The Flute of the Gods Part 27

"Thanks that you wish me," he said,--"but the work is there and the watching is there. When the smoke is over--I ask for your prayers and--I go!"

Steadily he ran on the trail past the thickets of the rose, and the great rock by the trail--steadily under the stars a long way. Then out of the many small night sounds of the wilderness he heard behind him the long call of a night bird in flight. Only a little ways did he go when again that little song of three descending notes came to him. It was very close this time, but he neither halted nor made more haste.

For all the heed given it he might not have hearkened to it more than to the cricket in the gra.s.s.

Yet it spoke clearly to his ears. He knew that sentinels had been placed along his trail, and as he ran steadily, and alone, past each, he knew that the watchers were keen of eye and ear, and that the last two sent each other the signal "All is well,"--also he knew that the signal would be echoed back along the trail until each watcher would know that their visitor was on the trail alone, and all was well, and each could go back to Te-gat-ha and report to the war chief, and find sleep.

The watchfulness told him also that the maid they sought was one of importance. The visitor in the sky, called by his people the Ancient Star,--and called by Fray Luis the planet Venus, gave special meaning to a captive from the tribe of an enemy. It saved some clan from devoting a son or a daughter to sacrifice.

He did not halt at once even after the last call was sent back into the night, and he was far on the south trail ere he turned and more slowly retraced his steps. No lingering watcher must be overtaken by him on the trail.

So it was that Arcturus (the watcher of the night when the sun is away) was high overhead when he came again to the place of the great rock where as youths, he and his comrades climbed on each others'

shoulders--and even then only the most agile and daring had scaled the smooth wall, and lay hidden there in a water worn depression. Many scouts might pa.s.s it without thought that a maid could be hidden there!

But the mere whisper of a whistle like the bluebird call brought her head over the edge, and their eyes met in the starlight.

Half the day, and half the night, had she lain there waiting for his call, hearing more than once the pad of the feet, or the panting breath of scouts:--she had even heard words of the sentinels sent from Te-gat-ha ahead of Tahn-te--eager as wolves they were in search of the maid--for it was evil medicine most potent to lose a captive after the symbols of ceremony had been drawn on the body!

But all her fear of them gave her no fear of Tahn-te. His first look into her eyes had been the look which said strange things, and sweet things--it was as if he had spoken thanks that he had found her on the trail.

And when he held up his arm to her in the night, she wrapped closely the deerskin robe about her, and slipped downward into his embrace.

The wall was so high he had himself gone ahead and dragged her up by help of the skin robe. And, strong though he was, the weight of her as she slipped downward against him staggered him, and his arms went tightly around her slender girl's body to save her, and to save himself.

And in that moment one of the magical things came to pa.s.s in the starlight, her young b.r.e.a.s.t.s were bare and held close to his own body.

Her heart beats were felt by him as she lay limp for a s.p.a.ce in his arms, and Tahn-te knew that for all other things in his life words could be found--but for the thrill of the touch of her body there were no words. It was as if a star had slipped out of the sky and given its glow and radiance to his life--the music of existence had touched him--and the magic of it held him dumb and still.

And he knew that the magic of the maid was born of the Great Mystery, and that a new life for him was born as each heard the heart beats of the other.

It was as truly a new marking for the Life Trail as had been the prayer made as a boy at the mesa shrine to answer the young moon message of the G.o.d of the Wilderness.

The maid stirred in his clasp and drew herself shyly away from him. At her first little movement, his arms grew tense about her, then they fell away, and he watched her, while with head averted from him, she arranged as well as might be her scant garb. There could be no words between them, but his touch was tender as he took her hand and led her out to the trail. He felt that she must know all he felt--and all the dreams into which the white shadow of her had entered--the sacred fourth shadow cast not by the body, but by the spirit, and linking itself with kindred spirit even while the human body breathed and moved and cast the black first shadow that all people may see.

The black first shadow all can see as a man moves or as he stands still, and the two gray shadows many can see after a man is on the death trail or when the breath has gone away. These remain with a man because they are of his body, but the white shadow is the shadow of the breath of the Great Mystery--it is as the perfume of the flower, the song of the bird, and the love of the man.

Fear lent the girl fleetness as she ran beside him in the night, and he marvelled at her.--No pueblo girl could have kept that pace. It was plain that she had lived with the rovers of the desert. All the long hours had she been without food or drink, yet she ran like a boy, and with the swiftness of a boy.

When the dawn broke, and the morning star showed each the face of the other, they had reached the trail by the river. From the west came black wind-swept clouds to meet the sun, and in the south the angered G.o.d of Thunder spoke. Tahn-te looked at the girl whose eyes showed the weariness of the long strain--his thoughts dwelt on the woes she must have lived through ere he found her:--plainly she could not run unfed to the hills of his people, and plainly since the storm was meeting them, the wise time to halt must be ere it swept the valley.

From the well known trail he had departed before the dawn, and the way they went was a hard way across the heights where earth's heart-fires had split the land and left great jagged monuments of stone;--and red ash as if even now scarcely free from the heat of flame.

Into one of the great crevices,--wide, and roofed by rock--he led the strange maid. Water came from a break in the great grey wall, and sand had drifted there on the wind, and the girl with a moan that was of weariness sank down there where the sand was. Tahn-te felt himself strangely hurt by that moan and wondered that it should be so.

She was only a maid after all, and the little woeful cry made him think of a hurt child he would have lifted in his arms and carried home to its mother. But the maid of the bluebird wing was far from mother and from her people;--no words had they exchanged in the long trail of the night, he knew not anything but that she spoke Navahu, and would have him think she wished to be Te-hua.

