She kissed him and stole away.
* * * * *
Cruel days fell upon the Crees before Baroma’s pride was broken. Many
children died and some of the mothers were beyond help. Siena’s people
kept their strength, and he himself showed no effect of hunger. Long
ago the Cree women had deemed him superhuman, that the Great Spirit fed
him from the happy hunting grounds.
At last Baroma went to Siena. “Siena may save his people and the Crees.”
Siena regarded him long, then replied: “Siena waits.”
“Let Baroma know. What does Siena wait for? While he waits we die.”
Siena smiled his slow, inscrutable smile and turned away.
Baroma sent for his daughter and ordered her to plead for her life.
Emihiyah came, fragile as a swaying reed, more beautiful than a rose
choked in a tangled thicket, and she stood before Siena with doe eyes
veiled. “Emihiyah begs Siena to save her and the tribe of Crees.”
“Siena waits,” replied the slave.
Baroma roared in his fury and bade his braves lash the slave. But the
blows fell from feeble arms and Siena laughed at his captors.
Then, like a wild lion unleashed from long thrall, he turned upon them:
“Starve! Cree dogs! Starve! When the Crees all fall like leaves in
autumn, then Siena and his people will go back to the north.”
Baroma’s arrogance left him then, and on another day, when Emihiyah lay
weak and pallid in his wigwam and the pangs of hunger gnawed at his own
vitals, he again sought Siena. “Let Siena tell for what he waits.”
Siena rose to his lofty height and the leaping flame of the Northern
Light gathered in his eyes. “Freedom!” One word he spoke and it rolled
away on the wind.
“Baroma yields,” replied the Cree, and hung his head.
“Send the squaws who can walk and the braves who can crawl out upon
Siena’s trail.”
Then Siena went to Baroma’s lodge and took up the wonderful shooting
stick and, loading it, he set out upon snowshoes into the white forest.
He knew where to find the moose yards in the sheltered corners. He
heard the bulls pounding the hard-packed snow and cracking their
antlers on the trees. The wary beasts would not have allowed him to
steal close, as a warrior armed with a bow must have done, but Siena
fired into the herd at long range. And when they dashed off, sending
the snow up like a spray, a huge black bull lay dead. Siena followed
them as they floundered through the drifts, and whenever he came within
range he shot again. When five moose were killed he turned upon his
trail to find almost the whole Cree tribe had followed him and were
tearing the meat and crying out in a kind of crazy joy. That night the
fires burned before the wigwams, the earthen pots steamed, and there
was great rejoicing. Siena hunted the next day, and the next, and for
ten days he went into the white forest with his wonderful shooting
stick, and eighty moose fell to his unerring aim.
The famine was broken and the Crees were saved.
When the mad dances ended and the feasts were over, Siena appeared
before Baroma’s lodge. “Siena will lead his people northward.”
Baroma, starving, was a different chief from Baroma well fed and in no
pain. All his cunning had returned. “Siena goes free. Baroma gave his
word. But Siena’s people remain slaves.”
“Siena demanded freedom for himself and people,” said the younger chief.
“Baroma heard no word of Siena’s tribe. He would not have granted
freedom for them. Siena’s freedom was enough.”
“The Cree twists the truth. He knows Siena would not go without his
people. Siena might have remembered Baroma’s cunning. The Crees were
ever liars.”
Baroma stalked before his fire with haughty presence. About him in the
circle of light sat his medicine men, his braves and squaws. “The Cree
is kind. He gave his word. Siena is free. Let him take his wonderful
shooting stick and go back to the north.”
Siena laid the shooting stick at Baroma’s feet and likewise the powder
horn and bullet pouch. Then he folded his arms, and his falcon eyes
looked far beyond Baroma to the land of the changing lights and the old
home on the green-white, rushing Athabasca, god-forsaken river. “Siena
stays.”
Baroma started in amaze and anger. “Siena makes Baroma’s word idle.
Begone!”
“Siena stays!”
The look of Siena, the pealing reply, for a moment held the chief mute.
Slowly Baroma stretched wide his arms and lifted them, while from his
face flashed a sullen wonder. “Great Slave!” he thundered.
So was respect forced from the soul of the Cree, and the name thus
wrung from his jealous heart was one to live forever in the lives and
legends of Siena’s people.
