TAHN-TÉ--THE RULER
Summers of the Sun, and winters when the stars danced for the snow,
had passed over the valley of Povi-whah. New people had been born into
the world, and old people had died, but the oldest man in the council,
K[=a]-ye-fah--the Ruler of Things from the Beginning, had lived many
years after the time when he thought the shadow life must come to him.
And to the Woman of the Twilight he had said that it was her son who
kept him living--her son to whom he taught the ancient things of his
own youth. In the keen enthusiasms he had found such a son as he had
longed for. The lost daughter, K[=a]-ye-povi, he had never found--and
never forgotten. To Tahn-té he had talked of her until she almost
lived in their lives. The face of the god-maid on the south mesa had
for K[=a]-ye-fah the outline of chin and backward sweep of hair
strangely akin to the face of the lost child. He liked to think the
god-maid belonged more to his clan of Towa Toan--the High Mesa
clan--than to another.
"If she had not gone into the shadow land, her face would have looked
that way," he said.
"And we could gather bright flowers for her hair,"--said the
boy--"they would be sweeter than the cold, far brightness of the stars
where the god-maid waits," and he pointed to where Antares gleamed
from the heart of the Scorpion above the dusk profile,--"I think of
K[=a]-ye-povi as the dream maid. She will be my always young
sweetheart--my only one."
"That is good," said K[=a]-ye-fah--"very good for the work of the
unborn years."
For the youth was to carry on the tribal prayers to the gods when
K[=a]-ye-fah no longer walked on earth. And his teaching must be
greater than all other teaching, for the Ruler was planning for the
work of the days to come.
And in a day of the early spring the work was made ready, for to
S[=aa]-hanh-que-ah he said:--"A week ago So-hoah-tza went under the
waters of the river and never breathed again. To him was given the
guard of the sacred place of the Sun Father. I have not yet made any
other the guardian. You are the woman of the order of the Po-Ahtun--I
give you the guard to keep. Call the governor--but call your son
first. You shall be guard as So-hoah-tza was guard, but Tahn-té shall
be guard as I have been! Lean lower, and let your ear listen and your
heart keep sacred the word. I go to our Lost Others--but I leave you
to guard."
The governor came, and all were sad, but no one thought that the life
was over. K[=a]-ye-fah talked and smiled as one who goes to a feast.
But Tahn-té, standing tall and still by the couch said:--"It will be
over! This morning he wakened and said he would go with the sun
to-day. He has no other thought, and he will go!"
And the women wept, and made ready the things of burial for the high
priest of the highest order. If Tahn-té said he would go into the
shadows at that time--the women knew that it would be so. Tahn-té, as
they knew him, joyous in the dances of the seasons,--was never in
their minds apart from Tahn-té the prophet whose dreams even as a boy,
had been beyond the dreams of the others who sought visions.
And as the sun touched the black line of the pines on the western
mountain, the aged Ruler asked for his wand of office, and the
governor gave it to him, and with his own hand he gave it to Tahn-té,
that even when his own form was covered with the soil, his vote would
be on record in the minds of those who listened--and that vote gave
to his pupil in magic, the wand of power--The youngest qualified
member of the Order of Spiritual things was thus acclaimed as the
Po-Ahtun-ho, a Ruler of Things from the Beginning.
Twenty-four years he had lived--but the time of life with the white
men had counted more than double. In magic of many kinds he was more
wise than the men of years, and the heart of his mother was glad with
the almost perfect gladness when Tahn-té stood in the place of the
Ancient Wisdom and listened as the ear of the god listens to the
recitation of many tribal prayers.
The Po-Ahtun-ho also listens at times to the individual appeals of the
things of every day life--as a father listens to a child who seeks
advice. To the more ancient Rulers the younger people were often
afraid to go--various "uncles" of the village were appealed to
instead. But the youth of Tahn-té made all things different--even the
love of a man for a maid, was not so small a thing that the new Ruler
made the suppliant feel how little it was.
And one of the first who came to him thus--who knelt and offered a
prayer to him, the prayer of a love, was the little Apache tigress who
had been first of his own village to greet him in Ua-lano--Yahn
Tsyn-deh, who had grown so pretty that the men of the other villages
talked of her, and her mother had asked great gifts for her. But the
mother had died with the winter, and Yahn refused to be subject to the
Tain-tsain clan of her father, and there had been much trouble until
she threatened to go back to her mother's tribe, and many thought it
might come to that after all--for she was very strong of will.
But before Tahn-té the Po-Ahtun-ho she crouched, and sobs shook her,
and her hair covered her face as a veil.
