PROPERTY
The sky hung grey, with wisps of cloud. It vaulted a valley, and was
propped by hills, long as billows of the open main. In part the hills
stood wooded, in part they wore a robe of grass and stunted bush. The
valley had a grassy floor, like a miniature plain. It spread jade-green
beneath that sky. Far off soared, darkly purple, one mountain peak.
The huts, round in shape and fairly spacious, were built of upright
stakes with an interweaving of wattled reeds. Close at hand huddled
sheds and enclosures for flock and herd, and all stood together by the
strand of a silver stream. Flock and herd, watched by herdsmen, wandered
through the valley or drank at the stream. Near the huts boys were
fishing, standing mid-leg in the running water. Seated among pebble and
boulder a row of old men watched and with thin voices mocked or
encouraged.
Evening drew on and the herdsmen brought the sheep and cattle to the
folds. A woman came out of the largest hut, a strong woman with dark-red
hair. Hand over eyes, her gaze swept the northern and western horizon.
Bare hill met grey sky. She spoke to the herdsmen. They hearkened to her
and answered, leaning on their staves. Said one, “We heard nothing and
saw nothing at the other end where we were.” Another spoke in a surly
voice, “If I were a war-man again and out of this valley, I would not
come back!” A third said, “You might see, O Marzumat, from the top of
the hill--” The woman nodded and turned away. She called to a boy and a
girl at play near the folds, and they ran to her and walked with her.
Near the huts rose a hill, bare to the top, hard in this light as a
mountain of jade. The woman and her children climbed it. At the top a
wind blew, a swirling, melancholy wind. She looked again from this
height, to the north and west. Nothing broke the earth-line, nothing
came. The children, too, stared from point to point. The wind blew their
hair into their eyes, whipped their bare limbs. They jumped up and down
for warmth. “The dark is coming,” said the woman. “Not Saran and the
others!”
Said the boy: “Let us go have supper! Bhuto is going to sing to us of
how Bin-Bin killed the giantess!”
They went down the hillside. The boy and girl capered and danced upon
the path. “Saran will bring me a bow and arrows and a dance-necklace!”
cried the first; and “Saran will bring me a dance-necklace and an
earring!” answered the second. They turned upon the red-haired woman.
“What else will he bring, Mother?”
“Sheep and cattle and men to keep them, spears and shields and pieces of
copper, grain and skins, and ornaments to wear.”
The boy danced and capered. “I am going to grow big! I am going to be
war-head like Saran my father! I am going to fight other-people! I am
going to bring home every kind of thing!”
They came to the level of huts, folds, and whispering stream. Earth and
air that had been grey and green were now grey and purple. Fires burned
in the larger huts, and the smoke, puffing out of the hole in the
thatch, drifted and eddied. A smell of seething flesh wrapped the
place. In pots of baked clay women were cooking the meat of sheep and
goats.
Young, and in prime, and old, there were many women. Within wall and
without wall showed the signs of their industries. They were weavers and
made from the hair of the flocks a texture that to an extent took the
place of the immemorial garments of beast-skins or of woven grass. They
were potters, and they skilfully constructed baskets, great and small.
Tanners, their tannery told where it was situated, a little down the
stream. Living now upon creatures which they had corralled and mastered,
the group, women and men, were mastered by the mastered and become
wanderers and pasture-seekers. When this valley showed eaten up and
small for the herds, another would be sought. Therefore there was little
planting about the reed huts. But what farming and gardening was
practised belonged, of old times, to women, and theirs were the stone
mills for the bruising and grinding of grain. The indoor gear was
counted theirs, and the rule of the house. Women and men, the group
reckoned descent and took name from the side of the mother.
The woman who had climbed the hill was a chief woman. There were old
women, wrinkled and wise, as there were old men, who sat by the fire or
in the sun and were listened to and in much obeyed. But this woman,
through native energy and also because she was paired with the strongest
man, had achieved authority before she was old. The valley called her
Marzumat.
Marzumat had few idle bones in her body. When now she went indoors, into
the largest of the huts, she came to the hearth, she helped with the
pots of meat. One great pot, steaming like a fire-mountain, must be
lifted from the place of mightiest heat. With a rude handle, unwieldy
and heated, it presented a weight for strong arms. Marzumat lifted it,
swung it clear from the flame, and set it upon the unreddened hearth.
With two or three of her fellows she took meal, mixed it with milk and
water, made cakes, and, kneeling, baked them upon slabs of stone sunk in
coals. Those around her talked; the place was filled with voices.
Marzumat could speak on occasion, but to-night she was silent, her mind
following Saran and the war-men.
The formless dark came down. Women lighted the torches of resinous wood,
and women brought and filled from the huger pots bowls of fire-dried
clay and trough-like trenchers of wood, and a woman, standing in the
doorway, blew the summoning ram’s horn. All--women, old men and children
and the herdsmen--ate together, in this greatest hut where the mess had
been cooked, or just without, seated on the ground, in the light of the
torches. Noticeably, there lacked young men and men in their prime.