Baroma sought the silence of his lodge, and his medicine men and braves
dispersed, leaving Siena standing in the circle, a magnificent statue
facing the steely north.
* * * * *
From that day insult was never offered to Siena, nor word spoken to
him by the Crees, nor work given. He was free to come and go where he
willed, and he spent his time in lessening the tasks of his people.
The trails of the forest were always open to him, as were the streets
of the Cree village. If a brave met him, it was to step aside; if a
squaw met him, it was to bow her head; if a chief met him, it was to
face him as warriors faced warriors.
One twilight Emihiyah crossed his path, and suddenly she stood as once
before, like a frail reed about to break in the wind. But Siena passed
on. The days went by and each one brought less labor to Siena’s people,
until that one came wherein there was no task save what they set
themselves. Siena’s tribe were slaves, yet not slaves.
The winter wore by and the spring and the autumn, and again Siena’s
fame went abroad on the four winds. The Chippewayans journeyed from
afar to see the Great Slave, and likewise the Blackfeet and the Yellow
Knives. Honor would have been added to fame; councils called; overtures
made to the somber Baroma on behalf of the Great Slave, but Siena
passed to and fro among his people, silent and cold to all others, true
to the place which his great foe had given him. Captive to a lesser
chief, they said; the Great Slave who would yet free his tribe and
gather to him a new and powerful nation.
Once in the late autumn Siena sat brooding in the twilight by Ema’s
tepee. That night all who came near him were silent. Again Siena was
listening to voices on the wind, voices that had been still for long,
which he had tried to forget. It was the north wind, and it whipped
the spruces and moaned through the pines. In its cold breath it bore a
message to Siena, a hint of coming winter and a call from Naza, far
north of the green-white, thundering Athabasca, river without a spirit.
In the darkness when the camp slumbered Siena faced the steely north.
As he looked a golden shaft, arrow-shaped and arrow-swift, shot to the
zenith.
“Naza!” he whispered to the wind. “Siena watches.”
Then the gleaming, changing Northern Lights painted a picture of gold
and silver bars, of flushes pink as shell, of opal fire and sunset
red; and it was a picture of Siena’s life from the moment the rushing
Athabasca rumbled his name, to the far distant time when he would say
farewell to his great nation and pass forever to the retreat of the
winds. God-chosen he was, and had power to read the story in the sky.
Seven nights Siena watched in the darkness; and on the seventh night,
when the golden flare and silver shafts faded in the north, he passed
from tepee to tepee, awakening his people. “When Siena’s people hear
the sound of the shooting stick let them cry greatly: ‘Siena kills
Baroma! Siena kills Baroma!’”
With noiseless stride Siena went among the wigwams and along the lanes
until he reached Baroma’s lodge. Entering in the dark he groped with
his hands upward to a moose’s antlers and found the shooting stick.
Outside he fired it into the air.
Like a lightning bolt the report ripped asunder the silence, and the
echoes clapped and reclapped from the cliffs. Sharp on the dying echoes
Siena bellowed his war whoop, and it was the second time in a hundred
years for foes to hear that terrible, long-drawn cry.
Then followed the shrill yells of Siena’s people: “Siena kills Baroma
... Siena kills Baroma ... Siena kills Baroma!”
The slumber of the Crees awoke to a babel of many voices; it rose
hoarsely on the night air, swelled hideously into a deafening roar that
shook the earth.
In this din of confusion and terror when the Crees were lamenting the
supposed death of Baroma and screaming in each other’s ears, “The Great
Slave takes his freedom!” Siena ran to his people and, pointing to the
north, drove them before him.
Single file, like a long line of flitting specters, they passed out
of the fields into the forest. Siena kept close on their trail, ever
looking backward, and ready with the shooting stick.
The roar of the stricken Crees softened in his ears and at last died
away.
Under the black canopy of whispering leaves, over the gray,
mist-shrouded muskeg flats, around the glimmering reed-bordered ponds,
Siena drove his people.
All night Siena hurried them northward and with every stride his heart
beat higher. Only he was troubled by a sound like the voice that came
to him on the wind.
But the wind was now blowing in his face, and the sound appeared to
be at his back. It followed on his trail as had the step of destiny.
