YAHN, THE APACHE
"Brothers:--you of the life
--Of also the fire divine!
You of the mountains
Of also the Mother Mist!
Out of the mist is a voice.
It is not the voice afraid!
Out of the shadows,
Out of the forests,
Out of the deserts
It is born!
In a good hour it is born.
The wind of the Sun sends it breath!
Brothers:--the Dawn drives the Darkness
And in the mountain strong
No one sings fear!
Out from far worlds it comes,
With the strong Dawn it comes
Brothers:--be mountain strong
Sing not of fear!"
The rising sun tipped the terraces with gold and rose, and the nude
brown men, and the men children, faced the east with hands lifted to
greet the coming of the Great Power. This was as it had been since the
time of most ancient days.
But the song chanted from the terrace by the Woman of the Twilight was
a new song, and the men made their prayers, and wondered at the singer
singing thus on the roof of her dwelling.
The dew of the hills was on her clothing and on her hair. She had
dreamed a dream and walked in the night until the words of the dream
had come to her lips, and when they came she sang them aloud and the
people listened, and the men went from their prayers and thought about
it.
Many were conscious of secret thoughts of dread at the coming of the
strangers. The priestess had spoken of the thing no one had given
voice to.
From the day when her son had been honored as Po-Ahtun-ho, the strife
of existence seemed ended for S[=aa]-hanh-que-ah. The thing she had
lived to see was now accomplished. Her days were now the gray days of
rest and of mystery. She made many prayers alone in the hills, and
forgot to eat.
She was not old, yet to Tahn-té she said, "It is over:--The time is
come when you stand alone to be strong. Your work is now the work of
the strong man, and I go to make prayers in the hills."
When she stayed over long, he sought her out lest ill should come to
her, and more than once he had walked into the village with his mother
in his arms as other people carried the little children. It was the
Woman of the Twilight, and no one laughed. At any other woman they
would have laughed to see her carried in the arms of a man.
And so, when she stood on her terrace and spoke of the voice of the
Dawn and the Mountain Mists, all listened. The men talked of it in the
kivas of each clan, and the women talked all together, and were glad.
They did not know quite what their fear had been, but it was no longer
with them since the woman of the God Thoughts said the voices sang no
fear.
Only Yahn Tsyn-deh on the terrace opposite, strung together claws of
birds for a necklace, and scoffed warily.
"Only if you are mountain strong need you have no fear," she said.
"The promise that her son is maybe the Voice and the Dawn is a good
promise--but the wise woman of the hill caves is double wise! Her song
has double thoughts. Be you all mountain strong, as gods are strong,
and no fear will come! But if the mountain strength waits not at your
door--what then happens?"
No one knew, and the women looked at each other in question. The peace
of the wise woman's words was killed by the bitter laugh of Apache
Yahn.
When the bitter mood touched the girl, the Te-hua people remembered
that her mother was of that wild Apache people--enemy to all. At times
she could be a maid like other maids--with charm and laughter--a very
bewitching Yahn who made herself a beauty barbaric with strings of gay
berries of the rose, or flat girdles of feathers dyed like the
rainbow. Her bare arms had bracelets of little shells. Into the
weaving of her garments she had put threads of crimson in strange
patterns--they were often the symbols of the Apache gods or spirit
people, and when she chose she made the other women feel fear with
them. Her own mother who told her of them, would not have worn them
thus--but Yahn was more Apache than her mother.
One woman shelling corn for the meal, suggested that if the Te-hua
people had not mountain strength it might mean war as the people to
the South had endured that other time--when the men at Tiguex were
burned to ashes by the strangers.
"Oh, wise Säh-pah!" and Yahn laughed at the late thought,--"Has the
thing at last come to the mind of one of you?"
"I thought of it also," said one of the other women sulkily.
"Ai:--you all thought--but none of you dared say words while the new
Ruler and the wise governor kept silent to the people!" she taunted
them. "Of all the women I only can speak in the speech of the
strangers."
"Think you we will see them?" asked one girl doubtfully--"will we not
all be sent to the hills the days when they come?"
"In other villages they did so in that long ago day--some men never
let their women be seen of the white men who wore the iron."
"I will not be sent to the hills," decided Yahn. "From Ke-yemo and
from Tahn-té I know their words. I will talk for the strangers. I will
learn many things!"
"When was it you learn so much?" asked Säh-pah jealously.
"A little--little at a time all these years!" declared Yahn in
triumph. "Tahn-té wanted not to forget it--so he said to me the
words--now they are mine."
The women regarded her with a wonder that was almost awe,--there might
be something infernal and unlucky in talking two ways.
"If it be war, think you Ka-yemo will be the war chief as he has been
made?" queried Säh-pah. "He will be made second if there is
fighting,--think you not so?"
Yahn apparently did not think, but she did listen.
"We know how it was with his father Awh-we--" said one. "In that day
of trial he failed that once in the battle with the Yutah. The old
men let him pull weeds in the corn when the next war came."
