The Flute of the Gods Part 28

THE GIVING OF THE SUN SYMBOL

Two nights had pa.s.sed over the world, and the day star was s.h.i.+ning over the mountains of the east when the people of Povi-whah saw again Tahn-te the Po-Ahtun-ho.

It was the sentinel on the terrace who saw him, and he was at the ancient shrine at the mesa edge, and a flame was there to show that prayers were being made to greet the G.o.d of the new day.

And when he came down from the mesa, and looked at the corn of the fields torn and beaten low by the great storm, his face showed that he carried a sad heart, and that he had gone from Te-gat-ha somewhere into the hills for prayer.

And to his house went the old men, and they listened to that which had been decided by the council of Te-gat-ha. A man had already arrived from Te-gat-ha to tell them that same thing, and to tell them that an evil spirit of the forest who spoke as a Navahu maid, had brought woe on the valley.

Some said it was the Ancient Star calling on the voice of the wind for sacrifice, and others said the tornado had come because the maid had been let go with the sacred symbols of ceremony painted on her body, and the G.o.ds of that ceremony called for her on the wind. But whichever way was the true way, the maid was linked to spirits of evil, and the corn of that year would be less than half of a full year, and the Te-gat-ha men asked that any Te-hua man who found the evil maid would send a runner to tell of it. Robes and blue beads would be given for her:--she belonged to the G.o.d of the star, or the G.o.d of the mad winds, and on the altar with prayers must she be given to them, that they be not angry.

Tahn-te listened--and when they said the anger of the sky had come from the west, as the maid had come, he was silent.

His first day of failure in council had been the day when he s.h.i.+elded the Dream Maid on the trail.--The woman who had wept in Te-gat-ha had said she was evil and a witch, and now the men pointed to the killed corn as the work of her magic!

No word of his could undo these things or wipe them from the Indian mind. In his own mind he knew that a weakness had come upon him. To live alone for the G.o.ds had been an easy thing to think of in the other days, but now it was not easy, and his heart trembled like a snared bird at each plan made by the men for the undoing of the witchmaid if she should be found.

The runner from Te-gat-ha looked strangely at Tahn-te as he walked across the court, and to Ka-yemo, he said:

"You men of Povi-whah are good runners always, and your Ruler of the Spirit Things has left you all behind always in the race. Yet this time, to come from Te-gat-ha, he stays two sleeps, and follows a trail no man sees!"

"In the hills he has been for prayers--so the old men say," replied Ka-zemo. But Yahn, whose ears were ever open, gave stew of rabbit to the Te-gat-ha runner and asked many things, and learned that the storm had washed away all tracks of feet, but that the witch maid had certainly run to the south--every other way was under the eyes of the sentinel on the wall. By a little stream to the south had her tracks been seen but not in any other place.

"Tahn-te crossed over the trail," said Yahn and laughed. "The priest of the men of iron say that Tahn-te is a sorcerer,--who knows that he did not bury owl-feathers or raven-feathers on the way to hide her trail? If the witch maid was a maid of beauty, is he not already a man?"

The man laughed with her, but he had heard of the dance of Tahn-te to the ancient stone G.o.d of the hills! The man who danced there was not the man for the cat scratches of Yahn the Apache, and though he laughed with her because she was pretty and a woman, he was not blind to her malice, and the meaning of her words went by him on the wind.

But the thought once planted in the mind of Yahn did not die. The face of Tahn-te held a trouble new and strange. He walked apart, and the old men said he made many prayers that the Great Mystery send a sign for the going of the white strangers.

In her heart Yahn thought as Tahn-te thought. The eyes of the man of the priest gown went like arrows through her at times--he looked like a man who knew all things. To Ka-yemo he talked until she was wild with desire to know the things said between them. It angered her that Ka-yemo was flattered by such attention. Padre Vicente she hated for his keen eyes and his plain speech of her. Don Ruy and the boyish secretary had too many moments of laughter when her name was spoken of to Juan Gonzalvo--as it often was! Their gifts she took with both hands, and did the talking for them as agreed, but she sulked at times even under their compliments, and Don Diego instructed Sah-pah to strive that the unruly beauty be brought within the Christian fold.

