Overland Part 21

"The vestal virgins here are old men," replied Ralph, wickedly pleased to get a joke on the lady.

"Oh! The Moquis are not Romans," decided Mrs Stanley. "Well, what do these old men do?"

"Keep the fire burning."

"What if it should go out? What would happen?"

"I don't know," responded the sub-acid Thurstane.

"I didn't suppose you did," said Aunt Maria pettishly. "Captain Glover, I want you to come with me."

Followed by the subservient skipper, she marched to the other end of the pueblo. There was the mysterious apartment; it was not really a temple, but a sort of public hall and general lounging place; such rooms exist in the Spanish-speaking pueblos of Zuni and Laguna, and are there called _estufas_. The explorers soon discovered that the only entrance into the estufa was by a trapdoor and a ladder. Now Aunt Maria hated ladders: they were awkward for skirts, and moreover they made her giddy; so she simply got on her knees and peeped through the trap-door. But there was a fire directly below, and there was also a pretty strong smell of pipes of tobacco, so that she saw nothing and was stifled and disgusted. She sent Glover down, as people lower a dog into a mine where gases are suspected.

After a brief absence the skipper returned and reported.

"Pooty sizable room. Dark's a pocket 'n' hot's a footstove. Three or four Injuns talkin' 'n' smokin'. Sc.r.a.p 'f a fire smoulder'in a kind 'f standee fireplace without any top."

"That's the sacred fire," said Aunt Maria. "How many old men were watching it?"

"Didn't see _any_."

"They must have been there. Did you put the fire out?"

"No water handy," explained the prudent Glover.

"You might have--expectorated on it."

"Reckon I didn't miss it," said the skipper, who was a chewer of tobacco and a dead shot with his juice.

"Of course nothing happened."

"Nary."

"I knew there wouldn't," declared the lady triumphantly. "Well, now let us go back. We know something about the religion of these people. It is certainly a very interesting study."

"Didn't appear to me much l'k a temple," ventured Glover. "Sh'd say t'was a kind 'f gineral smokin' room 'n' jawin' place. Git together there 'n'

talk crops 'n' 'lections 'n' the like."

"You must be mistaken," decided Aunt Maria. "There was the sacred fire."

She now led the willing captain (for he was as inquisitive as a monkey) on a round of visits to the houses of the Moquis. She poked smiling through their kitchens and bedrooms, and gained more information than might have been expected concerning their spinning and weaving, cheerfully spending ten minutes in signs to obtain a single idea.

"Never shear their sheep till they are dead!" she exclaimed when that fact had been gestured into her understanding. "Absurd! There's another specimen of masculine stupidity. I'll warrant you, if the women had the management of things, the good-for-nothing brutes would be sheared every day."

"Jest as they be to hum," slily suggested Glover, who knew better.

"Certainly," said Aunt Maria, aware that cows were milked daily.

The Moquis were very hospitable; they absolutely petted the strangers. At nearly every house presents were offered, such as gourds full of corn, strings of dried peaches, guavas as big as pomegranates, or bundles of the edible wrapping paper, all of which Aunt Maria declined with magnanimous waves of the hand and copious smiles. Curious and amiable faces peeped at the visitors from the landings and doorways.

"How mild and good they all look!" said Aunt Maria. "They put me in mind somehow of Shenstone's pastorals. How humanizing a pastoral life is, to be sure! On the whole, I admire their way of not shearing their sheep alive.

It isn't stupidity, but goodness of heart. A most amiable people!"

"Jest so," a.s.sented Glover. "How it must go ag'in the grain with 'em to take a skelp when it comes in the way of dooty! A man oughter feel willin'

to be skelped by sech tender-hearted critters."

"Pshaw!" said Aunt Maria. "I don't believe they ever scalp anybody--unless it is in self-defence."

"Dessay. Them fellers that went down to fight the Apaches was painted up's savage's meat-axes. Probably though 'twas to use up some 'f their paint that was a wastin'. Equinomical, I sh'd say."

Mrs. Stanley did not see her way clear to comment either upon the fact or the inference. There were times when she did not understand Glover, and this was one of the times. He had queer twistical ways of reasoning which often proved the contrary of what he seemed to want to prove; and she had concluded that he was a dark-minded man who did not always know what he was driving at; at all events, a man not invariably comprehensible by clear intellects.

Her attention was presently engaged by a stir in the pueblo. Great things were evidently at hand; some spectacle was on the point of presentation; what was it? Aunt Maria guessed marriage, and Captain Glover guessed a war-dance; but they had no argument, for the skipper gave in. Meantime the Moquis, men, women, and children, all dressed in their gayest raiment, were gathering in groups on the landings and in the square. Presently there was a crowd, a thousand or fifteen hundred strong; at last appeared the victims, the performers, or whatever they were.

"Dear me!" murmured Aunt Maria. "Twenty weddings at once! I hope divorce is frequent."

Twenty men and twenty women advanced to the centre of the plaza in double file and faced each other.

The dance began; the performers furnished their own music; each rolled out a deep _aw aw aw_ under his visor.

"Sounds like a swarm of the biggest kind of blue-bottle flies inside the biggest kind 'f a sugar hogset," was Glover's description.

The movement was as monotonous as the melody. The men and women faced each other without changing positions; there was an alternate lifting of the feet, in time with the _aw aw_ and the rattling of the gourds; now and then there was a simultaneous about face.

After a while, open ranks; then rugs and blankets were brought; the maidens sat down and the men danced at them; trot trot, aw aw, and rattle rattle.

Every third girl now received a large empty gourd, a grooved board, and the dry shoulder-bone of a sheep. Laying the board on the gourd, she drew the bone sharply across the edges of the wood, thus producing a sound like a watchman's rattle.

They danced once on each side of the square; then retired to a house and rested fifteen minutes; then recommenced their trot. Meanwhile maidens with large baskets ran about among the spectators, distributing meat, roasted ears of corn, sheets of bread, and guavas.

So the gayety went on until the sun and the visitors alike withdrew.

"After all, I think it is more interesting than our marriages," declared Aunt Maria. "I wonder if we ought to make presents to the wedded couples.

There are a good many of them."

She was quite amazed when she learned that this was not a wedding, but a rain-dance, and that the maidens whom she had admired were boys dressed up in female raiment, the customs of the Moquis not allowing women to take part in public spectacles.

"What exquisite delicacy!" was her consolatory comment. "Well, well, this is the golden age, truly."

When further informed that in marriage among the Moquis it is woman who takes the initiative, the girl pointing out the young man of her heart and the girl's father making the offer, which is never refused, Mrs. Stanley almost shed tears of gratification. Here was something like woman's rights; here was a flash of the glorious dawn of equality between the s.e.xes; for when she talked of equality she meant female preeminence.

"And divorces?" she eagerly asked.

"They are at the pleasure of the parties," explained Thurstane, who had been catechising the chief at great length through his Navajo.

"And who, in case of a divorce, cares for the children?"

"The grandparents."