II

When Walter was fifteen his father gave him a rifle, as he had promised,

and a word of advice with it.

"Learn to shoot quickly and well," he said, "and never ride out from

home without it. No one can tell what this trouble with the Indians may

come to in the end."

Walter rode straight to the campoodie. He was never happy in any of his

gifts until he had showed them to Joe. There was a group of older men at

the camp, quartering a deer which they had brought in. One of them,

called Scar-Face, looked at Walter with a leering frown.

"See," he said, "they are arming the very children with guns."

"My father promised it to me many years ago," said Walter. "It is my

birthday gift."

He could not explain why, and he grew angry at the man's accusing tone,

but after it he did not like showing his present to the Indians.

He called Joe, and they went over to a cave in the black rock where they

had kept their boyish treasures and planned their plays since they were

children. Joe thought the rifle a beauty, and turned it over admiringly

in the shadow of the cave. They tried shooting at a mark, and then

decided to go up Oak Creek for a shot at the gray squirrels. There they

sighted a band of antelope that led them over a tongue of hills into

Little Round Valley, where they found themselves at noon twelve miles

from home and very hungry. They had no antelope, but four squirrels and

a grouse. The two boys made a fire for cooking in a quiet place by a

spring of sweet water.

"You may have my rifle to use as often as you like," said Walter, "but

you must not lend it to any one in the campoodie, especially to

Scar-Face. My father says he is the one who is stirring up all this

trouble with the whites."

"The white men do not need any one to help them get into trouble," said

Joe. "They can do that for themselves."

"It is the fault of the Indians," said Walter. "If they did not shoot

the cattle, the white men would leave them alone."

"But if the white men come first to our lands with noise and trampling

and scare away the game, what then will they shoot?" asked the Paiute.

Walter did not make any answer to that. He had often gone hunting with

Joe and his father, and he knew what it meant to walk far, and fasting,

after game made shy by the rifles of cattlemen, and at last to return

empty to the campoodie where there were women and children with hungry

eyes.

"Is it true," he said after a while, "that Scar-Face is stirring up all

the Indians in the valley?"

"How should I know?" said Joe; "I am only a boy, and have not killed big

game. I am not admitted to the counsels of the old men. What does it

matter to us whether of old feuds or new? Are we not brothers sworn?"

Then, as the dinner was done, they ate each of the other's kill, for it

was the custom of the Paiutes at that time that no youth should eat game

of his own killing until he was fully grown. As they walked homeward the

boys planned to get permission to go up on Waban for a week, after

mountain sheep, before the snows began.

Mr. Baker looked grave when Walter spoke to him.

"My boy," he said, "I wish you would not plan long trips like this

without first speaking to me. It is hardly safe in the present state of

feeling among the Indians to let you go with them in this fashion. A

whole week, too. But as you have already spoken of it, and it has

probably been talked over in the campoodie, for me to refuse now would

look as if I suspected something, and might bring about the thing I most

fear."

"You should not be afraid for me with Joe, father, for we are brothers

sworn," said Walter, and he told his father how they had mixed the blood

of their arms in the arrow-maker's hut after they had come back from

their first journey on Waban.

"Well," said Mr. Baker, who had not heard of this before, "I know that

they set great store by these superstitious customs, but I have not much

faith in the word of a Paiute when he is dealing with a white man.

However, you had better go on with this hunting trip. Take Hank with

you, and Joe's father, and do not be gone more than five days at the

outside."

Hank was one of Mr. Baker's vaqueros, and very glad to get off for a

few days' hunting on the blunt top of Waban. On the Monday following

they left the Baker ranch for the mountain. As the two boys rode up the

boulder-strewn slope it set them talking of the first time they had gone

that way on their fruitless hunt for arrow points about the foot of

Winnedumah, and of all that happened to them at that time. The valley

lay below them full of purple mist, and away by the creek of Tres Pinos

the brown, wattled huts of the campoodie like great wasps' nests stuck

in the sage. Hank and Joe's father, with the pack horses, were ahead of

them far up the trail; Joe and Walter let their own ponies lag, and the

nose of one touched the flank of the other as they climbed slowly up the

steep, and the boys turned their faces to each other, as if they had

some vague warning that they would not ride so and talk familiarly

again, as if the boiling anger of the tribes in the valley had brewed a

sort of mist that rose up and gloomed the pleasant air on the slope of

Waban.

"Joe," said Walter, "my father says if it came to a fight between the

white settlers and the Paiutes, that you would not hold by the word we

have passed."

