went slinking, wolflike, between the trees, or rose like a wolf through
the earth and stole it from under your very foot. It doubled into black
lagoons to doze, and young snakes coiled on the lily-pads, so that when
the sun warmed them you could hear the shi-shisi-ss like a wind rising.
Also by night there would be greenish lights that followed the trails
for a while and went out suddenly in whistling noises. Now and then in
broad day the Swamp would fall asleep. There would be the plop of
turtles falling into the creek and the slither of alligators in the mud,
and all of a sudden not a ripple would start, and between the clacking
of one reed and another would come the soundless lift and stir of the
Swamp snoring. Then the hair on your neck would rise, and some man
caught walking alone in it would go screaming mad with fear.
"Six moons we had to stay in that place, for Scrag had hidden the herd
so cleverly that it was not until the week-old calves began to squeak
for their mothers that we found them. And from the time they were able
to run under their mother's bodies, One-Tusk and I kept watch and watch
to see that they did not break back to the Squidgy Islands. It was
necessary for Taku-Wakin's plan that they should go out on the other
side where there was good land between the Swamp and the Sea, not
claimed by the Kooskooski. We learned to eat grass that summer and
squushy reeds with no strength in them--did I say that all the
Grass-Eaters were pot-bellied? Also I had to reason with One-Tusk, who
had not loved a man, and found that the Swamp bored him. By this time,
too, Scrag knew what we were after; she covered her trail and crossed it
as many times as a rabbit. Then, just as we thought we had it, the wolf
water came and gnawed the trail in two.
"Taku-Wakin would come to me by the Black Lagoon and tell me how Opata
worked to make himself chief of the nine villages. He had his own and
Taku-Wakin's, for Taku had never dared to ask it back again, and the
chief of the Turtle clan was Opata's man.
"'He tells the people that my Stick will not talk to me any more. But
how can it talk, Arrumpa, when you have nothing to tell it?'
"'Patience,' I said. 'If we press the cows too hard they will break back
the way they have come, and that will be worse than waiting.'
"'And if I do not get them forward soon,' said Taku-Wakin, 'the people
will break back, and my father will be proved a fool. I am too little
for this thing, Grandfather,' he would say, leaning against my trunk,
and I would take him up and comfort him.
"As for Opata, I used to see him sometimes, dancing alone to increase
his magic power,--I speak but as the people of Taku-Wakin spoke,--and
once at the edge of the lagoon, catching snakes. Opata had made a noose
of hair at the end of a peeled switch, and he would snare them as they
darted like streaks through the water. I saw him cast away some that he
caught, and others he dropped into a wicker basket, one with a narrow
neck such as women used for water. How was I to guess what he wanted
with them? But the man smelled of mischief. It lay in the thick air like
the smell of the lagoons; by night you could hear it throbbing with the
drums that scared away the wandering lights from the nine villages.
"Scrag was beginning to get the cows together again; but by that time
the people had made up their minds to stay where they were. They built
themselves huts on platforms above the water and caught turtles in
the bayous.
"'Opata has called a Council,' Taku told me, 'to say that I must make my
Stick talk, or they will know me for a deceiver, a maker of short life
for them.'
"'Short life to him,' I said. 'In three nights or four, the Grass-Eaters
will be moving.'
"'And my people are fast in the mud,' said Taku-Wakin. 'I am a mud-head
myself to think a crooked rod could save them.' He took it from his
girdle warped by the wet and the warmth of his body. 'My heart is sick,
Arrumpa, and Opata makes them a better chief than I, for I have only
tried to find them their sea again. But Opata understands them. This is
a foolish tale that will never be finished.'
"He loosed the stick from his hand over the black water like a boy
skipping stones, but--this is a marvel--it turned as it flew and came
back to Taku-Wakin so that he had to take it in his hand or it would
have struck him. He stood looking at it astonished, while the moon came
up and made dart-shaped ripples of light behind the swimming snakes in
the black water. For he saw that if the Stick would not leave him,
neither could he forsake--Is this also known to you?" For he saw the
children smiling.
The Indian who leaned against Moke-icha's boulder drew a crooked stick,
shaped something like an elbow, from under his blanket. Twice he tossed
it lightly and twice it flew over the heads of the circle and back like
a homing pigeon as he lightly caught it.
"Boomerangs!" cried the children, delighted.
"We called it the Stick-which-kills-flying," said the Indian, and hid it
again under his blanket.