Among the herdsmen sat young men and middle-aged men. But certain of
these were simple of look or in some way weak or maimed, and others had
copper rings about their necks. That meant that the ring-wearers did not
belong by nature to the group, but had been seized from some other
group. No longer were they hunters or war-men. They were tamed to
keeping the flocks and herds of the captors, companions to the weaker
and duller of the captors’ own group. The intractable were killed, as
were the too weak or dull. Class and caste were in the world.
The fire and the torches threw a smoky and uneven light. The sky hung
black and low, a roof of cloud. The stream murmured over pebbles. It was
the lambing season, and from the folds rose a continuous low noise,
from the ewes and their young. In the circle of fire and torchlight
shadows were thrown against the walls. The shadows rose and fell; now
they were dwarfs and now they were giants and now they were something in
between. The shadows were chiefly those of women. Women forms passed
from darkness into light, from light into darkness, from darkness again
into light. Marzumat was seated now and the fire-shine struck her brow
and breast and knee. Behind her, on the wall, spread and towered her
shadow.
Supper eaten, occurred a lingering, for the night was cold and the fire
was warm. The smaller children went away, to creep under sheep-skins and
fall asleep; the babes were hushed already, except a sick one that
wailed in a hut a stone-cast away. A fire burned in the hut, and a woman
passed to and fro before it, the babe in her arms. Certain herdsmen went
to the folds and pens, others sat still about the fire in the open air.
The older children, the old men, the many women remained in the zone of
warmth and light. Talk was chiefly of the war-band that had gone forth
against other-people dwelling by the purple mountain. Valley people and
mountain people each had eyes for an intermediate rolling and verdant,
desirable pasturage. Mountain war-men had struck a valley herd that had
put hoof into this region, taking the beasts and killing the herdsmen.
Now there was to be retaliation, and all the strong men had gone forth
to retaliate and something beyond. Not in the memory of the valley
people had there been such a Punitive Expedition!
Marzumat’s children, the girl and the boy, hung around a man with
pale-blue eyes and a hawk nose and beard and hair as white as the fleece
of a lamb. “Bhuto, Bhuto! Sing us about how we used to do!”
Bhuto sang out of the history of the group. In part he knew and in part
he made up. He fixed his eyes upon the night beyond the fire, he marked
time with a large foot and a veinous hand. He had a sonorous voice, a
capacious memory, and a seeing eye. To-night the strain, the
wishing-to-know felt throughout the cluster, was apprehended by him more
clearly than by most. So his voice deepened, his words rang, the acts he
narrated seemed neither far off nor obscure. Presently the whole cluster
was listening. Bhuto chanted of long-since raids and war-bands.
The boy and girl sat beside his knees. Bhuto came to a traditional
pause. Part one of the ballad was done.
The girl spoke. “Bhuto, why are there no war-women? Why do not women go
with war-bands and fight other-people?”
“Once they did,” answered Bhuto. “That was long ago.”
“Why did they stop?”
“It was seen that peoples died--not here a man and here a woman--but
peoples.”
“How did they die?”
“They were not born. So it was seen that women must not be killed and
killed. So the women and men held a great council, and after that there
were war-men, but not war-women.”
“But Bin-Bin killed the giantess--”
“Yes. Every people had a giantess who would not stay at home. The one
Bin-Bin killed was a war-head. She was tall as a tree and she could run
like a deer and see at night like an owl, and when she shouted the wood
shook! But Bin-Bin killed her. Now women all stay with the houses and
the flocks and herds. If other-people come here and make fight, they
will fight. But they do not make war-bands. Men do that. Men have bows
and arrows and shields and spears.”
The girl fell silent, sitting with her chin upon her knees. Bhuto began
to chant the second half of the ballad.
A great distance away, as these people counted distance, behind the
curtain of hills, at the foot of the mountain peak, the cloud-roofed day
and evening had gone after another fashion. It had gone with struggle,
fury, jubilation, terror, death, and subjection.
The war-band from the valley numbered a hundred men. The group upon
which they fell in the hour before dawn fought back, men and women. But
it was taken by surprise and bewildered, and many could not reach their
weapons, and many were pierced with spears almost before they rose from
sleep. The hundred wrought havoc, slew and bound. When the east showed
purple, resistance lay dead, or glared, with tied hands, from a space
into which, naked, it had been driven like a beast. The old men, the old
women, the young children, were put to death. Many strong men and women
lay slain. Resistance, raging, biting at its bonds, came to be the
resistance of not more than the hundred could handle as captives. They
set the huts afire, but not before there was gathered from them spoil
and booty. This group had possessed flocks and herds. Flocks and herds
were taken for riches for the group in the valley. The valley men had
never before had so complete a victory. This was different from mere
raids against herds or herdsmen, or chance contests upon plain or hill,
away from the houses, away from the heaped goods!
