squawking and sputtering, from the other’s hands and again hung, heels
above head, like a chicken caught for the block.
“She did but what the wind hadst done,” faltered Padre Alonzo. “Sst!
sst!” (This to the parrot.) “Such language from a lady!”
“Ah-_ha!_” grunted Padre Anzar. “I _told_ thee not to buy a bird that
was raised in a garrison town.”
“_To-o-ny! To-o-ny!_” pleaded the parrot. “_A-aw, To-ony!_”
“Yes,” he went on solemnly, addressing her, “and thou art of the devil,
and hast as many tricks. Twice I forgave thee--once for shouting ‘Fire’
on St. John’s Day as the censer passed; again, for pulling the feathers
out of Señor Esteban’s choice hen. But thou wilt not escape now. Now,
thou’lt go to the kitchen and be shut in with Gabrielda’s black mouser.
There thou shalt shed some quills.”
With this dire threat, he departed along the path, Loretta still
hanging head down at his knee.
Scarcely a moment later a commotion sounded from the distance, a
commotion muffled by ’dobe wall. First came the voice of old Gabrielda,
then the clatter of an overturning pan, next the terror-stricken
shrieks of Loretta. Presently, Padre Anzar appeared, his jaw set, his
eyes shining with the look of duty done.
“She will be nicely scared this time,” he told Padre Alonzo. “She
will match her busy beak with Tomasso’s claws, and she will remember
hereafter to let my blossoms alone.”
“Perhaps,” began Padre Alonzo, deprecatingly, “perhaps ’twere as well
to take her out of temptation’s way, to----”
Padre Anzar raised his shoulders, strode over to knife and trowel and
caught them up. “Move her as thou wilt,” he said grumpily, “and the
farther the better. Tony is proper for us, pretty and songful. But that
parrot,”--he shook his tools as if they were Loretta--“how altogether
useless and ugly and noisy and blasphemous and good-for-naught!”
With this he departed into the shrubbery.
Sounds were still coming from the kitchen--Gabrielda’s cracked voice,
Loretta’s cries, the sullen yowling of a cat. Nodding sadly, Padre
Alonzo waddled to the perch, vacant and formed like a cross. This he
lifted and bore to a place along the wall opposite the great crucifix,
where climbed no flowers. Then, smiling gently, as if with some tender
thought, he waddled back to the trellis, took the cage from its nail,
and, returning to the perch, hung Tony close beside.
* * * * *
Late that night, on coming out of the chapel, Padre Alonzo discovered a
little black something blocking his way along the moonlit path. As he
paused, leaning forward to peer, the black something sidled nearer him,
and saluted.
“_Buenos noches!_” it said, its voice monotonous and human with grief
and weariness; “_buenas noches! buenas noches!_”
The padre bent lower and lifted the parrot to the level of his face.
“Aye, good-night truly, as thou sayest,” he repeated proudly. “Thou
hast some wicked words of a garrison town, but thou knowest the
difference between sun and moon.”
“_Aw, Lora_,” murmured the parrot; “_aw, Lo-ra! Lo-ra!_”
“Yes, Tomasso has used thee badly.” Padre Alonzo patted her head. “I
shall put thee on thy perch,” he went on; “though I trust good Anzar
will not know it. But the moon is up, and my heart is tender. Alas!
one does many things when the moon is up. And the next day--one does
penance.”
He thrust the parrot into a fold of his cassock, made along to where
was the perch, and placed her upon it. Then he stood back, folding his
arms.
“To-morrow is Christmas Day, Loretta,” he said. “And what wilt thou
give to Tony? What can the cactus give the golden poppy? Thou hast only
love, eh? Well, that is much, though it grows from naught, as a China
lily blooms from a bowl of rocks.”
He turned, and found himself before the Tree. Fir and pine massed their
branches behind it, making a background of plushy green. Against that
background, showing full, hung the torn and unclad shape. The moon
glinted upon it, haloing the head of the Crucified.
The padre sank, bowing, and touched himself in the sign.
“_Aw, To-o-ny! To-o-ny!_” came a sleepy croak at his back. The parrot
was settling herself for the night.
Padre Alonzo rose and turned, reaching up to stroke her. “Good-night,
Loretta,” he said fondly. “There were none too lowly for His gift of
love. It was spared to thee, a yawping fowl, a talker after the manner
of the lazy Mexicans that bred thee.”
He turned back upon the path, sighing and raising his eyes once more.