"Taku-Wakin thought it Magic Medicine," said the Mastodon. "It was a
Sign to him. Two or three times he threw the stick and always it came
back to him. He was very quiet, considering what it might mean, as I
took him back between the trees that stood knee-deep in the smelly
water. We saw the huts at last, built about in a circle and the sacred
fire winking in the middle. I remembered the time I had watched with
Taku under the Arch Rock.
"'Give me leave,' I said, 'to walk among the huts, and see what will come
of it.'
"Taku-Wakin slapped my trunk.
"'Now by the oath of my people, you shall walk,' he said. 'If the herds
begin to move, and if no hurt comes to anybody by it, you shall walk;
for as long as they are comfortable, even though the Rod should speak,
they would not listen.'
"The very next night Scrag began to move her cows out toward the hard
land, and when I had marked her trail for five man journeys, I came back
to look for Taku-Wakin. There was a great noise of singing a little back
from the huts at the Dancing-Place, and all the drums going, and the
smoke that drifted along the trails had the smell of a Big Eating. I
stole up in the dark till I could look over the heads of the villagers
squatted about the fire. Opata was making a speech to them. He was
working himself into a rage over the wickedness of Taku-Wakin. He would
strike the earth with his stone-headed spear as he talked, and the tribe
would yelp after him like wolves closing in on a buck. If the Talking
Stick which had led them there was not a liar, let it talk again and
show them the way to their sea. Let it talk! And at last, when they had
screeched themselves hoarse, they were quiet long enough to hear it.
"Little and young, Taku-Wakin looked, standing up with his Stick in his
hand, and the words coming slowly as if he waited for them to reach him
from far off. The Stick was no liar, he said; it was he who had lied to
them; he had let them think that this was his father's Stick. It was a
new stick much more powerful, as he would yet show them. And who was he
to make it talk when it would not? Yet it would talk soon...very
soon...he had heard it whispering... Let them not vex the Stick lest it
speak strange and unthought-of things...
"Oh, but he was well called 'The Wonderful.' I could see the heads of
the tribesmen lifting like wolves taking a new scent, and mothers
tighten their clutch on their children. Also I saw Opata. Him I watched,
for he smelt of mischief. His water-basket was beside him, and as the
people turned from baiting Taku-Wakin to believing him, I saw Opata push
the bottle secretly with his spear-butt. It rolled into the cleared
space toward Taku-Wakin, and the grass ball which stopped its mouth fell
out unnoticed. _But no water came out!_
"Many of the waters of the Swamp were bitter and caused sickness, so it
was no new thing for a man to have his own water-bottle at Council. But
why should he carry a stopped bottle and no water in it? Thus I watched,
while Taku-Wakin played for his life with the people's minds, and Opata
watched neither the people nor him, but the unstopped mouth of the
water-bottle.
"I looked where Opata looked, for I said to myself, from that point
comes the mischief, and looking I saw a streak of silver pour out of the
mouth of the bottle and coil and lift and make as a snake will for the
nearest shadow. It was the shadow of Taku-Wakin's bare legs. Then I knew
why Opata smelled of mischief when he had caught snakes in the lagoon.
But I was afraid to speak, for I saw that if Taku moved the snake would
strike, and there is no cure for the bite of the snake called
Silver Moccasin.
"Everybody's eyes were on the rod but mine and Opata's, and as I saw
Taku straighten to throw, I lifted my voice in the dark and trumpeted,
'Snake! Snake!' Taku leaped, but he knew my voice and he was not so
frightened as the rest of them, who began falling on their faces. Taku
leaped as the Silver Moccasin lifted to strike, and the stick as it flew
out of his hand, low down like a skimming bird, came back in a
circle--he must have practiced many times with it--and dropped the snake
with its back broken. The people put their hands over their mouths. They
had not seen the snake at all, but a stick that came back to the
thrower's hand was magic. They waited to see what Opata would do
about it.
"Opata stood up. He was a brave man, I think, for the Stick was Magic to
him, also, and yet he stood out against it. Black Magic he said it was,
and no wonder it had not led them out of the Swamp, since it was a false
stick and Taku-Wakin a Two-Talker. Taku-Wakin could no more lead them
out of the Swamp than his stick would leave him. Like it, they would be
thrown and come back to the hand of Taku-Wakin for his own purposes.