When he strained his ears he could not hear it, yet when he had gone
on swiftly, persuaded it was only fancy, then the voice that was not a
voice came haunting him.
In the gray dawn Siena halted on the far side of a gray flat and peered
through the mists on his back trail. Something moved out among the
shadows, a gray shape that crept slowly, uttering a mournful cry.
“Siena is trailed by a wolf,” muttered the chief.
Yet he waited, and saw that the wolf was an Indian. He raised the fatal
shooting stick.
As the Indian staggered forward, Siena recognized the robe of silver
fox and marten, his gift to Emihiyah. He laughed in mockery. It was a
Cree trick. Tillimanqua had led the pursuit disguised in his sister’s
robe. Baroma would find his son dead on the Great Slave’s trail.
“Siena!” came the strange, low cry.
It was the cry that had haunted him like the voice on the wind. He
leaped as a bounding deer.
Out of the gray fog burned dusky eyes half-veiled by dusky hair,
and little hands that he knew wavered as fluttering leaves. “Emihiyah
comes,” she said.
[Illustration: OUT OF THE GRAY FOG BURNED DUSKY EYES HALF VEILED BY
DUSKY HAIR--“EMIHIYAH COMES,” SHE SAID. “SIENA WAITS,” HE REPLIED]
“Siena waits,” he replied.
Far to the northward he led his bride and his people, far beyond the
old home on the green-white, thundering Athabasca, god-forsaken river;
and there, on the lonely shores of an inland sea, he fathered the Great
Slave Tribe.
YAQUI
YAQUI
I
Sunset--it was the hour of Yaqui’s watch. Chief of a driven remnant of
the once mighty tribe, he trusted no sentinel so well as himself at the
end of the day’s march. While his braves unpacked the tired horses, and
his women prepared the evening meal, and his bronze-skinned children
played in the sand, Yaqui watched the bold desert horizon.
Long years of hatred had existed between the Yaquis of upland Sonora
and the Mexicans from the east. Like eagles, the Indian tribe had lived
for centuries in the mountain fastnesses of the Sierra Madre, free,
happy, self-sufficient. But wandering prospectors had found gold in
their country and that had been the end of their peace. At first the
Yaquis, wanting only the wildness and loneliness of their homes, moved
farther and farther back from the ever-encroaching advance of the gold
diggers. At last, driven from the mountains into the desert, they
realized that gold was the doom of their tribe and they began to fight
for their land. Bitter and bloody were the battles; and from father to
son this wild, free, proud race bequeathed a terrible hatred.
Yaqui was one of the last great chiefs of his once great tribe. All his
life he remembered the words of his father and his grandfather--that
the Yaquis must find an unknown and impenetrable hiding place or perish
from the earth. When Mexican soldiers at the decree of their government
made war upon this tribe, killing those who resisted and making slaves
of the captured, Yaqui with his family and followers set out upon a
last journey across the Sonoran wilderness. Hateful and fearful of the
east, whence this blight of gold diggers and land robbers appeared to
come, he had fled toward the setting sun into a waste of desert land
unknown to his people--a desert of scorching heat and burning sand and
tearing cactus and treacherous lava, where water and wood and grass
seemed days apart. Some of the youngest children had died on the way
and all except the strong braves were wearing out.
Alone, on a ridge of rising ground, Yaqui faced the back trail and
watched with falcon eyes. Miles distant though that horizon was, those
desert eyes could have made out horses against the clear sky. He did
not gaze steadily, for the Indian method was to flash a look across the
spaces, from near to far, and to fix the eye momentarily, to strain the
vision and magnify all objects, then to avert the gaze from that
direction and presently flash it back again.
[Illustration: ALONE ON A RIDGE OF RISING GROUND YAQUI FACED THE BACK
TRAIL AND WATCHED WITH FALCON EYES]
Lonely, wild, and grand, the scene seemed one of lifelessness. Only the
sun lived, still hot, as it burned red-gold far away on the rugged rim
of this desert world. Nothing breathed in that vastness. To Yaqui’s
ear the silence was music. The red sun slipped down and the desert
changed. The golden floor of sand and rock shaded cold to the horizon
and above that the sky lost its rose, turning to intense luminous blue.