The attackers sat down and ate and drank and rested from labour in the
light of the burning huts, under the shadow of the purple mountain. They
rejoiced when they looked at the heap of spoil, and at the sheep and the
cattle and the human dead and the captives.
The leader of the hundred was a strong man, tall and ruddy, with the
seeming of one who would march in front. In other lives, before war
between human beings had well developed, he would have been a leader of
the chase, a mighty hunter of the four-footed, a chief in expeditions,
explorations. Now he was war-head.
He and all the other men from the valley rested through a smoky, a
fire-filled night. When the day came they prepared their leave-taking.
Yet another distance away dwelled another group, that, seeing a glow in
the night, might send _their_ war-men in strength. War was an endless
chain, though these minds were not advanced enough to find that out.
Back among the huts in the valley the night passed, the day following
passed, another night passed. The cloud-roof sank to the horizon, the
sky above sprang high and clear. Dawn arose with purple figures in the
east that looked like girdles and necklaces of tinted shells and
pebbles. Dawn in the north and west showed a cool pallor, a blank wall
behind the long hills.
The women came singly or in clusters from the huts, the herdsmen from
where they had slept apart in a structure built against the sheep-fold,
the older children with the women. All looked to the north and west, as
they had done many times since the hundred went out. Now they were
rewarded--now they saw the war-men coming back!
They saw them upon the top of a bare hill, drawn against the pale wall,
and following them captives, and sheep and goats and cattle and asses,
and these last heaped and burdened with the lighter spoil. The people of
the huts shouted, leaped in the air, clapped their hands together.
“Marzumat! They are coming!”
“Bina! They are coming!”
“Ito! They are coming!”
The war-men had with them horns, a rude drum and cymbals. Faint clangour
and blaring fell from the hill-top to the huts by the stream. The frieze
showed black against the pale wall, then the east brightened and gave it
colour. The line bent, came down over the shoulder of the hill. The
horns blew, the cymbals clanged, the drum beat louder and louder. In the
huts were yet a drum, cymbals fashioned of copper, ox-horns. The women
snatched these--all who could run and hasten poured from the huts by the
stream, hurried with cries and music of welcome over the valley floor.
They went with a dancing step, and Marzumat at the head lifted the
cymbals and clanged them together. The two bands met by the stream,
where the mist was slowly lifting.
The war-head’s name was Saran. He and Marzumat met first. “Hail, Saran!
Hail, Saran!” she cried with laughter and jubilee. “Hail, Marzumat!” he
answered, and shook his copper-pointed spear and struck it against his
shield of plaited osier bound with leopard-skin.
All met with acclaim, shouting out triumph and welcome. The older
children took part. The native-born herdsmen joined in. Those herdsmen
who were born on the farther side of a mountain or a river made slighter
welcome. But of these some had been taken young and hardly remembered
their own people, and some had been broken in, or, indifferent, took
luck as they found it. Besides, the group against which the war-men had
gone was not their group, and that being so, was outside their range of
sympathies. So the herdsmen, too, shouted.
Of the war-men who had gone forth, seven or eight made no returning. For
these the valley, when it had caught breath, burst into ceremonial
mourning. Out of the mass sound emerged a sharper crying, a wailing of
those most fond of the slain men, mourning that persisted when the other
ceased. The other ceased because, death to the contrary, here was so
much victory and spoil! Jubilation remounted. In the background rose the
lowing and bleating of the captured herds. There was a great, swarming
noise, and movement to and fro.
The first welcome gone by, there came into fuller notice the fruits of
the raid, the greatest in the memory of the group. Those who had stayed
by the huts saw the new flocks and herds, and that possessions would be
increased. There would be need of a larger valley, of a plain! Hearts
swelled with self-acclaim. The confused bleating and lowing was sweet as
flutes and pipes in their ears.
There was pushed forward one part of the human spoil. The war-men
exhibited the other-men whom they had taken. New herds would have new
herdsmen. Trees that must be hacked down, drudging work that must be
done, would not take war-men’s valuable time! Moreover, there was now
experienced, and would be further experienced, a dark pleasure in
authority, in power exercised over another. So long had human beings had
power over beasts that exhilaration was passing from that situation.
Authority there had lost its first lusciousness. Once it had had that
taste. But with the taking of beings formed like themselves zest had
come back to the palate.
The valley group was accustomed to such captives. It was among accepted
things that bands of men, roving afar, meeting other bands of men,
should capture, when they did not kill, and keep the captured for use.
That was old story, old song. The women, the old men, and the striplings
made loud admiration over these riches also, and the evidenced prowess
of valley men. The swarm worked again and there came into the foreground
the before-time obscured, other row of captives.
