to hunt and return with it, bringing your kill, that I may see how much you can do for my sake.'

"But long before light the girl would go out herself as a puma and scare the game away. Thus it happened every time that the young man would return at evening empty-handed, or he would be so mortified that he did not return at all, and the girl's parents would send the bundle back to him. The Chief Priest and his wife began to be uneasy lest their daughter should never marry at all.

"Finally Ho-tai of the pueblo of Matsaki heard of her, and said to his mother, 'That is the wife for me.'

"'_Shoom_!' said his mother; 'what have you to offer her?' for they were very poor.

"'_Shoom_ yourself!' said Ho-tai. 'He that is poor in spirit as well as in appearance, is poor indeed. It is plain she is not looking for a bundle, but for a man.' So he took what presents he had to the house of the Chief Priest of the Bow, and everything went as usual; except that when Ho-tai asked them to help him in, the Chief Priest said, 'Be yourself within,' for he was growing tired of courtings that came to nothing. But when Ho-tai came cheerfully down the ladder with his gift, the girl's heart was touched, for he was a fine gold color like a full moon, and his high heart gave him a proud way of walking. So when she had said, 'Only possibly you love me, but that I may know what manner of husband I am getting, I pray you hunt for me one day,' and when they had bidden each other 'wait happily until the morning,' she went out as a puma and searched the hills for game that she might drive toward the young man, instead of away from him. But because she could not take her eyes off of him, she was not so careful as she should be not to let him see her. Then she went home and put on all her best clothes, the white buckskins, the turquoises and silver bracelets, and waited. At evening, Ho-tai, the Two-Hearted, came with a fine buck on his shoulders, and a stiff face. Without a word he gave the buck to the Priest's wife and turned away, '_Hai_',' said the mother, 'when a young man wins a girl he is permitted to say a few words to her!'--for she was pleased to think that her daughter had got a husband at last.

"'I did not kill the buck by myself,' said Ho-tai; and he went off to find the Chief Priest and tell him that he could not marry his daughter. Flower-of-the-Maguey, who was in her room all this time peeking through the curtain, took a water jar and went down to the spring where Ho-tai could not help but pass her on his way back to his own village.

"'I did not bring back your bundle,' she said when she saw him; 'what is a bundle to a woman when she has found a man?'

"Then his two hearts were sore in him, for she was lovely past all naming. 'I do not take what I cannot win by my own labor,' said he; 'there was a puma drove up the game for me.'

"'Who knows,' said she, 'but Those Above sent it to try if you were honest or a braggart?' After which he began to feel differently. And in due course they were married, and Ho-tai came to live in the house of the Chief Priest at Hawikuh, for her parents could not think of parting with her,

"They were very happy," said the Condor, "for she was wisely slow as well as beautiful, and she eased him of the struggle of his two hearts, one against the other, and rested in her life as a woman."

"Does that mean she wasn't a puma any more?" asked Dorcas Jane.

The Condor nodded, turning over the Zuni words in his mind for just the right phrase. "Understanding of all her former states came to her with the years. There was nothing she dreaded so much as being forced out of this life into the dust and whirl of Becoming. That is one reason why she feared and distrusted the Spanish missionaries when they came, as they did about that time.

"One of her husband's two hearts pulled very strongly toward the religion of the Spanish Padres. He was of the first that were baptized by Father Letrado, and served the altar. He was also the first of those upon whose mind the Padre began to work to persuade him that in taking the new religion he must wholly give up the old.

"At the end of that trail, a day's journey," said the Condor, indicating the narrow foot-tread in the sand, which showed from tree to tree of the dark junipers, and seemed to turn and disappear at every one, "lies the valley of Shiwina, which is Zuni.

"It is a narrow valley, watered by a muddy river. Red walls of mesas shut it in above the dark wood. To the north lies Thunder Mountain, wall-sided and menacing. Dust devils rise up from the plains and veil the crags. In the winter there are snows. In the summer great clouds gather over Shiwina and grow dark with rain. White corn tassels are waving, blue butterfly maidens flit among the blossoming beans.

"Day and night at midsummer, hardly the priests have their rattles out of their hands. You hear them calling from the house-tops, and the beat of bare feet on the dancing places. But the summer after Father Letrado built his chapel of the Immaculate Virgin at Halona and the chapel and parish house of the Immaculate Conception at Hawikuh, he set his face against the Rain Dance, and especially against the Priests of the Rain. Witchcraft and sorcery he called it, and in Zuni to be accused of witchcraft is death.

"The people did not know what to do. They prayed secretly where they could. The Priests of the Rain went on with their preparations, and the soldiers of Father Letrado--for he had a small detachment with him--broke up the dance and profaned the sacred places. Those were hard days for Ho-tai the Two-Hearted. The gods of the strangers were strong gods, he said, let the people wait and see what they could do. The white men had strong Medicine in their guns and their iron shirts and their long-tailed, smoke-breathing beasts. They did not work as other gods. Even if there was no rain, the white gods might have another way to save the people.

"These were the things Father Letrado taught him to say, and the daughter of the Chief Priest of the Bow feared that his heart would be quite pulled away from the people of Zuni. Then she went to her father the Chief Priest, who was also the keeper of the secret of the Holy Places of the Sun, and neared the dividing of the ways of life.

"'Let Ho-tai be chosen Keeper in your place,' she said, 'so all shall be bound together, the Medicine of the white man and the brown.'

"'Be it well,' said the Priest of the Bow, for he was old, and had respect for his daughter's wisdom. Feeling his feet go from him toward the Spirit Road, he called together the Priests of the Bow, and announced to them that Ho-tai would be Keeper in his stead.

"Though Two-Hearted was young for the honor, they did not question it, for, like his wife, they were jealous of the part of him that was white--which, for her, there was no becoming--and they thought of this as a binding together. They were not altogether sure yet that the Spaniards were not gods, or at the least Surpassing Beings.

"But as the rain did not come and the winter set in cold with a shortage of corn, more and more they neglected the bowings and the reverences and the service of the mass. Nights Father Letrado would hear the muffled beat of the drums in the kivas where the old religion was being observed, and because it was the only heart open to him, he twisted the heart of Ho-tai to see if there was not some secret evil, some seed of witchcraft at the bottom of it which he could pluck out."

"That was great foolishness," said the Road-Runner; "no white man yet ever got to the bottom of the heart of an Indian."

"True," said the Condor, "but Ho-tai was half white, and the white part of him answered to the Padre's hand. He was very miserable, and in fact, nobody was very happy in those days in Hawikuh. Father Martin who passed there in the moon of the Sun Returning, on his way to establish a mission among the People of the Coarse Hanging Hair, reported to his superior that Father Letrado was ripe for martyrdom.

"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.