"He was a clever man, was Opata. He was a fine tall man, beaked like an
eagle, and as he moved about in the clear space by the fire, making a
pantomime of all he said, as their way is in speech-making, he began to
take hold on the minds of the people. Taku-Wakin watched sidewise; he
saw the snake writhing on the ground and the unstopped water-bottle with
the ground dry under it. I think he suspected. I saw a little ripple go
over his naked body as if a thought had struck him. He stepped aside
once, and as Opata came at him, threatening and accusing, he changed his
place again, ever so slightly. The people yelped as they thought they
saw Taku fall back before him. Opata was shaking his spear, and I began
to wonder if I had not waited too long to come to Taku-Wakin's rescue,
when suddenly Opata stopped still in his tracks and shuddered. He went
gray in the fire-light, and--he was a brave man who knew his death when
he had met it--from beside his foot he lifted up the broken-backed snake
on his spear-point. Even as he held it up for all of them to see, his
limbs began to jerk and stiffen.
"I went back to look for One-Tusk. The end of those who are bitten by
the moccasin is not pretty to see, and besides, I had business. One-Tusk
and I walked through all nine villages...and when we had come out on the
other side there were not two sticks of them laid together. Then the
people came and looked and were afraid, and Taku-Wakin came and made a
sound as when a man drops a ripe paw-paw on the ground. 'Pr-r-utt!' he
said, as though it were no more matter than that. 'Now we shall have the
less to carry.' But the mother of Taku-Wakin made a terrible outcry. In
the place where her hut had been she had found the Talking Stick of
Taku's father, trampled to splinters.
"She had had it all the time hidden in her bundle. Long-Hand had told
her it was Magic Medicine and she must never let any one have it. _She_
thought it was the only thing that had kept her and her children safe on
this journey. But Taku told them that it was his father's Rod which had
bewitched them and kept them from going any farther because it had come
to the end of its knowledge. Now they would be free to follow his own
Stick, which was so much wiser. So he caught their minds as he had
caught the Stick, swinging back from disaster. For this is the way with
men, if they have reason which suits them they do not care whether it is
reasonable or not. It was sufficient for them, one crooked stick being
broken, that they should rise up with a shout and follow another."
Arrumpa was silent so long that the children fidgeted.
"But it couldn't have been just as easy as that," Dorcas insisted. "And
what did they do when they got to the sea finally?"
"They complained of the fishy taste of everything," said Arrumpa; "also
they suffered on the way for lack of food, and Apunkéwis was eaten by an
alligator. Then they were afraid again when they came to the place
beyond the Swamp where the water went to and fro as the sea pushed it,
until some of the old men remembered they had heard it was the sea's
custom. Twice daily the water came in as if to feed on the marsh grass.
Great clouds of gulls flew inland, screaming down the wind, and across
the salt flats they had their first sight of the low, hard land.
"We lost them there, for we could not eat the salt grass, and Scrag had
turned north by a mud slough where the waters were bitter, and red moss
grew on the roots of the willows. We ate for a quarter of the moon's
course before we went back around the hard land to see what had become
of Taku-Wakin. We fed as far as there was any browse between the sea and
the marsh, and at last we saw them come, across the salt pastures. They
were sleek as otters with the black slime of the sloughs, and there was
not a garment left on them which had not become water-soaked and
useless. Some of the women had made slips of sea-birds' skins and nets
of marsh grass for carrying their young. It was only by these things
that you could tell that they were Man. They came out where the hard
land thinned to a tusk, thrust far out into the white froth and the
thunder. We saw them naked on the rocks, and then with a great shout
join hands as they ran all together down the naked sand to worship the
sea. But Taku-Wakin walked by himself..."
"And did you stay there with him?" asked Oliver when he saw by the stir
in the audience that the story was quite finished.
"We went back that winter--One-Tusk and I; in time they all went," said
Arrumpa. "It was too cold by the sea in winter. And the land changed.
Even in Taku-Wakin's time it changed greatly. The earth shook and the
water ran out of the marsh into the sea again, and there was hard ground
most of the way to Two Rivers. Every year the tribes used to go down by
it to gather sea food."
The Indians nodded.
"It was so in our time," they said. "There were great heaps of shells by
the sea where we came and dried fish and feasted."
"Shell Mounds," said Oliver. "I've heard of those, too. But I never
thought they had stories about them."
"There is a story about everything," said the Buffalo Chief; and by this
time the children were quite ready to believe him.