Silence fell among the valley people, astonishment upon those who had
stayed, upon those who had gone, embarrassment. Marzumat was the first
to speak. “_Women_--”
Saran answered with a wave of his arm. “Women we took and brought to you
women. We take men to work for us and save us trouble. Now you shall
have women to work for you and do as you tell them. Why not?” He spread
his arms. “We took them for you, O women,--a gift!”
The throng worked. Insensibly, the women of the group drew together,
leaving each woman the side of some man. They became compact, unitary,
the woman with the dark-red hair in front. Presently the women of the
valley were massed here, the men there. Between stood or lay, fallen
upon the ground, the captive women. They were twelve in number.
Marzumat spoke. “Never, O Saran,--never, men of the valley, never, O
women, was there heard of such a thing! You have committed evil! Mao-Tan
will say to In-Tan, ‘Let us smite them!’”
Her voice rose loudly, her arms were spread to the skies. Behind her the
serried women echoed assent. The war-men moved a little, to and fro.
“Talk for us, O Saran!”
Marzumat’s voice went on. “Men may take other men. If women, fighting
side by side with war-men are killed, they are killed. Mao-Tan says, ‘It
cannot be helped.’ But men may not take women and bind them and say to
them, ‘Come!’ or ‘Go!’ Mao-Tan!--Mao-Tan!”
Saran faced Marzumat. He threw out his hands. “We took trouble, O
Marzumat! We set up a stone and burned food upon it, and poured drink
for Mao-Tan. We danced and sang before her. Then we did the same for
In-Tan. In-Tan will keep Mao-Tan from being angry. Otherwise she might
be angry for a while! But we saw In-Tan sitting like an eagle upon a
tree and heard him talking like the wind. He said, O Marzumat, that
valley people were his people, and that Mao-Tan was not angry!”
The war-men made a deep, corroborating sound. They had seen the eagle
and heard the whistling and searching noise, and Saran’s imagination
leading, they had divined the words. A black-bearded man, next to Saran
in moral weight, gave articulate testimony. “O women of the valley!
In-Tan said that Mao-Tan and he held in hatred other-people, and cared
not what befell them, whether they were women or whether they were men!”
Saran continued. “We take men to work for us; why should you not have
women to work for you and do as you tell them? They are not our men.
They are not our women. Other-group-men, other-group-women! Old Bhuto
says that, long-time-ago, it was a new thing to make other-men work for
us and be our herdsmen. At first, Bhuto says, we had men who did not
like that. But soon they felt like the rest of us.--We thought, O
Marzumat, that we would please you! O women of the valley! they can
carry water for you and grind the corn. It is pleasant to rest while
another works! Many things are right when they are other-people. They
will call you ‘mistress’ and do as you tell them--”
The body of the valley women seemed slightly to sway. Two or three
voices were lifted. “Let us take them! Let us keep them! There grows so
much work to do!” The women and the war-men seemed to slant toward each
other.
The black-bearded man spoke again in a loud and cheerful voice. “They
are riches, O women! It is pleasant to be saved weariness. It is sweeter
than honey and like the wearing of ornaments to sit and see other-people
do what we bid! Now men have the most ornaments and rest longer under
the trees!”
A woman burst into laughter. “Mao-Tan knows that that is so!”
But Marzumat spoke again. “Men take other-men. But women have not taken
other-women. Now, to-day, shall men lay hands upon women and cry, ‘Our
prize and our riches’?”
“If we took them, O Marzumat, O women, did we not take them for you? It
is your bidding that they will do! They are your prize and your riches!
Take them now, and is it not as if you had taken them yonder”--he
gestured with his spear toward the purple mountain--“taken them yonder
yourselves, and brought them to the valley?”
“What you say is true, O Saran!”
The women behind her echoed, “It is true.” If, then, it was true, and if
Mao-Tan was not jealous for women?... Ornaments were desirable, and ease
from work was desirable--riches were desirable--and power--power more
than anything was desirable!... The soul of Marzumat inclined toward
service from those other-women.
“They are a gift!” said Saran. “If Mao-Tan is not angry, why should
Marzumat be so?”
Why indeed? Marzumat lifted her hands. “I do not know.--Where are the
children of these women?”
“Not all had children.--These people are other-group people. In-Tan does
not care for them--Mao-Tan does not care for them! The women are yours.
We only took them for you.”
The day was bright and sunny, the valley a cheerful green. The men were
back from danger with victory. The valley had new wealth; every one
wanted to be rejoicing, to be counting the goods.... The twelve
other-group women, young women and women in their prime, stood or
crouched, sullen and vengeful in their bonds. Only one spoke. “May our
gods slay your gods! May our gods kill and devour your children! Vile,
vile,--you are vile and your gods are vile!”