“But for high or low,” he said, musing aloud, “the fruit of that love
is sacrifice.”
* * * * *
Out of the chapel came the sounds of the noon service--the level
intoning of prayer, the rumble and swell of the padres’ voices. From
her place before the great crucifix Loretta mocked it, only ceasing
now and then to answer Tony’s warbles with little whistles of delight
or to run her open bill up and down the bit of vertical pole dividing
her perch. Yesterday’s bout in the kitchen, yesterday’s hunger and
fear, the lonely night ramble along the path, the lack of her preening
friend--all these were forgotten in to-day’s safety, sunlight, plenty,
and companionship. And so she _gurried_ and _purred_, _a-a-awed_ and
_ga-a-awked_, shrilled her “_Buenos días!_” across the garden, laughed
uproariously, or droned the familiar mass.
In reach of her pacing, in touch of her very tail, was the gilded cage,
with Tony darting upstairs and down, yet sparing time now and then for
a sip or a seed or a saucy chirp.
But of a sudden the happy cries of both birds were changed to notes of
alarm. The canary, its round eyes starting like two polished shots,
fluttered high and low, beating its yellow wings against the wires;
while Loretta squared her rudder, spread her pinions and squatted
belligerently. For on the ground, advancing that way by soft steps, and
with the gloating look of the hunter fixed upon the cage, came Tomasso,
the cat.
Quickly the parrot rallied from her panic. As if she knew that her
arch-enemy was not seeking her now, but the precious bit of fluff at
her side, she began a series of terror-inspiring performances learned
in the profane garrison town of her hatching; she gave tongue to dire
words that had long since gone out of her repertory. Ruffled to twice
her size, she strutted along her perch, shrieking angry orders to
mount, flinging out “_Vuelta! vuelta! vuelta!_” in husky trooper tones,
and whistling the bugle calls.
It failed to scare Tomasso. Within the cage, as it gently danced from
its spring, was a tempting morsel, one that lured all the more through
its effort to escape. The cat crept steadily forward, velvet foot
following velvet foot, across the shifting dapple before the great
crucifix, across the packed gravel of the garden path, to the near
shade of a gold of Ophir. There, under the roses, he paused, amber eyes
glowing, whetted claws slipping in and out expectantly, muscles rolling
and flexing with the measurement of the leap.
Then, with the cunning of the wild mother, Loretta adopted new tactics,
seeking to divert him. She wobbled upon her perch, giving vent to
bursts of hysterical laughter; she got between him and the cage and
railed at him.
His unblinking eyes did not leave his quarry, his muscles kept their
quiver of preparation. At the end of his sleek body, his long tail
swept, to and fro, like a furry pendulum marking off the dread time.
By now other inmates of the garden were alarmed. A blue jay scolded
from the terra-cotta roof of the chapel. From the cross-piece of the
tree a line of sparrows gave over their squabbling to look down.
Loretta’s excitement grew wilder. Out of her beak poured phrases not
of mass or military, not of good-days or -nights. For under the gold
of Ophir the furry pendulum was standing out straight and the moving
muscles down Tomasso’s length were tight and still. Her instinct knew
the signs, and again and again she quavered out the “_Fuego!_” that had
disgraced St. John’s Day.
No one heard. From the chapel still sounded the intoning of prayer,
broken by the rumble and swell of the padres’ voices.
A moment, and she acted. With a “_Ga-a-wk!_” of defiance, she aimed
her flight for the ground, took it in all but a somersault, and landed
herself directly before the astonished Tomasso. Then once again she
spread her wings and squared her rudder, making ready for a clash.
Tomasso’s eyes fell to her, he relaxed, body and tail, spitting
resentfully.
Quickly emboldened, she came a hand’s breadth nearer him, snapping at
the black tip of his nose.
He retreated to his haunches, but directed a swift cuff her way.
To this she responded with hoarse laughter and yells of “_To-ony!_” as
if she summoned the canary to witness the encouraging progress of the
fight. Then she stalked forward once more.
Tomasso wrinkled his face. Their positions were unpleasantly reversed.
In Gabrielda’s domain it was she who backed off or sought the safe
places, and he who sallied out from his cosy nook by the range to scare
her into noisy protests. While here she was bristling to him. His paw
poised itself in mid-air.
Loretta grew reckless. Fanning her wings, in one lightning stroke she
bit him between his flattened ears.
The pain of it enraged Tomasso. With a jump, he met her.