[Illustration]
V
HOW HOWKAWANDA AND FRIEND-AT-THE-BACK FOUND THE TRAIL TO THE BUFFALO
COUNTRY TOLD BY THE COYOTE
"Concerning that Talking Stick of Taku-Wa-kin's,"--said the Coyote, as
the company settled back after Arrumpa's story,--"there is a Telling of
_my_ people ... not of a Rod, but a Skin, a hide of thy people, Great
Chief,"--he bowed to the Bull Buffalo,--"that talked of Tamal-Pyweack
and a Dead Man's Journey--" The little beast stood with lifted paw and
nose delicately pointed toward the Bighorn's country as it lifted from
the prairie, drawing the earth after it in great folds, high crest
beyond high crest flung against the sun; light and color like the inside
of a shell playing in its snow-filled hollows.
Up sprang every Plainsman, painted shield dropped to the shoulder, right
hand lifted, palm outward, and straight as an arrow out of every throat,
the "Hey a-hey a-huh!" of the Indian salutation.
"Backbone of the World!" cried the Blackfoot. "Did you come over that,
Little Brother?"
"Not I, but my father's father's first father. By the Crooked Horn,"--he
indicated a peak like a buffalo horn, and a sag in the crest below it.
"Then that," said Bighorn, dropping with one bound from his aerial
lookout, "should be _my_ story, for my people made that trail, and it
was long before any other trod in it."
"It was of that first treading that the Skin talked," agreed the Coyote.
He looked about the company for permission to begin, and then addressed
himself to Arrumpa. "You spoke, Chief Two-Tails, of the 'tame wolves' of
Taku-Wakin; _were_ they wolves, or--"
"Very like you, Wolfling, now that I think of it," agreed the Mastodon,
"and they were not tame exactly; they ran at the heels of the hunters
for what they could pick up, and sometimes they drove up game for him."
"Why should a coyote, who is the least of all wolves, hunt for himself
when he can find a man to follow?" said the Blackfoot, who sat smoking a
great calumet out of the west corridor. "Man is the wolf's Medicine. In
him he hears the voice of the Great Mystery, and becomes a dog, which is
great gain to him."
Pleased as if his master had patted him, without any further
introduction the Coyote began his story.
"Thus and so thought the First Father of all the Dogs in the year when
he was called Friend-at-the-Back, and Pathfinder. That was the time
of the Great Hunger, nearly two years after he joined the man pack
at Hidden-under-the-Mountain and was still known by his lair name
of Younger Brother. He followed a youth who was the quickest
afoot and the readiest laugher. He would skulk about the camp at
Hidden-under-the-Mountain watching until the hunters went out. Sometimes
How-kawanda--that was the young man he followed--would give a coyote cry
of warning, and sometimes Younger Brother would trot off in the
direction where he knew the game to be, looking back and pointing until
the young men caught the idea; after which, when they had killed, the
hunters would laugh and throw him pieces of liver.
"The Country of Dry Washes lies between the Cinoave on the south and the
People of the Bow who possessed the Salmon Rivers, a great gray land cut
across by deep gullies where the wild waters come down from the
Wall-of-Shining-Rocks and worry the bone-white boulders. The People of
the Dry Washes live meanly, and are meanly spoken of by the People of
the Coast who drove them inland from the sea borders. After the Rains,
when the quick grass sprang up, vast herds of deer and pronghorn come
down from the mountains; and when there were no rains the people ate
lizards and roots. In the moon of the Frost-Touching-Mildly clouds came
up from the south with a great trampling of thunder, and flung out over
the Dry Washes as a man flings his blanket over a maiden. But if the
Rains were scant for two or three seasons, then there was Hunger, and
the dust devils took the mesas for their dancing-places.
"Now, Man tribe and Wolf tribe are alike in one thing. When there is
scarcity the packs increase to make surer of bringing down the quarry,
but when the pinch begins they hunt scattering and avoid one another.
That was how it happened that the First Father, who was still called
Younger Brother, was alone with Howkawanda when he was thrown by a buck
at Talking Water in the moon of the Frost-Touching-Mildly. Howkawanda
had caught the buck by the antlers in a blind gully at the foot of the
Tamal-Pyweack, trying for the throw back and to the left which drops a
buck running, with his neck broken. But his feet slipped on the grass
which grows sleek with dryness, and by the time the First Father came up
the buck had him down, scoring the ground on either side of the man's
body with his sharp antlers, lifting and trampling. Younger Brother
leaped at the throat. The toss of the antlers to meet the stroke drew
the man up standing. Throwing his whole weight to the right he drove
home with his hunting-knife and the buck toppled and fell as a tree
falls of its own weight in windless weather.