"That is the speech of a white man," said Joe.

"But would you?" the other insisted.

"I am a Paiute," said Joe; "I will hold by my people, also by my word; I

will not fight against you."

"Nor I against you, but I would not like to have my father think you had

broken your word."

"Have no care," said the Indian, "I will not break it."

Mr. Baker looked anxiously after his son as he rode to the hunting on

Waban; he looked anxiously up that trail every hour until the boy came

again, and that, as it turned out, was at the end of three days. For the

trouble among the Indians had come to something at last,--the wasps were

all out of nest by the brown creeks, and with them a flight of stinging

arrows. The trouble began at Cottonwood, and the hunting party on Waban

the second day out saw a tall, pale column of smoke that rose up from

the notch of the hill behind the settlement, and fanned out slowly into

the pale blueness of the sky.

It went on evenly, neither more nor less, thick smoke from a fire of

green wood steadily tended. Before noon another rose from the mouth of

Oak Creek, and a third from Tunawai. They waved and beckoned to one

another, calling to counsel.

"Signal fires," said Hank; "that means mischief."

And from that on he went with his rifle half cocked, and walked always

so that he might keep Joe's father in full view. By night that same day

there were seven smoke trees growing up in the long valley, and

spreading thin, pale branches to the sky. There was no zest left in the

hunt, and in the morning they owned it. Walter was worried by what he

knew his father's anxiety must be. Then the party began to ride down

again, and always Hank made the Indian go before. Away by the foot of

Oppapago rose a black volume of smoke, thick, and lighted underneath by

flames. It might be the reek of a burning ranch house. The boys were

excited and afraid. They talked softly and crowded their ponies together

on the trail.

"Joe," said Walter whisperingly, "if there is battle, you will have to

go to it."

"Yes," said Joe.

"And you will fight; otherwise they will call you a coward, and if you

run away, they will kill you."

"So I suppose," said Joe.

"Or they will make you wear a woman's dress like To-go-na-tee, the man

who got up too late." This was a reminder from one of the arrow-maker's

tales. "But you have promised not to fight."

"Look you," said the Indian boy; "if a white man came to kill me, I

would kill him. That is right. But I will not fight you nor your

father's house. That is my vow."

The white boy put out his hand, and laid it on the flank of the foremost

pony. The Indian boy's fingers came behind him, and crept along the

pony's back until they reached the other hand. They rode forward without

talking.

Toward noon they made out horsemen riding on the trail below them. As it

wound in and out around the blind gullies they saw and lost sight of

them a dozen times. At last, where the fringe of the tall trees began,

they came face to face. It was Mr. Baker and a party of five men; they

carried rifles and had set and anxious looks.

"What will you have?" said Indian Joe's father as they drew up before

him under a tamarack pine.

"My son," said the cattleman.

"Is there war?" said the Indian.

"There is war. Come, Walter."

The boys were still and scared. Slowly Hank and Walter drew their horses

out of the path and joined the men. Indian Joe and his father passed

forward on the trail.

"Do them no harm," said Joe Baker to those that were with him.

"Good-by, Joe," said Walter half aloud.

The other did not turn his head, but as he went they noticed that he had

bared his right arm from the hunting shirt, and an inch above the elbow

showed a thin, white scar. Walter had the twin of that mark under his

flannels.

Mr. Baker did not mind fighting Indians; he thought it a good thing to

have their troubles settled all at once in this way, but he did not want

his son mixed up in it. The first thing he did when he got home was to

send him off secretly by night to the fort, and from there he passed

over the mountains with other of the settlers' families under strong

escort, and finally went to his mother's people in the East, and was put

to school. As it turned out he never came back to Tres Pinos, he does

not come into this story any more.

When the first smoke rose up that showed where the fierce hate of the

Paiutes had broken into flame, the Indians took their women and children

away from the pleasant open slopes, and hid them in deep canons in

secret places of the rocks. There they feathered arrows, and twisted

bowstrings of the sinew of deer. And because there were so many grave

things done, and it was not the custom for boys to question their

elders, Joe never heard how Walter had been sent away. He thought him

still at the ranch with his father, and it is because of this mistake

that there is any more story at all.