Then ensued such a scene as the kitchen knew. There was mewing and
spitting and yowling; there was _gawking_ and squalling and a rending
cry for “_Tony!_” All the while, close to the gold of Ophir, the cat
and the parrot went dizzily around and around, a whirligig of grey,
scarlet and black--that tossed off fur and feathers.
It was over in a moment, when Tomasso fled, over path and grass, and
into a dusky recess between the trunks of fir and pine. There he lay
down, sulking and grumbling and licking his paws. But Loretta stayed
where she was a little, holding her head sidewise in the attitude of a
listener.
“_Lora_,” she murmured presently, her voice inquiring, “_Lora, Lora._”
Then, slowly and clumsily, she made her way to the base of the perch,
and with beak and talons climbed it.
* * * * *
It was past the noon angelus when Padre Alonzo came waddling along
the path, and he found the garden still--still, and filled with the
sun-drawn incense of trees and flowers.
“Sst sst! Tony will be too warm, I fear,” he was saying aloud as he
neared the cage. “The little one shall go to a cooler spot.” And with
this conclusion, he halted beside the perch of the parrot and lifted
the chirping canary down to his knee.
“Buenos días,” he said to Loretta, pausing a moment: “a good-day,
truly, but over-hot, so that my cassock makes of me a living olla, for
I am beaded with water drops from top to toe.”
The parrot shifted a little, and again set her head sidewise, as
if she were puzzled and listening. Next, she edged toward him, and
uncertainly, putting a foot down, clasping and unclasping the pole,
trying it cautiously. Against the vertical piece that made her perch
like a cross she teetered awkwardly and stopped.
“Loretta,” said the padre, in some concern, “hast anything in thy craw?
Well, gulp down a stone and grind thy grist. What one swallowest that
must one digest.”
The gravel crunched behind him. He glanced back, to see Padre Anzar
advancing, brown cowl shading hollow eyes.
Padre Alonzo coloured guiltily. “Tony must go to the shade,” he said.
“The sun is hot to the cooking-point.”
Padre Anzar paused a moment, glowering up at Loretta. “Then may it
singe the plumage of that vixen,” he answered. “She desecrates our
garden.” Another frown, and he passed on.
Padre Alonzo watched him out of sight before he again addressed the
parrot. “I fear thou must mend thy ways, Loretta,” he said. “Here
it is Christmas Day, and yet Anzar has no good words for thee. But
see,”--he held up a plump hand, displaying one of Gabrielda’s sweet
biscuits--“riotous as thou art, I have remembered. And now tell me,
what has thou given Tony?”
As though in mute answer, the parrot suddenly lowered her head toward
him, and he saw that over the grey of her feathered face was a splash
of scarlet, as if a vivid fuchsia petal had fallen there.
“Loretta!” he cried anxiously; “Loretta! thine eyes!”
She lifted her head until her beak pointed past the giant crucifix and
straight into the glaring sun.
“Buenos días,” he prompted tenderly, alarmed now at her unusual silence
and the indifference shown his offering; “Loretta, buenos días.”
But she was settling herself upon her cross-like perch as if for the
night. “_A-aw, To-o-ny! To-o-ny!_” she returned with a little sleepy
croak; “_buenas noches! buenas noches!_”
LITTLE WATCHER
Picked from among the litter by the slack of his neck, the coyote whelp
opened round eyes of greyish amber and blinked into the face of the Old
Woman. The Navajo looked back at him, noting with satisfaction that he
did not wriggle. Then she put him carefully to one side and leaned over
the other cubs, whimpering and crawling about in their shallow burrow
like so many helpless puppies. These she caught up, one by one, and
gave each a swift flick against a stone.
But with the baby she had chosen, she was most tender, holding him
tucked in a fold of her bright-striped blanket as she descended the
steep trail from the butte. When they came out upon the level below,
she made at once toward the goats, which were pasturing at some
distance, and from the flock drove a young female, fat, and black as
the coal streak that furnished her cooking fires. Still carrying the
coyote, she led the goat by a riata to the corral at the foot of the
mesa precipice, tied her to a cedar post, and promptly put the whelp up
to the udder for his first meal of goat’s milk.
He was a wee ball of downy, mouse-coloured fur then, with soft ears, a
head shaped like a peach, and a mere wisp of tail. At night, he slept
near the Old Woman in the dirt-covered hogan, his bed a square of red
flannel on the bottom of a great, olla-like basket which he could
neither tip over nor crawl out of. In the daytime, riding in the crook
of the aged squaw’s arm, he accompanied her to the desert, where she
went to herd, or he lay beneath a brush sun shelter while she worked in
the cornfield.
