The homesteader's cabin stood in a moon-shaped hollow between the hills
and the high mesa; and the land before it stretched away golden and
dusky green, and was lost in a blue haze about where the river
settlements began. The hills had a flowing outline and melted softly
into each other and higher hills behind, until the range broke in a
ragged crest of thin peaks white with snow. A clean, wide sky bent over
that country, and the air that moved in it was warm and sweet.
The homesteader's son had run out on the trail that led toward the
spring, with half a mind to go to it, but ran back again when he saw the
Basket Woman coming. He was afraid of her, and ashamed because he was
afraid, so he did not tell his mother that he had changed his mind.
"There is the mahala coming for the wash," said his mother; "now you
will have company at the spring." But Alan only held tighter to a fold
of her dress. This was the third time the Indian woman had come to wash
for the homesteader's wife; and, though she was slow and quiet and had a
pleasant smile, Alan was still afraid of her. All that he had heard of
Indians before coming to this country was very frightful, and he did not
understand yet that it was not so. Beyond a certain point of hills on
clear days he could see smoke rising from the campoodie, and though he
knew nothing but his dreams of what went on there, he would not so much
as play in that direction.
The Basket Woman was the only Indian that he had seen. She would come
walking across the mesa with a great cone-shaped carrier basket heaped
with brushwood on her shoulders, stooping under it and easing the weight
by a buckskin band about her forehead. Sometimes it would be a smaller
basket carried in the same fashion, and she would be filling it with
bulbs of wild hyacinth or taboose; often she carried a bottle-necked
water basket to and from the spring, and always wore a bowl-shaped
basket on her head for a hat. Her long hair hung down from under it, and
her black eyes glittered beadily below the rim. Alan had a fancy that
any moment she might pick him up with a quick toss as if he had been a
bit of brushwood, and drop him over her shoulder into the great carrier,
and walk away across the mesa with him. So when he saw her that morning
coming down the trail from the spring, he hung close by his mother's
skirts.
"You must not be afraid of her, Alan," said his mother; "she is very
kind, and no doubt has had a boy of her own."
The Basket Woman showed them her white, even teeth in a smile. "This one
very pretty boy," she said; but Alan had made up his mind not to trust
her. He was thinking of what the teamster had said when he had driven
them up from the railroad station with their belongings the day they
came to their new home and found the Basket Woman spying curiously in
at the cabin windows.
"You wanter watch out how you behaves yourself, sonny," said the
teamster, wagging a solemn jaw, "she's likely to pack you away in that
basket o' her'n one of these days." And Alan had watched out very
carefully indeed.
It was not a great while after they came to the foothill claim that the
homesteader went over to the campoodie to get an Indian to help at fence
building, and Alan went with him, holding fast by his father's hand.
They found the Indians living in low, foul huts; their clothes were also
dirty, and they sat about on the ground, fat and good-natured. The dogs
and children lay sleeping in the sun. It was all very disappointing.
"Will they not hurt us, father?" Alan had said at starting.
"Oh, no, my boy; you must not get any such notion as that," said the
homesteader; "Indians are not at all now what they were once."
Alan thought of this as he looked at the campoodie, and pulled at his
father's hand.
"I do not like Indians the way they are now," he said; and immediately
saw that he had made a mistake, for he was standing directly in front of
the Basket Woman's hut, and as she suddenly put her head out of the door
he thought by the look of her mysterious, bright eyes that she had
understood. He did not venture to say anything more, and all the way
home kept looking back toward the campoodie to see if anything came of
it.
"Why do you not eat your supper?" said his mother. "I am afraid the long
walk in the hot sun was too much for you." Alan dared not say anything
to her of what troubled him, though perhaps it would have been better if
he had, for that night the Basket Woman came for him.
She did not pick him up and toss him over her shoulder as he expected;
but let down the basket, and he stepped into it of his own accord. Alan
was surprised to find that he was not so much afraid of her after all.
"What will you do with me?" he said.
"I will show you Indians as they used to be," said she.
Alan could feel the play of her strong shoulders as they went out across
the lower mesa and began to climb the hills.
"Where do you go?" said the boy.
"To Pahrump, the valley of Corn Water. It was there my people were
happiest in old days."
They went on between the oaks, and smelled the musky sweet smell of the
wild grapevines along the water borders. The sagebrush began to fail
from the slopes, and buckthorn to grow up tall and thicker; the wind
brought them a long sigh from the lowest pines. They came up with the
silver firs and passed them, passed the drooping spruces, the wet
meadows, and the wood of thimble-cone pines. The air under them had an
earthy smell. Presently they came out upon a cleared space very high up
where the rocks were sharp and steep.
"Why are there no trees here?" asked Alan.
"I will tell you about that," said the Basket Woman. "In the old flood
time, and that is longer ago than is worth counting, the water came up
and covered the land, all but the high tops of mountains. Here then the
Indians fled and lived, and with them the animals that escaped from the
flood. There were trees growing then over all the high places, but
because the waters were long on the earth the Indians were obliged to
cut them down for firewood. Also they killed all the large animals for
food, but the small ones hid in the rocks. After that the waters went
down; trees and grass began to grow over all the earth, but never any
more on the tops of high mountains. They had all been burned off. You
can see that it is so."
