THE FIRE BRINGER
This is one of the stories that Alan had from the Basket Woman after shecame to understand that the boy really loved her tales and believedthem. She would sit by the spring with her hands clasped across herknees while the clothes boiled and Alan fed the fire with broken brush,and tell him wonder stories as long as the time allowed, which was neverso long as the boy liked to hear them. The story of the Fire Bringergave him the greatest delight, and he made a game of it to play withlittle Indian boys from the campoodie who sometimes strayed in thedirection of the homesteader's cabin. It was the story that cameoftenest to his mind when he lay in his bed at night, and saw the starsin the windy sky shine through the cabin window.
He heard of it so often and thought of it so much that at last it seemedto him that he had been part of the story himself, but his mother saidhe must have dreamed it. The experience came to him in this way: He hadgone with his father to the mountains for a load of wood, a two days'journey from home, and they had taken their blankets to sleep upon theground, which was the first time of Alan's doing so. It was the time ofyear when white gilias, which the children call "evening snow," were inbloom, and their musky scent was mingled with the warm air in the softdark all about him.
He heard the camp-fire snap and whisper, and saw the flicker of itbrighten and die on the lower branches of the pines. He looked up andsaw the stars in the deep velvet void, and now and then one fell fromit, trailing all across the sky. Small winds moved in the tops of thesage and trod lightly in the dark, blossomy grass. Near by them ran aflooding creek, the sound of it among the stones like low-toned,cheerful talk. Familiar voices seemed to rise through it and approachdistinctness. The boy lay in his blanket harking to one recurring note,until quite suddenly it separated itself from the babble and called tohim in the Basket Woman's voice. He was sure it was she who spoke hisname, though he could not see her; and got up on his feet at once. Heknew, too, that he was Alan, and yet it seemed, without seeming strange,that he was the boy of the story who was afterward to be called the FireBringer. The skin of his body was dark and shining, with straight, blacklocks cropped at his shoulders, and he wore no clothing but a scrap ofdeerskin belted with a wisp of bark. He ran free on the mesa andmountain where he would, and carried in his hand a cleft stick that hada longish rounded stone caught in the cleft and held by strips of skin.By this he knew he had waked up into the time of which the Basket Womanhad told him, before fire was brought to the tribes, when men and beaststalked together with understanding, and the Coyote was the Friend andCounselor of man. They ranged together by wood and open swale, the boywho was to be called Fire Bringer and the keen, gray dog of thewilderness, and saw the tribesmen catching fish in the creeks with theirhands and the women digging roots with sharp stones. This they did insummer and fared well, but when winter came they ran nakedly in the snowor huddled in caves of the rocks and were very miserable. When the boysaw this he was very unhappy, and brooded over it until the Coyotenoticed it.
"It is because my people suffer and have no way to escape the cold,"said the boy.
"I do not feel it," said the Coyote.
"That is because of your coat of good fur, which my people have not,except they take it in the chase, and it is hard to come by."
"Let them run about, then," said the Counselor, "and keep warm."
"They run till they are weary," said the boy, "and there are the youngchildren and the very old. Is there no way for them?"
"Come," said the Coyote, "let us go to the hunt."
"I will hunt no more," the boy answered him, "until I have found a wayto save my people from the cold. Help me, O Counselor!"
But the Coyote had run away. After a time he came back and found the boystill troubled in his mind.
"There is a way, O Man Friend," said the Coyote, "and you and I musttake it together, but it is very hard."
"I will not fail of my part," said the boy.
"We will need a hundred men and women, strong and swift runners."
"I will find them," the boy insisted, "only tell me."
"We must go," said the Coyote, "to the Burning Mountain by the Big Waterand bring fire to your people."
Said the boy, "What is fire?"
Then the Coyote considered a long time how he should tell the boy whatfire is. "It is," said he, "red like a flower, yet it is no flower;neither is it a beast, though it runs in the grass and rages in the woodand devours all. It is very fierce and hurtful and stays not for asking,yet if it is kept among stones and fed with small sticks, it will servethe people well and keep them warm."