You may be sure that, of those two boys, Joe's was the deeper loving,

for, besides having grown up together, Walter was white, therefore

thinking himself, and making the other believe it, the better of the

two. But for this Walter made no difference in his behavior; had Joe to

eat at his table, and would have him sleep in his bed, but Joe laughed,

and lay on the floor. All this was counted a kindness and a great honor

in the campoodie. Walter could find out things by looking in a book,

which was sheer magic, and had taught Joe to write a little, so that he

could send word by means of a piece of paper, which was cleverer than

the tricks Joe had taught him, of reading the signs of antelope and elk

and deer. The white boy was to the Indian a little of all the heroes

and bright ones of the arrow-maker's tales come alive again. Therefore

he quaked in his heart when he heard the rumors that ran about the camp.

The war began about Cottonwood, and ran like wildfire that licked up all

the ranches in its course. Then the whites came strongly against the

Paiutes at the Stone Corral, and made an end of the best of their

fighting men. Then the Indians broke out in the north, and at last it

came to such a pass that the very boys must do fighting, and the women

make bowstrings. The cattlemen turned in to Baker's ranch as a centre,

and all the northern campoodies gathered together to attack them. They

had not much to hope for, only to do as much killing as possible before

the winter set in with the hunger and the deep snows.

By this time Joe's father was dead, and his mother had brought the boy a

quiver full of arrows and a new bowstring, and sent him down to the

battle.

And Joe went hotly enough to join the men of the other village, nursing

his bow with great care, remembering his father, but when he came to

counsel and found where the fight must be, his heart turned again, for

he remembered his friend. The braves camped by Little Round Valley, and

he thought of the talk he and Walter had there; the war party went over

the tongue of hills, and Joe saw Winnedumah shining whitely on Waban,

and remembered his boyish errand, the mystery of the tall, strange

warrior that came upon them in the night, their talk in the hut of the

arrow-maker, and the vow that came afterward.

The Indians came down a ravine toward Tres Pinos, and there met a band

of horses which some of their party had run in from the ranches; among

them was a pinto pony which Walter had used to ride, and it came to

Joe's hand when he called. Then the boy wondered if Walter might be

dead, and leaned his head against the pony's mane; it turned its head

and nickered softly at his ear.

The war party stayed in the ravine until it grew dark, and Joe watched

how Winnedumah swam in a mist above the hills long after the sun had

gone quite down, as if in his faithfulness he would outwatch the dark;

and then the boy's heart was lifted up to the great chief standing still

by Tinnemaha. "I will not forget," he said. "I, too, will be faithful."

Perhaps at this moment he expected a miracle to help him in his vow as

it had helped Winnedumah.

In the dusk the mounted Indians rode down by the Creek of Tres Pinos.

When they came by the ruined hut where his father had lived, Joe's heart

grew hot again, and when he passed the arrow-maker's, he remembered his

vow. Suddenly he wheeled his pony in the trail, hardly knowing what he

would do. The man next to him laid an arrow across his bow and pointed

it at the boy's breast.

"Coward," he whispered, but an older Indian laid his hand on the man's

arm.

"Save your arrows," he said. Then the ponies swept forward in the

charge, but Joe knew in an instant how it would be with him. He would

be called false and a coward, killed for it, driven from the tribe, but

he would not fight against his sworn brother. He would keep his vow.

A sudden rain of arrows flew from the advancing Paiutes; Joe fumbled his

and dropped it on the ground. He was wondering if one of the many aimed

would find his brother. Bullets answered the arrow flight. He saw the

braves pitch forward, and heard the scream of wounded ponies.

He hoped he would be shot; he would not have minded that; it would be

better than being called a coward. And then it occurred to him, if

Walter and his father came out and found him when the fight was done,

they would think that he had broken his word. The Paiutes began to seek

cover, but Joe drove out wildly from them, and rode back in the friendly

dark, and past the ruined campoodie, to the black rocks. There he crept

into the cave which only he and Walter knew, and lay on his face and

cried, for though he was an Indian he was only a boy, and he had seen

his first fight. He was sick with the thought of his vow. He lay in the

black rocks all the night and the day, and watched the cattlemen and the

soldiers ranging all that county for the stragglers of his people, and

guessed that the Paiutes had made the last stand. Then in the second

night he began to work back by secret paths to the mountain camp. It

never occurred to him not to go. He had the courage to meet what waited

for him there, but he had not the heart to go to it in the full light of

day. He came in by his mother's place, and she spat upon him, for she

had heard how he had carried himself in the fight.

"No son of mine," said she.

He went by the women and children and heard their jeers. His heart was

very sick. He went apart and sat down and waited what the men would say.

There were few of them left about the dying fire. They had washed off

their war paint, and their bows were broken. When they spoke at last, it

was with mocking and sad scorn.