When she lay so very still that he could not see even the sign of life in her face, he went close and touched her--and then he saw that the spirit of her had truly gone on the trail of the twilight--she was no longer alive as other people are alive.

He lifted her to where the water ran, and with prayer let the cool drops of the living spring touch her face until the life came back, and her eyes opened wide with terror at sight of him bending above her, but he whispered as to a child--"Na-vin (my own)" and then "K[=a]-ye-povi"--which was to call her the Blossom of the Spirit, the name had been always with him in the Love-maiden Dream;--and this maid was the dream come true!

He drew her back from that strange border land of life where the strong G.o.ds of shadow wait;--and then the whisper of the blossom name took the fear from her dazed eyes--she clung to his hands and in a sort of breathless joy repeated the name "K[=a]-ye-povi--K[=a]-ye-povi!"--Me!

"K[=a]-ye-povi!"

"You!--Doli--Navahu!"

She nodded a.s.sent. "Yes--it is so--now," she said--"but once when little,"--she made the sign for the height of a child--"Te-hua, not Navahu--then K[=a]-ye-povi!"

Thus it was Tahn-te found K[=a]-ye-povi after the many years, and knew that the Great Mystery had set his foot on the trail to Te-gat-ha that he, and not another, should find her!

From traders, and from an occasional Navahu prisoner, Tahn-te had learned Navahu words, and Navahu G.o.d thoughts, and now he strove with eagerness to speak their language, even though haltingly, and question of her coming to him--to him!

To a new master she had been sold by the old people who had owned her long, and many of the Navahu had gone north for deer--and perhaps for buffalo, and she had been taken with them. So far had they travelled that Tse-c[=o]me-u-pin, the sacred, had been pointed out to her--and as a bird will seek its own place of nesting, had she sought the Te-hua land by fleeing to the sacred mountain. In the night time she had fled from her new master,--from a tall pine where she had climbed, had she seen them search the trail for her. In vain they had searched, and alone she had wandered many days. Almost had she reached the Te-hua towns of the river when some traders of Te-gat-ha had found her in the forest. To their own town they had taken her and had traded her for sh.e.l.l beads and for corn--the rest Tahn-te knew!

He strung his bow while he listened,--and while the thunder shook the earth he slipped through the crevices of the rock and lay hidden at the edge of a mountain mora.s.s where the reeds grew tall, and wild things fed--ahead of the storm small animals might cross the open there to reach the shelter of the rock walls--and K[=a]-ye-povi must not go unfed.

A rabbit he killed and covered each track of his feet from the place where he picked it up. When he took it to her it had been cleaned and washed in a little cascade below the shelter he had found for her.

With him he took also dry twigs and dry pinon boughs, that the fire made might not carry the odor of green wood.

The sheets of rain were flowing steadily towards them from the west, the earth trembled as the G.o.d of Thunder spoke, and the lances of fire were flung from the far sky and splintered on the rocks of the mountain.

The maid lay, wide eyed and still, where he had left her. That she feared was plain to be seen, and at his coming tears of gladness shone in her eyes.

To see that light in her face as he came back to her brought to him a joy that was new and sweet. He did not speak to her. He made the fire in silence, but at every crash of the storm he smiled at her, and made prayers, and threw sacred white pollen to the four ways, and the feeling that he was as guardian to the maid whose very name had been a part of his boy dreams, was a sweet thought.

It was a wonderful thing that out of the dreams she had grown real, and had covered the trails until she had reached him! It was sweet that his hand had touched her and told him that the maid was a real maid of pulsing heart and tremulous breath.

But with all the sweetness of it, there was a strange thought fluttering over his mind like a moth or a b.u.t.terfly. It did not find lodgment there, but it did not go quite away, and ere he offered to her the meat roasted in the red coals of the pinon wood, he scattered prayer pollen between them as on a shrine.

The line of the white between them was as the threshold of a door over which a man may not step. No man crosses threshold of another if the wife of that man is alone there,--and no brother goes into the house where his sister is without other companion. This was the law from the time of the ancient days, and belongs to many tribes.

To the Navahu it did not belong, and the maid knew only that the white pollen meant prayer, and that she was circled by sacred things, and by thought so sweet that her eyes rested on the sands when he gazed at her.

So sweet did the thought grow that they no longer tried to speak as at first, and compare words Navahu, and words Te-hua;--her own forgotten tongue.

To whisper "K[=a]-ye-povi" was sweet, but to think "Doli" was sweeter--for it had been the vision of the G.o.ddess of the blue he had first seen in the pool of the hills;--and to him had come her symbol dancing on the ripples. He wore it in the banda about his head;--and he knew now that the image of her would never grow faint in his heart.

Out of the hand of the Great Mystery had she come to him that the last and best gift of life should be known, and that the prayers to the G.o.ds be double strong because of that knowing.

Without daring to look at her he sat in silence and thought these things, and he felt that she must know what the thoughts were. The war of the elements was as a background for strange harmonies, and the low roaring clouds of darkness were but a blanket of mist under which the fire glow of two hearts be felt to s.h.i.+ne near and clear, and send to each its signal.

Then--like a monster let loose, there were broken all bonds of the tornado on the river hills. A blackness as of night covered the earth with wide spread wings. With the voice of thunder it came;--and with the strength of a G.o.d it came.

Earth and stone were hurled on the wind as if a rain of arrows or spears had been hurled by some spirit of annihilation.

Even breath had to be fought for there,--and the maid in terror reached out her hands to the man across the sacred barrier and moaned pitifully, and in the darkness the man drew her close until her head rested on his breast, and his own bent head, and his body, sheltered her.

CHAPTER XV