The Weaving Woman lived under the bank of the stony wash that cut
through the country of the mesquite dunes. The Coyote-Spirit, which, you
understand, is an Indian whose form has been changed to fit with his
evil behavior, ranged from the Black Rock where the wash began to the
white sands beyond Pahranagat; and the Goat-Girl kept her flock among
the mesquites, or along the windy stretch of sage below the campoodie;
but as the Coyote-Spirit never came near the wickiups by day, and the
Goat-Girl went home the moment the sun dropped behind Pahranagat, they
never met. These three are all that have to do with the story.
The Weaving Woman, whose work was the making of fine baskets of split
willow and roots of yucca and brown grass, lived alone, because there
was nobody found who wished to live with her, and because it was
whispered among the wickiups that she was different from other people.
It was reported that she had an infirmity of the eyes which caused her
to see everything with rainbow fringes, bigger and brighter and better
than it was. All her days were fruitful, a handful of pine nuts as much
to make merry over as a feast; every lad who went by a-hunting with his
bow at his back looked to be a painted brave, and every old woman
digging roots as fine as a medicine man in all his feathers. All the
faces at the campoodie, dark as the mingled sand and lava of the Black
Rock country, deep lined with work and weather, shone for this singular
old woman with the glory of the late evening light on Pahranagat. The
door of her wickiup opened toward the campoodie with the smoke going up
from cheerful hearths, and from the shadow of the bank where she sat to
make baskets she looked down the stony wash where all the trails
converged that led every way among the dunes, and saw an enchanted mesa
covered with misty bloom and gentle creatures moving on trails that
seemed to lead to the places where one had always wished to be.
Since all this was so, it was not surprising that her baskets turned out
to be such wonderful affairs, and the tribesmen, though they winked and
wagged their heads, were very glad to buy them for a haunch of venison
or a bagful of mesquite meal. Sometimes, as they stroked the perfect
curves of the bowls or traced out the patterns, they were heard to sigh,
thinking how fine life would be if it were so rich and bright as she
made it seem, instead of the dull occasion they had found it. There were
some who even said it was a pity, since she was so clever at the craft,
that the weaver was not more like other people, and no one thought to
suggest that in that case her weaving would be no better than theirs.
For all this the basket-maker did not care, sitting always happily at
her weaving or wandering far into the desert in search of withes and
barks and dyes, where the wild things showed her many a wonder hid from
those who have not rainbow fringes to their eyes; and because she was
not afraid of anything, she went farther and farther into the silent
places until in the course of time she met the Coyote-Spirit.
Now a Coyote-Spirit, from having been a man, is continually thinking
about men and wishing to be with them, and, being a coyote and of the
wolf's breed, no sooner does he have his wish than he thinks of
devouring. So as soon as this one had met the Weaving Woman he desired
to eat her up, or to work her some evil according to the evil of his
nature. He did not see any opportunity to begin at the first meeting,
for on account of the infirmity of her eyes the woman did not see him as
a coyote, but as a man, and let down her wicker water bottle for him to
drink, so kindly that he was quite abashed. She did not seem in the
least afraid of him, which is disconcerting even to a real coyote;
though if he had been, she need not have been afraid of him in any case.
Whatever pestiferous beast the Indian may think the dog of the
wilderness, he has no reason to fear him except when by certain signs,
as having a larger and leaner body, a sharper muzzle, and more evilly
pointed ears, he knows him the soul of a bad-hearted man going about in
that guise. There are enough of these coyote-spirits ranging in Mesquite
Valley and over towards Funeral Mountains and about Pahranagat to give
certain learned folk surmise as to whether there may not be a strange
breed of wolves in that region; but the Indians know better.
When the coyote-spirit who had met the basket woman thought about it
afterward, he said to himself that she deserved all the mischance that
might come upon her for that meeting. "She knows," he said, "that this
is my range, and whoever walks in a coyote-spirit's range must expect to
take the consequences. She is not at all like the Goat-Girl."
The Coyote-Spirit had often watched the Goat-Girl from the top of
Pahranagat, but because she was always in the open where no
lurking-places were, and never far from the corn lands where the old
men might be working, he had made himself believe he would not like that
kind of a girl. Every morning he saw her come out of her leafy hut,
loose the goats from the corral, which was all of cactus stems and broad
leaves of prickly-pear, and lead them out among the wind-blown hillocks
of sand under which the trunks of the mesquite flourished for a hundred
years, and out of the tops of which the green twigs bore leaves and
fruit; or along the mesa to browse on bitterbrush and the tops of
scrubby sage. Sometimes she plaited willows for the coarser kinds of
basket-work, or, in hot noonings while the flock dozed, worked herself
collars and necklaces of white and red and turquoise-colored beads, and
other times sat dreaming on the sand. But whatever she did, she kept far
enough from the place of the Coyote-Spirit, who, now that he had met the
Weaving Woman, could not keep his mind off her. Her hut was far enough
from the campoodie so that every morning he went around by the Black
Rock to see if she was still there, and there she sat weaving patterns
in her baskets of all that she saw or thought. Now it would be the
winding wash and the wattled huts beside it, now the mottled skin of the
rattlesnake or the curled plumes of the quail.
At last the Coyote-Spirit grew so bold that when there was no one
passing on the trail he would go and walk up and down in front of the
wickiup. Then the Weaving Woman would look up from her work and give him
the news of the season and the tribesmen in so friendly a fashion that
he grew less and less troubled in his mind about working her mischief.
He said in his evil heart that since the ways of such as he were known
to the Indians,--as indeed they were, with many a charm and spell to
keep them safe,--it could be no fault of his if they came to harm
through too much familiarity. As for the Weaving Woman, he said, "She
sees me as I am, and ought to know better," for he had not heard about
the infirmity of her eyes.