"If it is of the clan, Yahn, it is to the governor you should
speak:--" said Tahn-té--"from him it may come to me if he thinks best.
There are rules we must not break. Because I carried you, when little,
on my shoulder, is no reason to walk past the door of the governor and
bring his duties to me."
He spoke kindly, for his heart was kind towards the little fighter of
boyhood's days. Her alien blood was ever prompting her to reckless
daring beyond the customs of Te-hua maidens. In a different way, he
himself was an alien and it helped him to understand her. But this day
he saw another Yahn--one he had not known could hide under the
reckless exterior.
She tossed back her hair and faced him.
"How should I speak with Phen-tza the governor--he is the uncle of
Ka-yemo! It is he who has helped do this thing--he would make me a
slave or have me whipped! How should I speak with him? Ka-yemo knows
that the governor his uncle, will--"
"Ka-yemo! What has Ka-yemo done? What trouble does he make?"
"Oh--no trouble!" her words were bitter words,--"Only the governor his
uncle, has talked with the family of Tsa-fah and the marriage is made
with his daughter Koh-pé of the beads, and you--know, Tahn-té--you
know!"
Tahn-té did know, he regarded her in silence.
"Speak!"--she pleaded. "You are more than governor--you are the
Highest! Magic is yours to make and to unmake. Unmake this thing! With
your magic send him back to me--to me!"
"Magic is not for that:--it is for Those Above!"
Again she flung herself at his feet and wept. The sobs hurt him, yet
he must not lift her. She begged for a charm--for a spell--for black
magic to strike dead the wearer of the red bears and the blue beads,
for all wild things a wild passion could suggest.
"If you could see into the other years you would be content to have it
as it is," he said gently--"the years ahead may--"
"I care nothing for the years ahead! I want the _now_!--I want--"
"Listen!" he said, and she fell silent with covered face. "That which
you feel for Ka-yemo is not the love of marriage. A man takes a wife
for love of a wife and a home and children in the home. A man does not
chain himself to a tigress whose bite and whose blows he has felt. A
man would wish to be master:--what man has been born who could be
master in your home?"
"You do not know. You have lived a different sort of life! I could be
more than another wife--than any other wife! I shall kill some one!--"
and she rose to her feet--"unless the magic comes I kill some one!"
"And then?"
"Then Phen-tza the governor will have me strangled, and they will
take me to my grave with ropes of raw hide and there will not any
where be a sad heart for Yahn Tsyn-deh."
"You see how it is--he is precious to you--as he always has been. But
your love is too great a love for happy days. Always it will bring you
the ache in the heart. No thing of earth should be given the love like
that:--it is a fire to burn a whole forest in the days of its summer,
and in the winter snows there will be only ashes."
"Good!--then I, Yahn, will rather burn to the ashes in such summer
days, and be dead under the snows in the winter of the year!"
"And after that?"
"After that will not the Po-Ahtun-ho be Ruler always? Will he not
remember his friends who are precious in the Beyond as he remembers
this one to-day?" she asked mockingly. "K[=a]-ye-fah told the council
that you have lived a life no other man lives, and that no woman is
precious to you:--when you find the woman who is yet to come, may a
viper poison her blood--may a cat of the hills tear her flesh! May you
love until madness comes--and may the woman find only death in your
arms--and find it quickly!"
When the Woman of the Twilight came in from the field with yellow corn
pollen for the sacred ceremonies, the lattice of reeds at the outer
door was yet shaking as from touch of a ruthless hand, or a strong
wind.
"Who was it that cried here?" she asked. "Who has left you sad?"
"Perhaps a prophetess, my mother," answered Tahn-té, and sat
thoughtful where Yahn had left him. And after a long time he arose
and sought the governor.
But it was fated that the governor and the new Ruler were not to talk
of the love of a maid or the marriage of a man that day.
A runner had been sent to Povi-whah from Kat-yi-ti. He gave his
message, and stayed to eat while other runners took the trail, and
before the sun had moved the width of a hand across the sky, the
villages of Kah-po and Tsa-mah and Oj-ke were starting other runners
to Ui-la-ua and far Te-gat-ha and at Kah-po the head men gathered to
talk in great council over the word brought from the south.
For the word was that the men of the iron and the beards and the white
skins were again coming to the land of the People of the Sun. They
came in peace, and searched for the lost padres. A man of the gown was
with them for prayers, and a Te-hua man who had been caught by the
Navahu long winters ago and traded to the land of green birds. The
Te-hua man said the white people were good people, and he was guiding
them to the villages by the big river, P[=o]-s[=o]n-gé.