The success was not great, for Sah-pah was brave in a new gift of silver spurs--worn on rawhide about her neck, for it was the time of the Summer dance when the women choose companions, and love is very free. If the man prefers not to share the love of the dame who makes choice of him--he makes her a gift--or she chooses one.

The pious Don Diego had the secretary give many lines in the "Relaciones" of this strange custom where the fair fond ones offered marriage--or accepted a gift as memento. He even strutted a bit that the poor heatheness offered to him what best she could afford in exchange for the divine grace of a good sprinkling of holy water. But Yahn said things of the baptism not good for ears polite, or for the "Relaciones," and Sah-pah scuttled back in fear to her new master, and told him,--and told Juan Gonzalvo, that the veins of Yahn Tsyn-deh must be cut open to let out the Apache blood, before they could hope she might be one of the heaven birds in their angel flock!

But Sah-pah did not tell them that the thing of torment awaking Yahn to wrath had been the knowledge that Ka-yemo was somewhere across the mesa, and the old people laughed that he could not stay longer from the new wife, but had gone to seek her in the place of the old ruins.

After that, divine grace had not s.h.i.+elded Sah-pah from vituperation, and when Juan Gonzalvo came wooing, Yahn told him that across the hills was a woman waiting for a man, and dressed in fine skins and many beads:--when he or his men had won Koh-pe the daughter of Tsa-fah, to come back and tell her. She did not mean to be won easier than the other, and without a price!

Which was also a novel statement for the truthful record of the adventurers, and the secretary, on a terrace above, heard it, and rolled on the flat roof in laughter, and wrote it down most conscientiously. By such light matters was the dreariness of waiting days lessened.

For plainly the days were to be of waiting. All the good will of gift-bought friends helped the strangers not at all to the finding of the trail of gold. In the sands of the streams some fragments no larger than seeds of the gra.s.s were found, and in the canon of Po-et-se some of the adventurers dug weary hours in the strange soil where the traces are yet plain of black ashes, and charred cinders far beneath the sagebrush growth of to-day.

But while the Te-hua men gave good will for their digging, yet more than that they could not give, for the reason that no more than two persons could hold in trust that secret of the Sun Father's symbol--and only certain members of the Po-Ahtun order knew even the names of those two people.

After much patient delving had Ka-yemo learned that this was so, for the thing was not a tribal matter, but a thing of high medicine in the Po-Ahtun order. Not even the governor knew who held the secret. When the time came for certain religious ceremonies, some of the yellow stone was placed on the shrine of the weeping G.o.d with other prayers, but it was a sacred thing, as was the pollen of the corn, and no man asked from whence it came. To be told meant that the person told was made guardian until the death blankets wrapped him. It was a great honor. No man could ask for it. A brother might not know that his brother was the keeper of the trust. Only the head men of the secret order of Spirit Things could know.

In vain Juan Gonzalvo swore, and Padre Vicente used diplomacy and made wondrous fine impression as the amba.s.sador for the king of all Spain and the Indian Island!

Don Ruy took the secretary and Yahn Tsyn-deh, and went to the governor of Kah-po where his reception was kindly, but the information given him was slight.

That dignitary told him that his men of Mexico might dig great caves if they chose in search for the yellow metal of the sun symbol, but that to Povi-whah had been given the secret of the gold at the time when Senor Coronado had burned the two hundred men at the stake in Tiguex. All the old men knew that gold was the one thing the men of iron searched for. Before that time all villages had men who knew where it was hidden by the Sun Father. But a council of head men had been called. It had been a great council and long. At the end of it, one village was chosen, one order of that village, and two members of that order, and in the ears of those two alone was whispered the hiding place. No man could know who the two keepers of the secret might be, for it had to do with sacred things and with strong magic, and in that way did the villages decide to guard the secret of the High Sun.

"No chance here for whispers of courtiers and king's counselors to get abroad in the land," decided Don Ruy as they mounted their horses for the home ride and Yahn lingered to gossip with neighbors. "In the south the conquerors could fight for gold and win it--but in this land of silence with whom is one to fight?"

"Need you the gold so much that you must come between these poor people and their G.o.d in the sky?" asked the secretary doubtfully, for the att.i.tude of the two had been of extreme politeness and not so much of comrades.h.i.+p since that morning of confession when the lad had owned himself a deficient page in the bearing of love messages,--"Is the finding of the gold a matter of life or of death?"