But soon, well suckled by the she-goat, he began to grow amazingly.
First he found his legs, and was able to go wabbling after his foster
mother as she lonesomely circled the corral. Next, the wabble became
a stout little trot. And now the Old Woman found no need of holding
him up for his dinner. The goat, when heavy with milk, stood without
being tied, and even _uh-uh-uhed_ to him invitingly if he was slow to
come; while he had so lengthened and heightened that he was able to
drink without aid. He gave over the olla-like basket, therefore, and
the corral became his home. Here he showed an increasing love for the
she-goat by yelping mournfully if she started off down the enclosure,
and by barking in noisy delight at her return. The squaw still saw him
often, and stroked him much so that he might not become hand shy.
Changed in looks he was by now. The black-tipped nose was longer and
more pointed; the greyish amber eyes were paler and narrowed in their
slits; the head was flat; the ears were upright; the hair was not
downy, but coarse to wiriness, blackish and brindled along the back and
mane, striped burro-wise across the shoulders, elsewhere of a dusty,
sunburned, tawny grey.
With his change in looks there came a change in appetite. He began to
crave other food than milk, when the Old Woman gave him to eat of wafer
bread and let him lap from a gourd shell filled from her wicker water
bottle. Later, the she-goat having gone dry, and there being no second
foster mother for him, she fed him with other things--the bean of the
mesquite and the sweetish fruit of the prickly pear. One day, he tasted
blood. The squaw brought him in a linnet, all plump and juicy beneath
its feathery coat. He lay down, holding the tiny thing between his
forefeet, and tore at it greedily, with little throaty growls. When he
was finished, she tried to pull away the bits of plumage caught in his
paws. And for the first time he showed his teeth.
Then the Boy came. Having got the man scent before he reached the
hogan, the young prairie wolf was not frightened at the stranger
whose blanket was as bright with stripes as the Old Woman’s, and who
was otherwise very like her in appearance--except that a gay banda
kept back the hair from his forehead. On the other hand, the Boy was
startled as, on entering the low hut, he saw two eyes burning out at
him from a dim corner.
“What is it?” he asked the Old Woman, speaking in the Navajo tongue.
“It is Little Watcher,” she answered. “For so I have named him. The
kids were all stolen away by night. When I prayed to Those Above, I was
bidden to do what my father had done--fight poison with poison.”
With the Boy’s coming, the coyote had much meat. For every day the Boy
took bow and arrows and climbed to the mesa top. Here grew juniper,
piñon, and cedar, and here rabbits were to be found, and reptiles,
ground squirrel, buzzard, and hawk. Returning, the hunter threw the
whole of his quarry to Little Watcher, who was easy to please but hard
to satisfy. The coyote dragged the game out of reach and then fell upon
it as if he feared interruption, mumbling his delight.
Meanwhile the Old Woman was not neglecting to train him. When the
sunrise sheen was on the desert, and the squaw, singing the early
morning song, drove the flock to its scant feeding, she took Little
Watcher along. And as the goats slowly travelled, browsing, she taught
him to follow and round them.
By the end of twelve moons, what with no long runs and plentiful food,
Little Watcher was larger than the wild of his own kind and as big as
his kinsman, the grey wolf. Now a wren was not a mouthful for him: a
snap, a swallow, and it was gone, and the amber eyes were pleading for
more. Yet for all his gorging and his hankering after flesh, he was
no less a friend to his foster mother, the she-goat, than before, and
having skirted the flock, liked to sprawl near by her, and perhaps
tease a lizard by way of entertainment.
There came a night when for the first time his strength, his training,
and his affection for her were put to the test. Enemies came.
Only the stars were shining, and the corral lay in the heavy shadow
of the precipice. But Little Watcher needed no light to tell him that
danger threatened. He lifted his muzzle to the rough path from the
mesa, perked his ears, and snuffed noiselessly. Then, as noiselessly,
he rose.
Presently, along the foot of the precipice, came several forms like his
own. He was down the wind from them, and they skulked forward with no
halts, their feet softly padding the sand. Soon the foremost was beside
the enclosure and reared upon his hind legs.