The strong fingers of Yahn broke the bird's claw, and she tossed it
from the terrace edge, and selected another.
"But the new young wife Koh-pé may make the son of his father brave
for all that," and Säh-pah who was not young and not winsome, watched
Yahn, and felt content when she saw the Apache eyes grow narrow and
the teeth set. "A wife with many robes and many strings of shells and
blue stones, makes a man strong to fight for them. Ka-yemo will be a
strong man now."
"He is of my clan--Ka-yemo!" said Yahn panting with pent up fury, "he
can fight,--all of our blood can fight!--if the war is here we can
show you of the Panyoo clan how the Tain-tsain clan can fight with the
new enemy!"
They all knew that Yahn Tsyn-deh could indeed fight, she wore eagle
feathers and had a right to wear them since a season of the hunt on
the Navahu border when a young warrior had stolen her for his lodge,
and with his own club set with flint blades, had she let his spirit go
on the shadow trail, and to her own village had she brought the scalp
and the club, also his robe and beads of blue and of green stone--and
she made the other women remember it at times.
"Ho!--and will it be you who bears a spear and a shield and a club on
that day?" asked Säh-pah the skeptic.
"I fight that day--or any day, as strong as the fight any man of yours
can ever make!" This retort of Yahn was met with half frightened
giggles by the other women. Säh-pah had been unlucky in the matter of
men. Yet, her list of favorites had not been limited, and the sarcasm
of Yahn was understood.
"It is good there is some one brave to meet the strangers!" and the
smile of Säh-pah was not nice. "Maybe you go to ask for a man--maybe
it is why you learn their words--maybe the Tain-tsain clan will ask
for a white man for you!"
"When _I_ ask--I will not be made a laugh, and sent home with a
gift,"--and the other women squealed with shrill laughter and had
great joy over the quarrel. The eyes of Säh-pah blazed. She tried to
speak but her fury gave voice only in throaty growls, and an older
woman than all of them stepped between them in protest.
"To your own houses--all you who would fight!" she decided--"go fight
your own men if they send you away with gifts, but by my door I do not
want panthers who scream!"
Säh-pah sulkily obeyed, and Yahn laughed and continued her work.
"It is not good to laugh when the bad fortune comes to any one," said
the old woman, but Yahn refused to be subdued.
"It is true, mother--" she insisted--(all elderly women are mothers or
aunts to village folk)--"it is true. When the dance of the corn was
here and the women made choice of their favorites--it is well known
that Säh-pah did follow Phen-tza a long ways. He laughed at her." Yahn
herself laughed as she told it,--"he laughed and he asked why she
comes so far alone--and he gives her his blanket and goes away! That
is how he takes her for favorite that day!--he only laughs and let go
his blanket to Säh-pah!"
The old woman put up her hand that her laugh be not heard. The
humor of primitive people is not a delicate thing, and that the
blandishments of Säh-pah had been of no use--as was witness the
blanket!--had made many laugh around the night fires. Yet the old
"mother" thought it not good that quarrels should grow out of it.
"Is your heart so bright with happiness that you understand nothing of
the shame another woman may know, Yahn Tsyn-deh?"--she asked
seriously. "Säh-pah is of the free woman--and we are not of her clan
to make judgement."
"Speak no words to me of a bright heart!" said Yahn, and arose, and
went away. Across the roofs she went to the stairway of her dwelling,
where she had lived alone since the death of her mother. It was a good
room she entered, very white on the walls, and the floor white also,
with the works of her own fingers on the smoothness of it. In a niche
of the thick wall stood a bronze god, and a medicine bowl with
serrated edges, and a serpent winged and crowned painted in fine lines
to encircle it. On the wall was a deerskin of intricate ornamentation,
good and soft in the dressing, it was painted in many symbols of the
Apache gods and the prayer thoughts. From her mother Yahn had learned
them and had painted them in ceremonial colors. The great goddess of
the white shell things--and white flowers--and white clouds--was
there, and the sun god was also there, and the curve of the moon with
the germ of life in its heart. The morning star was there--and also
the symbol of the messengers from the gods. Circling all these sacred
things was the blue zig-zag of the sky lightening by which Those Above
send their decrees to earth children who know the signs, and at each
corner the symbols of the Spirit People were on guard.
[Illustration: THE PRAYER OF YAHN TSYN-DEH _Page 109_]
Säh-pah had said once that they might be devil things, and not god
things, and Yahn had watched her chance, and emptied a jar of dirty
water on her head for that, and no more women said things of the walls
of Yahn Tsyn-deh's house. But whether she deemed them holy or not
holy, she hung the necklace of birds' claws under the symbol of the
Goddess Stenaht-lihan, and then prostrated herself and lay in
silence.
After a long time she spoke.
"All this that the Apache blood be not lost in the flood of a shame!
All this that no Te-hua woman ever again sees that my heart has been
sick--all this that a double curse of--"
But in the midst of her words of whispered prayer speech failed
her--and tears choked her until she sobbed for breath. With all her
will she wished to curse some one whom all her woman's heart forbade
her harm!