In the far distance the peaks dimmed and vanished in purple. The fire
of the western heavens paled and died, and over all the rock-ribbed,
sand-encumbered plateau stole a wondrous gray shade. Yaqui watched
until that gray changed to black and the horizon line was lost in
night. Safe now from pursuers were he and his people until the dawn.
Then, guided by a speck of camp-fire light, he returned to his silent
men and moaning women and a scant meal that he divided. Hunger was
naught to Yaqui, nor thirst. Four days could he travel the desert
without drink, an endurance most of his hardy tribe were trained to.
And as for toil, the strength of his giant frame had never reached its
limit. But strong chief that he was, when he listened to the moaning
women and gazed at the silent, set faces of the children under the
starlight he sagged to the sands and, bowing his head, prayed to his
gods. He prayed for little--only life, freedom, loneliness, a hidden
niche where his people would hear no steps and fear no specters on
their trail. Then with unquenchable faith he stretched his great length
on the sands; and the night was as a moment.
In the gray of a dawn cold, pure, and silent, with the radiant morning
star shining like a silver moon, the long file of Yaquis rode and
tramped westward, on down the rugged bare slopes of this unknown desert.
And out of the relentless east, land of enemies, rose the glaring sun.
Like magic the frost melted off the rocks and the cool freshness of
morning changed to a fiery breath. The sun climbed, and the leagues
were as long as the hours. Down into a broad region of lava toiled the
fugitives. Travel over the jagged crusts and through the poison-spiked
cholla lamed the horses and made walking imperative. Yaqui drove his
people before him, and some of the weakest fell by the way.
Out of the hot lava and stinging cactus the Indians toiled and entered
a region of bare stone, cut by wind and water into labyrinthine
passages where, even if they had left tracks on the hard rocks, few
pursuers could have followed them. Yaqui told this to his people, told
them he saw sheep on the peaks above and smelled water, and thus urged
them on and on league after league toward distant purple heights.
Vast and hard as had been the desert behind them, this strange upflung
desert before them seemed vaster and grimmer. The trackless way led
ever upward by winding passages and gorges--a gloomy and weird region
of colored stone. And over all reigned the terrible merciless sun.
Yaqui sacrificed horses to the thirst and hunger of his people and
abandoned the horror of toil under the sun to a slower progress by
night. Blanched and magnified under the great stars, the iron-bound
desert of riven rock, so unreal and weird, brought forth a chant from
the lips of Yaqui’s women. His braves, stoic like himself, endured and
plodded on, lightening burdens of the weaker and eventually carrying
the children. That night passed and a day of stupor in the shade of
sun-heated rock; another night led the fugitives onward and upward
through a maze of shattered cliffs, black and wild. Day dawned once
more, showing Yaqui by the pitiless light that only his men could
endure much more of this dragging on.
He made camp there and encouraged his people by a faith that had
come to him during the night--a whisper from the spirit of his
forefathers--to endure, to live, to go to a beautiful end his vision
could not see. Then Yaqui stalked alone off into the fastnesses of the
rocks and prayed to his gods for guidance. All about him were silence,
desolation, a gray barren world of rock, a black barren world of
lava. Far as his falcon eye could see to the north and east and south
stretched the illimitable glaring desert, rough, peaked, spiked, riven,
ghastly with yellow slopes, bleak with its bare belts, terrible with
its fluted and upflung plateaus, stone faced by endless ramparts and
fast bound to the fading distance. From the west, up over the dark and
forlorn heights, Yaqui heard the whispers of his dead forefathers.
Another dawn found Yaqui on the great heights with the sunrise at his
back and with another and more promising world at his feet.
“Land of our forefathers!” he cried out sonorously to his people,
gazing mutely down into the promised land. A vast gray-green valley
yawned at their feet. Leagues of grassy, rock-ribbed, and tree-dotted
slopes led down to a gleaming white stream, winding like a silver
ribbon down the valley, to lose itself far in the lower country, where
the colored desert merged into an immense and boundless void of hazy
blue--the sea.
“Great Water, where the sun sleeps,” said Yaqui with long arm
outstretched. “Yaqui’s father’s father saw it.”