Once more Little Watcher rose--his body rigid, his head stretched out,
his brush on a stiff line with his back, and from crest to tail his
hair stood up belligerently. Then, with a shrill yelp of defiance he
leaped forward and caught the other by the throat.
His fangs were sharp, his hold was a vise. One rending pull, and the
strange coyote pitched end for end between his fellows. They smelled
the warm blood--and leaped upon him with a wrangle of exultant cries.
Out of her hogan rushed the Old Woman waving a pine torch above her
head and shrieking to scare the intruders. They ran to a safe distance,
from where they stopped to look round. The Old Woman did not follow
them nor trouble to wake the Boy. When she had gone among the goats to
see that none was hurt or missing, she dragged the dead coyote some
rods away, and returned to give Little Watcher a caress.
But there was no rest for Little Watcher. Still bristled, he stayed
inside the corral, now skirting the goats on fleet foot, now pausing
beside his black foster mother, but always licking his chops and
mumbling crossly.
It was then the season that follows the first rains. A haze of green
lay on the desert--a haze touched here by the yellow of sunflower and
marigold masses, there by the purple of the larkspur’s slender wand,
again by a fleck of gleaming alkali.
But all too soon that haze was gone again, melting away with the hot
kiss of the sun. Greasewood and mesquite showed the only verdure now,
and the flock found the picking poor.
So, one dawn, a burro was loaded with blankets, the cooking pottery,
and some water bottles filled at the precious spring. Then the squaw
said farewell to the Boy, who stayed to tend orchard and corn strips,
and drove her bearded company out of the cedar corral. Soon she was
well on her way, and the grey and the red sandstone ribbons of the mesa
precipice were blending and fading behind her.
Finally, when more than a score of camps had been pitched and broken,
the goats were stopped near the cottonwood-lined bed of a dry stream.
Here the burro was unloaded, the Old Woman made a sun shelter of boughs
on the bare gravel of the arroyo, and dug for, and found, water.
Grazing was good, and the goats fattened. So did Little Watcher, who
fared well on the daily spoil of the squaw’s snares. Here, too, almost
in the shadow of the wooded Tunicha Mountains, was peace--for a period.
Each night the goats were driven in to the line of cottonwoods, where,
bunched together, they lay down. On one side of them was the shelter
of boughs, where the Old Woman slept, rousing occasionally to put a
length of mesquite root upon her torch fire; on the opposite side,
close to his picketed foster mother, dozed Little Watcher, flat upon
his belly, his hind legs stretched out straight with his tail, his
muzzle on his forepaws. But, like the squaw, he waked now and again,
and listened--head high, ears upright and moving, amber eyes glowing
in the dark. And he often heard what the other did not--the far-off
staccato _yip! yip! yip!_ of the prairie wolf on a scent.
Then, for a second time during his term of guarding, enemies
appeared--boldly, in broad daylight, when the Old Woman was away
looking to her traps. It was now the season when the coyote runs in
pairs. And but two appeared, out of a patch of cactus to the mountain
side of the goats. From the cacti, they came darting down upon the
nearest of the flock--Little Watcher’s black foster mother.
But before they could reach her, a streak of tawny grey shot between.
And as the she-goat scrambled up, bleating in terror, to join the herd,
Little Watcher, all bristled from crest to tail, met the male of the
coyote pair and buried his teeth in his flank.
They fought furiously, rolling over and over, sending the sand into
the air, tearing up the greasewood, mingling their cries of pain and
rage. From the edge of the cactus patch, the female watched them,
rather indifferently, however, and with frequent hungry glances in the
direction of the goats.
The gaunt stranger was no match for the guardian of the flock. Very
soon the battle was over. Then Little Watcher looked up, and at the
female. There she was at the summit of the gentle rise, apparently
waiting, and turning her head prettily this way and that. Little
Watcher loped toward her. She let him come close, then wheeled and sped
away through the cacti. He followed.
He was back before nightfall, and lay down at the feet of the aged
Navajo, his eyes furtive, as if he were conscious of neglected duty,
his tongue lolling with a long, hard run. Alternately scolding and
caressing him, the Old Woman gave him a few laps from her gourd shell,
and presently he sought out his foster mother and rested beside her
until the goats sought the cottonwoods.
But thereafter he often left his charges to go bounding away toward
the mountains, and not even the proffering of food could tempt him to
stay. Sometimes of a night he would rise and sneak off. Sometimes of a
morning he would trot to the top of a near-by rise, stop, look round
upon the goats, give a troubled whine--and disappear.