From the top of the mountain Alan could see all the hills on the other
side shouldering and peering down toward the happy valley of Corn Water.
"Here," said the Basket Woman, "my people came of old time in the
growing season of the year; they planted corn, and the streams came
down from the hills and watered it. Now we, too, will go down."
They went by a winding trail, steep and stony. The pines stood up around
and locked them closely in.
"I see smoke arising," said Alan, "blue smoke above the pines."
"It is the smoke of their hearth fires," said the Basket Woman, and they
went down and down.
"I hear a sound of singing," said the boy.
"It is the women singing and grinding at the quern," she said, and her
feet went faster.
"I hear laughter," he said again, "it mixes with the running of the
water."
"It is the maidens washing their knee-long hair. They kneel by the water
and stoop down, they dip in the running water and shake out bright drops
in the sun."
"There is a pleasant smell," said Alan.
"It is pine nuts roasting in the cones," said the Basket Woman; "so it
was of old time."
They came out of the cleft of the hills in a pleasant place by singing
water. "There you will see the rows of wickiups," said the Basket Woman,
"with the doors all opening eastward to the sun. Let us sit here and see
what we shall see."
The women sat by the wickiups weaving baskets of willow and stems of
fern. They made patterns of bright feathers and strung wampum about the
rims. Some sewed with sinew and needles of cactus thorn on deerskin
white and fine; others winnowed the corn. They stood up tossing it in
baskets like grains of gold, and the wind carried away the chaff. All
this time the young girls were laughing as they dried their hair in the
sun. They bound it with flowers and gay strings of beads, and made their
cheeks bright with red earth. The children romped and shouted about the
camp, and ran bare-legged in the stream.
"Do they do nothing but play?" said Alan.
"You shall see," said the Basket Woman.
Away up the mountain sounded a faint halloo. In a moment all the camp
was bustle and delight. The children clapped their hands; they left off
playing and began to drag up brushwood for the fires. The women put away
their weaving and brought out the cooking pots; they heard the men
returning from the hunt. The young men brought deer upon their
shoulders; one had grouse and one held up a great basket of trout. The
women made the meat ready for cooking. Some of them took meal and made
cakes for baking in the ashes. The men rested in the glow of the fires,
feathering arrows and restringing their bows.
"That is well," said the Basket Woman, "to make ready for to-morrow's
meat before to-day's is eaten."
"How happy they are!" said the boy.
"They will be happier when they have eaten," said she.
After supper the Indians gathered together for singing and dancing. The
old men told tales one after the other, and the children thought each
one was the best. Between the tales the Indians all sang together, or
one sang a new song that he had made. There was one of them who did
better than all. He had streaked his body with colored earth and had a
band of eagle feathers in his hair. In his hand was a rattle of wild
sheep's horn and small stones; he kept time with it as he leapt and sang
in the light of the fire. He sang of old wars, sang of the deer that was
killed, sang of the dove and the young grass that grew on the mountain;
and the people were well pleased, for when the heart is in the singing
it does not matter much what the song is about. The men beat their hands
together to keep time to his dancing, and the earth under his feet was
stamped to a fine dust.
"He is one that has found the wolf's song," said the Basket Woman.
"What is that?" asked Alan.
"It is an old tale of my people," said she. "Once there was a man who
could not make any songs, so he got no praise from the tribe, and it
troubled him much. Then, as he was gathering taboose by the river, a
wolf went by, and the wolf said to him, 'What will you have me to give
you for your taboose?' Then said the man, 'I will have you to give me a
song.'
"'That will I gladly,' said the wolf. So the wolf taught him, and that
night he sang the wolf's song in the presence of all the people, and it
made their hearts to burn within them. Then the man fell down as if he
were dead, for the pure joy of singing, and when deep sleep was upon him
the wolf came in the night and stole his song away. Neither the man nor
any one who had heard it remembered it any more. So we say when a man
sings as no other sang before him, 'He has the wolf's song.' It is a
good saying. Now we must go, for the children are all asleep by their
mothers, and the day comes soon," said the Basket Woman.
"Shall we come again?" said Alan. "And will it all be as it is now?"
"My people come often to the valley of Corn Water," said she, "but it
is never as it is now except in dreams. Now we must go quickly." Far up
the trail they saw a grayness in the eastern sky where the day was about
to come in.
"Hark," said the Basket Woman, "they will sing together the coyote song.
It is so that they sing it when the coyote goes home from his hunting,
and the morning is near.
"The coyote cries ...
He cries at daybreak ...
He cries ...
The coyote cries" ...
sang the Basket Woman, but all the spaces in between the words were
filled with long howls,--weird, wicked noises that seemed to hunt and
double in a half-human throat. It made the hair on Alan's neck stand up,
and cold shivers creep along his back. He began to shake, for the wild
howls drew near and louder, and he felt the bed under him tremble with
his trembling.
"Mother, mother," he cried, "what is that?"
"It is only the coyotes," said she; "they always howl about this time of
night. It is nothing; go to sleep again."
"But I am afraid."
"They cannot hurt you," said his mother; "it is only the little gray
beasts that you see trotting about the mesa of afternoons; hear them
now."
"I am afraid," said Alan.
"Then you must come in my bed," said she; and in a few minutes he was
fast asleep again.