"We have enough of killing," said the one called Scar-Face. "Let him

have a woman's dress and stay to mend the fire."

So it was done in the presence of all the camp; and because he was a

boy, and because he was an Indian, he said nothing of his vow, nor

opened his mouth in his defense, though his heart quaked and his knees

shook. He had the courage to wear the badge of being afraid all his

life. They brought him a woman's dress, though they were all too sad for

much laughter, and in the morning he set to bringing the wood for the

fire.

Afterward there was a treaty made between the Paiutes and the settlers,

and the remnant went back to the campoodie of Tres Pinos, and Joe

learned how Walter had been sent out of the valley in the beginning of

the war, but that did not make any difference about the woman's dress.

He and Walter never met again. He continued to go about in dresses,

though in time he was allowed to do a man's work, and his knowledge of

English helped to restore a friendly footing with the cattlemen. The

valley filled very rapidly with settlers after that, and under the

slack usage of the tribe, Mahala Joe, as he came to be known, might have

thrown aside his woman's gear without offense, but he had the courage to

wear it to his life's end. He kept his sentence as he kept his vow, and

yet it is certain that Walter never knew.

PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY Of

INDIAN NAMES AND WORDS

CAMPOODIE (k[)a]mp'[=o]-dy). A group of Indian huts, from the

Spanish campo, a field or prairie. In some localities written

"_campody_."

HINONO (h[)i]-n[)o]-n[)o]). A legendary Indian hero.

MAHALA (m[.a]-h[:a]'l[)a]). An Indian woman, perhaps a corruption

from the Spanish _mujer_, woman.

MESA (m[=a]'sae). A table-land, or plateau with a steeply sloping

side or sides.

MESQUITE (m[)e]s-k[=e]t'). A thorny desert shrub, bearing edible

pods, like the locust tree, which are ground into meal for food.

NA'[:Y]ANG-WIT'E. An Indian gambling game.

OPPAPAGO (op-p[)a]-p[=a]'g[=o]). A mountain peak near Mt. Whitney.

The name signifies "The Weeper," in reference to the streams that

run down from it continually like tears.

PAHRUMP (p[.a]h-r[)u]mp'). From the Indian words _pah_, water, and

rump, corn, "corn-water," i. e. a place where there is water

enough to grow corn.

PAIUTES (p[=i]'[=u]t). The name of a large tribe of Indians

inhabiting middle California and Nevada. The name is derived from

the Indian word _pah_, water, and is used to distinguish this

tribe from the related tribe of Utes, who lived in the desert away

from running water.

PENSTEMON (p[)e]ni-st[=e]'m[)o]n). A wild flower common to the

lower slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

PHARANAGAT (ph[)a]-r[)a]n-[)a]-g[)a]t'). An Indian name of a

place. The meaning is uncertain.

PINON (p[.=e]-ny[=o]n'). The Spanish name for the one-leaved, nut

pine.

PIPSISEWA (p[)i]p-s[)u]s'[=e]-w[.a]). A wild flower common to

the lower slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

QUERN (kw[^u]rn). A primitive mill for grinding corn. It consists

of two circular stones, the upper being turned by hand.

SHOSHONE (sh[.=o]-sh[=o]'n[.=e]). An Indian tribe split in two by

the Pintes, and living north and south of them. In this book the

southern division only is referred to.

TABOOSE (t[.a]-b[)oo]s'). Small tubercles of the joint grass;

they appear on the joints of the roots early in spring, and are an

important item of food to the Indians.

TAVWOTS (t[)a]v-w[)o]ts'). The rabbit.

TINNEMAHA (tin-ny-m[.a]-hae'). A legendary Indian hero.

TOGOBAH (t[=o]-g[=o]-bae'). } Indian names of places. The

TOGONATEE (t[=o]-g[=o]-n[)a]-t[=e]'). } meaning is uncertain.

TULARE (t[=oo]-lae're). A marshy place overgrown with the bulrushes

known as _tule_.

VAQUERO (vae-k[=a]'r[=o]). The Spanish word for cowboy (from

_vaca_, a cow).

WABAN (w[)a]-b[)a]n'). An Indian name of a place. The meaning is

uncertain.

WICKIUP (w[)i]k'[)i]-[)u]p). An Indian hut of brush, or reeds. It

is often pieced out with blankets and tin cans.

WINNEDUMAH (win-ny-d[=u]'m[)a]h). A legendary Indian hero.