"'Now, for this,' said Howkawanda to my First Father, when they had
breathed a little, 'you are become my very brother.' Then he marked the
coyote with the blood of his own hurts, as the custom is when men are
not born of one mother, and Younger Brother, who had never been touched
by a man, trembled. That night, though it made the hair on his neck rise
with strangeness, he went into the hut of Howkawanda at
Hidden-under-the-Mountain and the villagers wagged their heads over it.
'Hunger must be hard on our trail,' they said, 'when the wolves come to
house with us.'
"But Howkawanda only laughed, for that year he had found a maiden who
was more than meat to him. He made a flute of four notes which he would
play, lying out in the long grass, over and over, until she came out to
him. Then they would talk, or the maiden would pull grass and pile it in
little heaps while Howkawanda looked at her and the First Father looked
at his master, and none of them cared where the Rains were.
"But when no rain fell at all, the camp was moved far up the shrunken
creek, and Younger Brother learned to catch grasshoppers, and ate
juniper berries, while the men sat about the fire hugging their lean
bellies and talking of Dead Man's Journey. This they would do whenever
there was a Hunger in the Country of the Dry Washes, and when they were
fed they forgot it."
The Coyote interrupted his own story long enough to explain that though
there were no buffaloes in the Country of the Dry Washes, on the other
side of the Wall-of-Shining-Rocks the land was black with them. "Now and
then stray herds broke through by passes far to the north in the Land of
the Salmon Rivers, but the people of that country would not let
Howkawanda's people hunt them. Every year, when they went up by tribes
and villages to the Tamal-Pyweack to gather pine nuts, the People of the
Dry Washes looked for a possible trail through the Wall to the Buffalo
Country. There was such a trail. Once a man of strange dress and speech
had found his way over it, but he was already starved when they picked
him up at the place called Trap-of-the-Winds, and died before he could
tell anything. The most that was known of this trail at
Hidden-under-the-Mountain was that it led through Knife-Cut Cañon; but
at the Wind Trap they lost it.
"I have heard of that trail, 'said the First Father of all the Dogs to
Howkawanda, one day, when they had hunted too far for returning and
spent the night under a juniper: 'a place where the wind tramples
between the mountains like a trapped beast. But there is a trail beyond
it. I have not walked in it. All my people went that way at the
beginning of the Hunger.'
"'For your people there may be a way,' said Howkawanda, 'but for
mine--they are all dead who have looked for it. Nevertheless, Younger
Brother, if we be not dead men ourselves when this Hunger is past, you
and I will go on this Dead Man's Journey. Just now we have other
business.'
"It is the law of the Hunger that the strongest must be fed first, so
that there shall always be one strong enough to hunt for the others. But
Howkawanda gave the greater part of his portion to his maiden.
"So it happened that sickness laid hold on Howkawanda between two days.
In the morning he called to Younger Brother. 'Lie outside,' he said,
'lest the sickness take you also, but come to me every day with your
kill, and let no man prevent you.'
"So Younger Brother, who was able to live on juniper berries, hunted
alone for the camp of Hidden-under-the-Mountain, and Howkawanda held
back Death with one hand and gripped the heart of the First Father of
all the Dogs with the other. For he was afraid that if he died, Younger
Brother would turn wolf again, and the tribe would perish. Every day he
would divide what Younger Brother brought in, and after the villagers
were gone he would inquire anxiously and say, 'Do you smell the Rain,
Friend and Brother?'
"But at last he was too weak for asking, and then quite suddenly his
voice was changed and he said, 'I smell the Rain, Little Brother!' For
in those days men could smell weather quite as well as the other
animals. But the dust of his own running was in Younger Brother's nose,
and he thought that his master's mind wandered. The sick man counted on
his fingers. 'In three days,' he said, 'if the Rains come, the back of
the Hunger is broken. Therefore I will not die for three days. Go, hunt,
Friend and Brother.'
"The sickness must have sharpened Howkawanda's senses, for the next day
the coyote brought him word that the water had come back in the gully
where they threw the buck, which was a sign that rain was falling
somewhere on the high ridges. And the next day he brought word, 'The
tent of the sky is building.' This was the tentlike cloud that would
stretch from peak to peak of the Tamal-Pyweack at the beginning of the
Rainy Season.