Yaqui carried the boy and led the way down from the heights. Mountain
sheep and wild horses and deer and quail that had never before seen
man showed no fear of this invasion of their wild home. And Yaqui’s
people, footsore and starved, gazed round them and, in the seeming
safety of this desert-locked valley with its grass and water and wood
and abundant game, they took hope again and saw their prayers answered
and happiness once more possible. New life flushed their veins. The
long slopes, ever greener as they descended, were welcome to aching
eyes so tired of the glaring expanses of the desert.
For an encampment Yaqui chose the head of the valley. Wide and gently
sloping, with a rock-walled spring that was the source of the stream,
and large ironwood trees and pines and paloverdes, this lonely hidden
spot satisfied the longing in Yaqui’s heart. Almost his joy was
complete. But never could he feel wholly secure again, even had he
wings of an eagle. For Yaqui’s keen eyes had seen gold in the sands
of the stream; and gold spelled the doom of the Indian. Still Yaqui
was grateful and content. Not soon indeed would his people be tracked
to this fastness, and perhaps never. He cautioned his braves to save
their scant gun ammunition, sending them out with bows and arrows to
kill the tame deer and antelope. The weary squaws no longer chanted the
melancholy songs of their woe. The long travel had ended. They unpacked
their stores under the wide-spreading pines, made fires to roast the
meat that would soon be brought, and attended to the ailments of the
few children left to them. Soon the naked little ones, starved and
cut and worn as they were, took to the clear cool water like goslings
learning to swim.
Yaqui, carrying his rifle, stalked abroad to learn more of this
wonderful valley. Stretching at length along the stream, he drank
deeply, as an Indian who loved mountain water. The glint of gold in the
wet sand did not please him as had the sweetness of the cold water.
Grasping up a handful of sand and pebbles, he rubbed and washed it in
his palm. Tiny grains of gold and little nuggets of gold! Somewhere up
at the head of this valley lay the mother lode from which the gold had
washed down.
Yaqui knew that here was treasure for which the white men would spill
blood and sell their souls. But to the Indians--the Papagos, the Yumas,
the man-eating Seris, and especially to the Yaquis--gold was no more
than rock or sand, except that they hated it for the curse of white
hunters it lured to the desert. Yaqui had found many a rich vein and
ledge and placer of gold. He had hated them, and now more than any
other he hated this new discovery. It would be a constant peril to his
people. In times of flood this mountain stream would carry grains of
gold as far as it flowed down on the desert. Yaqui saw in it a menace.
But there was hope in the fact that many treasures of the desert
heights would never be seen by white men. His father had told him
that. This gray valley was high, cradled in the rocky uplands, and it
might be inaccessible from below.
Yaqui set out to see. His stride was that of the strongest and tallest
of his tribe, and distance meant little to him. Hunger gnawed at his
vitals, but the long march across the wastes and heights had not tired
him. Yaqui had never known exhaustion. Before the sun stood straight
overhead he had ascertained that this valley of promise was shut off
from the west and that the stream failed in impassable desert. From
north and east he had traveled, and therefore felt a grim security. But
to the south he turned apprehensive eyes. Long he tramped and high he
climbed, at last to see that the valley, this land of his forefathers,
could be gained from the south. Range and ridge sloped gradually to a
barren desolate land of sun and cacti, far as his desert eyes could
see. That must be the land of the Seris, the man-eaters. But it was a
waterless hell in summer. No fear from the south till the winter rains
fell! Yaqui returned to his camp, reaching there at sunset. There was
joy in the dusky welcoming eyes of his young wife as she placed fresh
meat before him.
“Yaqui’s only son will live,” she said, and pointed to the frail boy as
he slept. The chief gazed somberly at the little brown face of his son,
the last of his race.
Days passed. With rest and food and water the gloomy spirit of the
Yaquis underwent a gradual change. The wild valley was an Indian’s
happy hunting ground, encompassed by lofty heights known only to sheep
and eagles. Like wild animals, all savages, in the peace and loneliness
of a secluded region, soon forgot past trials and fears. Still, the
chief Yaqui did not forget, but as time passed and nothing disturbed
the serenity of this hiding place his vigilance slowly relaxed. The
wind and the sun and the solitude and the presence of antelope and wild
horses always within sight of camp--these factors of primitive nature
had a healing effect upon his sore heart. In the canyons he found
graves and bones of his progenitors.