Anger broke against her, anger of women and of men. She had cried out
loudly. Moving as she did out of the cluster of her fellows, she had
come to face Marzumat and the children of Marzumat. Her arms being bound
she could not gesture with hand or finger. But she jerked her head, and
her eyes burned toward those she fronted. “Mo-Tal hear me!” she cried.
“Slay their gods and them! Mo-Tal! Mo-Tal! Slay their children!”
Marzumat grew all red. Her brows drew together, a vein in her forehead
swelled, her nostrils widened, her teeth were uncovered, and her
dark-red hair appeared to bristle. She stood for a moment tense and
still, then, moving forward, she struck the mountain woman a blow that
brought her to the earth. “Mao-Tan turn your talk upon yourself!”
The valley women behind her laughed with anger, and also now with
willingness to triumph. “Their gods are not strong like our gods! They
can do naught!--Let us keep them and make them work!”
“Agreed!” said Marzumat, the red yet in her face and the vein showing in
her forehead.
* * * * *
The lambing season, the spring season, the season of fresh green and of
birds that sang from every flowering bush passed into a summer hot and
dry. The stream shrank to a silver thread, the flocks found but parched
herbage. Sometimes clouds came up, but they never overspread the blue
vault. They rolled away, and the earth again lay bare beneath the sun.
The sun bleached the huts, turned brown the growth upon the hillsides,
and the standing trees. The herdsmen went afar with the bands of the
four-footed. The bondwomen carried water over the wide, pebbled stretch
from which the stream had gone, or kneeling before hollowed stones, beat
and ground the corn into meal. The weather made a fever in the blood. It
was weather in which effect followed like a hound at the heels of cause.
A woman stood in the doorway of one of the huts. She looked at the
grinding women, but looked somewhat absently. It was not a novelty
now--other-group women grinding the valley corn! Presently, however, she
remarked an absence. “Where is Gilhumat?”
A woman looked up from the grinding, shaking elf-locks from her eyes.
“Endar, the black-bearded, shot an arrow at a great bird. The bird fell
over the hill-top. Endar bade Gilhumat stop her grinding and go find the
bird.”
The woman in the doorway turned her head over her shoulder. “Marzumat,
come hither!”
Marzumat came out of the dusk. “Endar,” said the first woman, “shot a
bird and it fell over the hill-top. Endar bade Gilhumat stop her
grinding and go find the bird!”
“Where is Endar?”
“Lying under the tree yonder.--There is Gilhumat now!”
They watched Gilhumat coming down the hillside. She bore upon her
shoulders a large bird, its plumage showing copper hues in the sun.
Marzumat looked at her with her brows knitted, her lips parted. Gilhumat
approached the level ground, came upon it, and to the tree under which
Endar had stretched his length. She lowered the bird from her shoulder
and it lay motionless beside the war-man. Gilhumat returned to her
grinding.
The woman with the dark-red hair breathed quickly. Leaving the doorway
she moved through the beating sun to the tree where lay Endar. “Endar!”
Endar sat up. “What is it, O Marzumat?”
“When did it begin with valley people that a man, killing meat, can send
a woman to bring in that bird or beast? I ask you when, Blackbeard?”
Blackbeard scratched his head. “I was asleep, O Marzumat!--It was not a
freewoman, but a bondwoman.”
“Bondwomen are ours, not yours!--O Mao-Tan! a woman to be bidden by a
man to do his work and save him trouble! The sky will fall! If it falls
or not, O Endar, do that again and valley women will deal with you!”
Saran appeared beside them. “She is angry,” explained Endar, “because I
bade one of those mountain women do a small thing! War-men may bring
the meat, but they must not put hand in the pot!”
The outer corners of his eyes moved up, his white teeth flashed, he
laughed and stretched his arms. The huge muscles showed.
Marzumat’s eyes narrowed. “My heart will not be heavy,” she said, “when
Mao-Tan gives Endar to the beasts to eat!”
Endar’s laughter stopped. He put up his arm and with the fingers of the
other hand made a sign in the air. “Do not wish evil upon me! In-Tan
hear me say it! I will bring the next bird myself!”
The tree under which he lay edged a grove that stretched toward the
stream. Marzumat went away into this and Saran moved with her.
“What harm,” said the latter, “if Gilhumat brought the bird that Endar
shot? Endar is next to me in the valley.”
His tone was sullen. Marzumat stood still. They were in the heart of the
grove, out of earshot unless they raised their voices loudly. The people
of the valley had hardly as yet developed restraint in quarrel. But
something in this man and woman kept them from shouting each at the
other, made them prefer the space of trees to the trodden earth by the
huts.
“Ah--ah!” said Marzumat. “You have not set Gilhumat, that is bondwoman
to women, to do your work.--But you have followed Maihoma when she was
sent at twilight to draw water!”