"It pays for most good things," stated Don Ruy. "How know you that I do not beggar myself on this expedition? And to go back with empty hands would win little of favor for me from even the well-guarded Dona of the Mexic tryst."

"You forget, Excellency," said the lad and smiled, "she is called mad you know--and to a mad maid you might return in a cloak of woven gra.s.ses, or of shredded bark, and lack nothing of welcome."

"Humph! Only to a mad maid dare I return coatless, and find an open gate? And suppose it be another than the gentle maniac whom I seek?--a cloak of gra.s.ses would be a sorry equipment to cover my failure."

"There is one right good blanket at your disposal," said the lad looking straight out across the river, yet feeling the color mount to his hair as Don Ruy regarded him keenly and then clapped him on the shoulder.

"I'll claim half of the blanket when the day comes!" he declared--"and in truth I'd not be so sorry to see the maid of your discourse whether mad or of sanity. That ever restless Cacique who strives to bar us out, shows me that more than one Indian may have gone mad in the same struggle. Think you he must know the keepers of the secret of gold?"

"It would not be strange, since he is the head of the magicians and the worker of spirit things."

"G.o.d send that Juan Gonzalvo gets not that idea strongly in his mind--it would be the cap sheaf to the stack of his grievances."

"And it would be the one to weigh most heavily with his reverence the padre"--added Chico. "His soul is set on treasure for the Holy Brotherhood--and to win in secret where Coronado and the church failed with all the blare of trumpets, means that no man in the Indies would have a name written above that of the patient and devout Padre Vicente."

"You say things, lad, with a serious face;--but with a mocking voice,"

commented Don Ruy. "Tell me truly if the life of a page in the palace of the Viceroy teaches you so much of politics and holy orders that you combine the two and grow skeptic to each?"

"A page sees more than he understands--" returned the lad, "it was the teaching of your mad Dona of the silken scarf who saw things as the priests told her they were not to be seen,--she it was who taught me to laugh instead of doing penance."

"And she it was also no doubt who taught you of magic Mexic things in keeping with the fairy Melissa of Charlemagne's day, and Merlin the magian of Britain?"

"Heigh-ho! It is precious magic those old romancers did tell of!"

agreed the lad. "Think how fine it would be if we had those enchanted steeds and lances,--and the fair daughter of the Khan of Kathay for company through the wilderness!"

"She was too fickle, and too much the weeping fair," decided Don Ruy.

"Bradamante the warrior maid is more to the fancy--she would fight for the lover she loved--or against him as the case might be, yet give love to him all the time! She was the very pole-star of those old romances--but they make no such maids except in books!"

"Not so much pity for that," commented the secretary. "Since she was too easily won for the hearth stone of a plain man. It is clearly set down that she spoke with her pagan lover but once, and fell straightway so deep in love that she would fight either Christian or Moor to find the way to him. A maid like that looks well afar off, but it would take a valiant man to house with her!"

"How know you aught of how many times eyes must meet--or words be said ere love comes?" demanded Don Ruy--"Bantam that you are!--Must a man and a maid see summer and winter together ere the priest has work to do?"

"Alas--and saints guard us!--we need not to live long to see denial of that!" said the secretary and shrugged and smiled. "But since a maid close to my own house throws lilies to strange cavaliers, it is not for me to make discourse of ladies light-of-love!"

"Light-of-love!--Jack-a-napes! You know not so much after all if you get that thought cross wise in your skull! My 'Dona Bradamante' (for as yet neither you or the padre have given a name to her!) the 'Dona Bradamante' spoke no word the most rigid duenna could have frowned down! If you are her foster brother you might have gathered that much of wisdom to yourself!"

"But--your Excellency--she has never scattered wisdom broadcast on any one of us! An elfish maid who needed guard of both duenna and confessor:--how was a mere friend to know that a love of a mad moment would have made her a wonder of wisdom and discretion?"

Whereupon Don Ruy suggested that he go to the devil and learn sense, and added that if the famous magic steed, or ring of invisibility were to be found in the desert regions of these Indian provinces, he would use them for a peep into the palace of the Viceroy, or the nunnery of the Dona of the Lily. No amba.s.sador would he trust. For himself he would see how much or how little of madness was back of the message of the blossom, or the guerdon of the silken scarf.