Finally he made up his mind to ask her to go with him to dig for roots
around the foot of Pahranagat, and if she consented,--and of course she
did, for she was a friendly soul,--he knew in his heart what he would
do. They went out by the mesa trail, and it was a soft and blossomy day
of spring. Long wands of the creosote with shining fretted foliage were
hung with creamy bells of bloom, and doves called softly from the
Dripping Spring. They passed rows of owlets sitting by their burrows and
saw young rabbits playing in their shallow forms. The Weaving Woman
talked gayly as they went, as Indian women talk, with soft mellow voices
and laughter breaking in between the words like smooth water flowing
over stones. She talked of how the deer had shifted their feeding
grounds and of whether the quail had mated early that year as a sign of
a good season, matters of which the Coyote-Spirit knew more than she,
only he was not thinking of those things just then. Whenever her back
was turned he licked his cruel jaws and whetted his appetite. They
passed the level mesa, passed the tumbled fragments of the Black Rock
and came to the sharp wall-sided canons that showed the stars at noon
from their deep wells of sombre shade, where no wild creature made its
home and no birds ever sang. Then the Weaving Woman grew still at last
because of the great stillness, and the Coyote-Spirit said in a hungry,
whining voice,--
"Do you know why I brought you here?"
"To show me how still and beautiful the world is here," said the Weaving
Woman, and even then she did not seem afraid.
"To eat you up," said the Coyote. With that he looked to see her fall
quaking at his feet, and he had it in mind to tell her it was no fault
but her own for coming so far astray with one of his kind, but the woman
only looked at him and laughed. The sound of her laughter was like water
in a bubbling spring.
"Why do you laugh?" said the Coyote, and he was so astonished that his
jaws remained open when he had done speaking.
"How could you eat me?" said she. "Only wild beasts could do that."
"What am I, then?"
"Oh, you are only a man."
"I am a coyote," said he.
"Do you think I have no eyes?" said the woman. "Come!" For she did not
understand that her eyes were different from other people's, what she
really thought was that other people's were different from hers, which
is quite another matter, so she pulled the Coyote-Spirit over to a
rain-fed pool. In that country the rains collect in basins of the solid
rock that grow polished with a thousand years of storm and give back
from their shining side a reflection like a mirror. One such lay in the
bottom of the black canyon, and the Weaving Woman stood beside it.
Now it is true of coyote-spirits that they are so only because of their
behavior; not only have they power to turn themselves to men if they
wish--but they do not wish, or they would not have become coyotes in the
first place--but other people in their company, according as they think
man-thoughts or beast-thoughts, can throw over them such a change that
they have only to choose which they will be. So the basket-weaver
contrived to throw the veil of her mind over the Coyote-Spirit, so that
when he looked at himself in the pool he could not tell for the life of
him whether he was most coyote or most man, which so frightened him that
he ran away and left the Weaving Woman to hunt for roots alone. He ran
for three days and nights, being afraid of himself, which is the worst
possible fear, and then ran back to see if the basket-maker had not
changed her mind. He put his head in at the door of her wickiup.
"Tell me, now, am I a coyote or a man?"
"Oh, a man," said she, and he went off to Pahranagat to think it over.
In a day or two he came back.
"And what now?" he said.
"Oh, a man, and I think you grow handsomer every day."
That was really true, for what with her insisting upon it and his
thinking about it, the beast began to go out of him and the man to come
back. That night he went down to the campoodie to try and steal a kid
from the corral, but it occurred to him just in time that a man would
not do that, so he went back to Pahranagat and ate roots and berries
instead, which was a true sign that he had grown into a man again. Then
there came a day when the Weaving Woman asked him to stop at her hearth
and eat. There was a savory smell going up from the cooking-pots, cakes
of mesquite meal baking in the ashes, and sugary white buds of the yucca
palm roasting on the coals. The man who had been a coyote lay on a
blanket of rabbit skin and heard the cheerful snapping of the fire. It
was all so comfortable and bright that somehow it made him think of the
Goat-Girl.
"That is the right sort of a girl," he said to himself. "She has always
stayed in the safe open places and gone home early. She should be able
to tell me what I am," for he was not quite sure, and since he had begun
to walk with men a little, he had heard about the Weaving Woman's eyes.
Next day he went out where the flock fed, not far from the corn lands,
and the Goat-Girl did not seem in the least afraid of him. So he went
again, and the third day he said,--
"Tell me what I seem to you."
"A very handsome man," said she.
"Then will you marry me?" said he; and when the Goat-Girl had taken time
to think about it she said yes, she thought she would.
Now, when the man who had been a coyote lay on the blanket of the
Weaving Woman's wickiup, he had taken notice how it was made of willows
driven into the ground around a pit dug in the earth, and the poles
drawn together at the top, and thatched with brush, and he had tried at
the foot of Pahranagat until he had built another like it; so when he
had married the Goat-Girl, after the fashion of her tribe, he took her
there to live. He was not now afraid of anything except that his wife
might get to know that he had once been a coyote. It was during the
first month of their marriage that he said to her, "Do you know the
basket-maker who lives under the bank of the stony wash? They call her
the Weaving Woman."
"I have heard something of her and I have bought her baskets. Why do you
ask?"
"It is nothing," said the man, "but I hear strange stories of her, that
she associates with coyote-spirits and such creatures," for he wanted to
see what his wife would say to that.
"If that is the case," said she, "the less we see of her the better. One
cannot be too careful in such matters."
After that, when the man who had been a coyote and his wife visited the
campoodie, they turned out of the stony wash before they reached the
wickiup, and came in to the camp by another trail. But I have not heard
whether the Weaving Woman noticed it.