Saran’s eyes, too, narrowed. “Is a great war-man not to speak to spoil
that he brings?”
“‘Spoil’! O Mao--Tan! I wish that you had never brought that ‘spoil’!”
“We brought it. You took it.”
“You speak the truth!--Mao-Tan, Mao-Tan! I wish that the spoil was back
in the mountain!”
“Will you, O Marzumat, send it back?”
Marzumat stood with parted lips. Moments went by, leaves dropped in the
grove, a bird flew overhead. Through an opening between the trees showed
the huts and in the burning sun the bondwomen grinding at the mills....
The woman who, the first day, had called upon her own god to smite the
valley people and their children was seen grinding.... “They are
useful,” said Marzumat. “But men are not to bid them work. And men are
not, O Saran, to follow them in the twilight when they go to draw
water!”
Saran’s tanned face paled which was Saran’s way of showing anger. “How
will you help that, red-haired one? You have strong arms. But will you
bind our arms--mine and Endar’s? Will the valley women bind the
war-men’s arms--set them to keeping sheep, away from the huts and the
spoil?”
Red flowed over Marzumat’s face and throat and breast. “It is in my mind
that we might bind many of you!”
“Not so many that the rest could not loose!” Saran stretched out his
arm, regarded the play of muscle. “And we have the spears, the shields,
the bows and arrows! Men are stronger to fight than women. As for
Mao-Tan--Mao-Tan is very strong, but so is In-Tan. In-Tan has grown as
strong as Mao-Tan.”
Out of the blue had come a flash and thunder, a shock unimaged before.
Each stared at the other, each pale, each breathing short. Marzumat
broke the silence. “What talk is this? The Ji-Ji, the ill spirits, have
taken this place!... And all the same, I warn you, O Saran, not to
follow Maihoma by twilight or by sunlight!”
With that she burst from the grove, and went over the shadeless earth,
past the succession of huts, to the place where the bondwomen were
grinding the corn. She spoke to a woman grinding. “You are bondwoman to
women, not to men! Why, then, did you hearken to Endar when he called
you, or go bring the bird he had shot?”
Gilhumat shook her hair back from her face, straightened her body from
the grinding. “Why?... All of you are other-people, hated by Mo-Tal!
Bring for Endar?--grind for Marzumat? Where is the difference to
Gilhumat?” Her features twitched. “I had rather bring for men than grind
for women! Women--women who bind their own hands and eat their own
flesh! To do Endar’s bidding?--to do Marzumat’s bidding? Mo-Tal hear me,
it hurts less to do the first!”
Marzumat made as if to strike her. “Do that also,” said Gilhumat. “Then
weep when evil comes!”
The other withdrew her hand. “I will not strike you for your words,
Gilhumat! But if you turn again from the task we set to a task a man
sets, I will strike you many times! And what I say to Gilhumat I say to
every grinding woman!”
“Say on,” said Gilhumat; and with her handstone crushed the grains of
corn spread upon the hollowed surface.
That overheated day went by, another day, other days, and all were
heated, with clouds that puffed up from the horizon, deceived and went
away, leaving the earth unclad and the sun a fire. A number of valley
women, working in the morning in a bean-field, observed a war-man of no
great account take a basket of fish from his own shoulders and put it
upon those of a bondwoman. That same day Gilhumat was seen to answer
Endar’s crooked finger and, leaving her grinding, carry for him the
bundle of osiers for mending broken shields. This was told to Marzumat,
who gave Gilhumat the promised blows. But that did not turn away the
Ji-Ji from the place! She left the punished woman, foaming at her from
the ground, and as she entered the great hut saw in the dusk, in the
distance, Saran with Maihoma.
That night there broke a great thunderstorm. The Ji-Ji might be praised
for bringing rain and coolness, but blamed for the most frightening
noises and a sky of white fire! For the night the valley group forgot
differences within itself and huddled together in mind as huddled the
bodies of the sheep in the folds. All to be thought of was the Ji-Ji,
and if the upper spirits would hold back the Ji-Ji from all lengths. The
Ji-Ji struck down trees and smote one of the cattle pens. The Ji-Ji
threw hugely long, crooked spears of white fire and uttered noises that
made women and men and children stop eyes and ears. Then at dawn the
Ji-Ji went away.
They left the air cool and bright. Old times seemed to come back to the
valley, though new times could not be wholly killed either. Old times
thought to-day that new times might be held in bounds.
Copper was wanted by the war-men for spear-heads. Copper was dug out of
the hills to the south. Half of the war-men went on an expedition to get
copper. They were gone a week. Those who stayed at home seemed in a
quiet mood, in what, later in time, might be called a spiritual mood.