"How is it to be come at?"
"It has its lair in the Burning Mountain, and the Fire Spirits guard itnight and day. It is a hundred days' journey from this place, andbecause of the jealousy of the Fire Spirits no man dare go near it. ButI, because all beasts are known to fear it much, may approach it withouthurt and, it may be, bring you a brand from the burning. Then you musthave strong runners for every one of the hundred days to bring it safelyhome."
"I will go and get them," said the boy; but it was not so easily done assaid. Many there were who were slothful and many were afraid, but themost disbelieved it wholly, for, they said, "How should this boy tell usof a thing of which we have never heard!" But at the last the boy andtheir own misery persuaded them.
The Coyote advised them how the march should begin. The boy and theCounselor went foremost, next to them the swiftest runners, with theothers following in the order of their strength and speed. They left theplace of their home and went over the high mountains where great jaggedpeaks stand up above the snow, and down the way the streams led througha long stretch of giant wood where the sombre shade and the sound of thewind in the branches made them afraid. At nightfall where they restedone stayed in that place, and the next night another dropped behind, andso it was at the end of each day's journey. They crossed a great plainwhere waters of mirage rolled over a cracked and parching earth and therim of the world was hidden in a bluish mist; so they came at last toanother range of hills, not so high but tumbled thickly together, andbeyond these, at the end of the hundred days, to the Big Water quakingalong the sand at the foot of the Burning Mountain.
It stood up in a high and peaked cone, and the smoke of its burningrolled out and broke along the sky. By night the glare of it reddenedthe waves far out on the Big Water when the Fire Spirits began theirdance.
Then said the Counselor to the boy who was soon to be called the FireBringer, "Do you stay here until I bring you a brand from the burning;be ready and right for running, and lose no time, for I shall be farspent when I come again, and the Fire Spirits will pursue me." Then hewent up the mountain, and the Fire Spirits when they saw him come werelaughing and very merry, for his appearance was much against him. Leanhe was, and his coat much the worse for the long way he had come.Slinking he looked, inconsiderable, scurvy, and mean, as he has alwayslooked, and it served him as well then as it serves him now. So the FireSpirits only laughed, and paid him no farther heed. Along in the night,when they came out to begin their dance about the mountain, the Coyotestole the fire and began to run away with it down the slope of theBurning Mountain. When the Fire Spirits saw what he had done, theystreamed out after him red and angry in pursuit, with a sound like aswarm of bees.
The boy saw them come, and stood up in his place clean limbed and tautfor running. He saw the sparks of the brand stream back along theCoyote's flanks as he carried it in his mouth and stretched forward onthe trail, bright against the dark bulk of the mountain like a fallingstar. He heard the singing sound of the Fire Spirits behind and thelabored breath of the Counselor nearing through the dark. Then the goodbeast panted down beside him, and the brand dropped from his jaws. Theboy caught it up, standing bent for the running as a bow to speeding thearrow; out he shot on the homeward path, and the Fire Spirits snappedand sung behind him. Fast as they pursued he fled faster, until he sawthe next runner stand up in his place to receive the brand. So it passedfrom hand to hand,
and the Fire Spirits tore after it through the scrubuntil they came to the mountains of the snows. These they could notpass, and the dark, sleek runners with the backward-streaming brand boreit forward, shining star-like in the night, glowing red through sultrynoons, violet pale in twilight glooms, until they came in safety totheir own land. Here they kept it among stones, and fed it with smallsticks, as the Coyote had advised, until it warmed them and cooked theirfood. As for the boy by whom fire came to the tribes, he was called theFire Bringer while he lived, and after that, since there was no otherwith so good a right to the name, it fell to the Coyote; and this is thesign that the tale is true, for all along his lean flanks the fur issinged and yellow as it was by the flames that blew backward from thebrand when he brought it down from the Burning Mountain. As for thefire, that went on broadening and brightening and giving out a cheerysound until it broadened into the light of day, and Alan sat up to hearit crackling under the coffee-pot, where his father was cooking theirbreakfast.