Back of the grove stood a large, rude, booth-like structure
appropriated by valley men to their sole use. Here they kept ritual
costumes and here they feathered arrows, and adorned with red and black
pigments quiver and shield, and did other work purely pertaining to
great hunters whether of beast or man. The men who did not go for copper
resorted to this place, returning to the centre at mealtime. Day after
day they kept the good mood. The women heard that they were working upon
an image of In-Tan. That seemed a good thing to do!
The herdsmen went afar with the flocks, the bondwomen did as they were
bid to do, ground the corn and carried the water. Certain of them, like
certain of the herdsmen, ceased to make protest outward or inward.
Gilhumat said nothing, but kneeling, crushed the grains beneath her
handstone. Maihoma carried water from the stream to the huts. She moved
slowly, with a body stiff and sore, for Marzumat, the chief woman, had
beaten her terribly, as she had beaten Gilhumat. The valley women went
about their manifold business, pursued vocation and avocation with a
feeling of serenity.
The war-men came back, laden with copper. At the same time came again
the heated weather. It seemed also that the Ji-Ji had only been
asleep....
After five days of heat and Ji-Ji in an awakened condition, things
changed again. One of the larger flocks, grazing far to the west,
wandered out of the valley upon a plain behind the chain of hills. Here
a band of other-men fell upon them. There had been three herdsmen. Two
were slain. The third, a swift-foot, escaping, won back to the valley
with the news.
The war-men who had gone for copper and the war-men who had stayed at
home went out, swift-foot, to the west, out of the valley, through the
hills to the plain. It was a small, newly arrived group that they found
there, a wretched cluster of huts, wattle and dab, with little more in
the way of possessions than the stolen flock. But the men and the women
fought like wolves. Even the children bit and tore. But the group was
very small.
The valley men killed and those they did not kill they bound. Fighting
over, they ransacked the place, but found little spoil beyond their own
recovered flock. Only in one hut they found jars filled with a fermented
drink new to them and stronger than the drink the valley made.
The weather was hot and dry. The mood of the copper-digging and of the
making of In-Tan’s image was passed. The struggle-lust and delight in
killing, the more complex delight of binding fast the unslain, was over
with for the time. Victory had slaked thirst for revenge. The goods were
back with usury. The minds of the valley men were for the moment empty.
They sat upon the earth and lifted to their lips the jars of drink.
It seemed to the valley men that their minds enlarged. There came to
them from In-Tan, or perhaps only from Ji-Ji, a blissful sense of power
and daring. They were such great war-men!
The captives remained bound in a space between the huts. The two or
three men among them were those who, in the face of odds, had thrown
down their weapons. The rest--the women--had fought to the end, but had
been encumbered by the children. Now the children were dead, those two
or three weaker men cowed. But the women reviled from their bonds. It
was shameful that they should thus revile such great war-men, favourites
of gods and Ji-Ji!
They looked at the women over the rims of the jars of drink. They had
not looked so at the women of the purple mountain, the women they had
taken to the women of the valley for a gift. But it seemed a long time
since that day! Points of view must change in a changing world.... The
hot weather and the Ji-Ji and the drink--never the little light man in
the heart falling asleep while the little dark man stirred and grew....
The war-men began to reason, and it seemed to them that they reasoned
loftily. The world was divided into one’s own people and other-people to
whom nothing was owed. In-Tan certainly and probably Mao-Tan approved
the division. Now, women--own-group women and other-women.... Certainly
own-group women chose absolutely when they would pair and with whom they
would pair. That was order-of-nature. No one questioned it.... But these
other-group women.... If you could make war with other-women--if you
could kill them--if you could bind them to their own door-posts--if you
could take them for bondwomen to grind corn and carry water.... What
else might you not do if you were sure that order-of-nature would not
rise and blast you? Casuists sprang up and inner and outer arguing
against any such abstractions as natural sanctities. The war-men tilted
the jars of drink and found that the liquor helped to free them from
abstractions. It gave them fire, it added height on height to their
courage. It helped them to questions such as “For what, then, was
greater strength given?” and “Do sanctities apply to the conquered?” It
helped to the answers and the answers were according to their desires.
Saran and Endar were the subtlest disputants.... All drank again and the
pitchy fire within broke its bounds. Presently they were quite free
from abstractions. They moved toward the other-group women....
The hot night went on. The day came up in a blaze of light.
The war-men quitted the plain and threaded the hills, but they did not
carry these women with them. The dead and the yet living, they left
behind all of this group. It had been a small, small settlement, seekers
of fortune newly arrived in the land. The valley men took with them
their own flock and the few beasts that the cluster had owned, but then
these could say naught, nor awaken the wrath of Mao-Tan....
They marched back to the valley over parched herbage. The tale that they
told to the huts was of a band of robbers who had fought until one and
all were slain.... As to their greeting from the women of the valley, it
was cooler than once it had been. Maihoma was dead. Gilhumat ground corn
in silence.
The weather was hot. Mao-Tan and In-Tan were perhaps somewhere in green
meadows by waterfalls. But the Ji-Ji liked heat and dryness and a
feeling in the air like a singing bow-string. The first day and night
went by in a general taciturnity. The second day Saran and Marzumat
encountered under a tree by the field of corn.
“Maihoma that is dead was a fair woman,” said Saran. He was pale and his
nostrils opened and shut.
“So?” said Marzumat. “All of us die, and even fair women.”
The two stared each at the other. The sky like fire, and the Ji-Ji
active, and man and woman at odds....
The next day held quiet. Most of the men went to the booth behind the
grove. Endar, going, said to women in the bean-field that In-Tan’s
image occupied them. He said that it was going to be a great In-Tan,
twice as tall as a man. They meant to set it up in front of the men’s
booth, and it would be a great help in keeping women from the place.
Endar’s black beard moved, and his white teeth flashed, and his eyes
crinkled up.
Women, truly, went not to the place, but two, passing at no great
distance, heard first Endar and then Saran haranguing, and coming to the
fields reported what they had heard. It had not been much, a few
shouted-out words, chance-caught. “Lesson.... Teach a lesson!... Show
power, and then have peace!” The women knew no more than that of the
harangue. It was to be presumed that the men were talking of raid and
foray against other-people.
That day passed. The next day all the war-men went early to the grove
and the booth. A woman, weaving, spoke to a woman making baskets. “When
I waked at first light, the men were taking spears and clubs to the
great booth. I asked what they were doing and they said they were going
to make a hunting-dance before the In-Tan they are cutting from a tree.”
The sun walked up the sky in a dazzling robe and throwing arrows of
heat. Women were in the bean-field and the corn-field. They wove at rude
looms. With bone needle and fibre thread they were sewing garments. They
were making baskets; they were preparing to fire a rude kiln and bake
therein vessels of clay. The meat had been killed for the next meal;
they had brought it from the pens, they were quartering and dressing it.
They were at work upon this and at work upon that, or they were resting
from work. Some were crooning to babes. The bondwomen worked without
being able to say, “Now I shall rest awhile!” The noise of all their
industries blended into a steady, droning, humming, not unpleasing
sound. Here and there a woman sang, and through the whole fluted the
voices of children.
A woman at the loom shaded her eyes with her hands. “The men are under
the trees, dressed up to dance.” Another looked. “They are coming from
under the trees--that’s a new dance!” A third, carrying a large jar,
stopped to look. “They have their spears and clubs. I see Saran. He has
hawk wings bound upon his head.--Ha, you grinding women! They looked
that way when they came down upon your huts!” As she strained to look,
her grasp upon the jar loosened. It slipped from her hands and broke at
her feet in twenty fragments. “Mao-Tan! choke that Ji-Ji!”
The women generally began to observe. Marzumat rose from a stone beside
a hut door. The men left the grove. The sun dazzled against their
array--she saw Saran with the hawk wings bound upon his head....
Saran and Endar and all the others came across the space between the
grove and the huts. They came shouting and swiftly. The women saw their
procedure as inconceivable; then, in a moment, the inconceivable became
the actual.
While the men used their weapons, their spears and clubs for advantage,
they were not used to the uttermost. But they made for advantage, as did
muscular strength and training in battle, as did organization, as did
prepared attack! Even so, there was for a long time breathless, swaying
struggle. The women were not weak-thewed, and behind them stood ancient
powers of combat. Furious anger sustained them against the valley men.
Man and woman, old kindnesses, old unities, were forgotten. All grudges
were remembered, all separatenesses. They wrestled, they fought, and
around all their own noise rose the crying of children.
The war-men had strong advantage, and they had swelled their numbers by
the herdsmen. A woman and man, wrestling together, reeled near to the
eleven bondwomen where they were gathered by the grinding-stones.
The woman cried, panting. “Gilhumat, you and the others give help!”
Gilhumat’s laughter rose and whistled like a storm. “Give you help?
_No!_ We shall stand still and rest, O women who grind women like corn!”
Marzumat cried to no one. She lifted a great stone, struck Endar
Blackbeard with it, and stretched him at her feet. Two war-men came
against her, then herdsmen crept up behind and seized her arms. Saran
appeared before her, shaking his spear. She foamed at him and his hawk
wings.
At last there parted the struggling mass--the men flushed conquerors,
the women flung to earth, bruised with clubs, panting, beaten.... The
men produced a rite which, with some self-pluming, they had devised and
rehearsed.
Bondmen drove toward the trodden space sheep from the fold. Saran, the
war-head, Endar Blackbeard, and other chief men took bow and arrow, shot
strongly, and brought this game to earth.... The men were here, the
beaten women there, the slain beasts lying beyond the two groups.
Saran stood forth with Endar just behind him. “O valley women, war-men
have been hunting, and are tired!--Go you and bring in our game!”