“If Peter Vahndert belonged to our frat,” said Mr. Rider, “we could submit the dispute to the Inner Lodge. But the Vahnderts don’t, so that way is out. However, nothing will happen to cause us to draw our swords until after the boys come back. Then, God alone knows. That Joel is a loudmouth; he’s been nothing but a trouble maker since he was a child. Give the child of Seytuh his due, though, he throws a mighty javelin.”
The men began to heap abuse on Joel. Benoni did not join them. It would not have been correct for him to do so when others present were. Besides, he did not want to think of the lout. He wanted to think about Debra. After a decent interval, he excused himself and went upstairs to his room. Here, he soaked some clothes in water and hung them over the window in the hope the breeze would be cool enough for him to sleep. After an hour or more of tossing and turning and futile efforts to get Debra out of his mind, he fell asleep.
Benoni dreamed that he had been captured by the Navahos. They were about to pour a great kettle of scalding hot water over him before inflicting more localized injuries. To give him an idea of what the entire kettle would be like, they were letting a few drops of the skin-burning water drip on him. By doing this, they also hoped to unnerve him and make him beg for mercy.
He swore to himself that he would act like a man, a true Fiinishan, and would make them admire him. After it was over, the Navahos would send a message to Fiiniks that the white youth, Benoni Rider, had died bravely, and they would compose a song in his honor. Debra would hear of this. She would weep, but she would also be proud of him. And she would scorn Joel Vahndert when he came courting. She would call her father and brothers. They would drive him from the house with whips and dogs.
Benoni woke to see his stepmother’s profile against the moonlit square of the gauze-hung windows. She was sitting on his bed and was bent over him; her tears were dripping on his chest.
“What’s the matter?” he said.
“Nothing, really,” she said, sitting up and sniffling. “I came in to sit by you, to look at you a while. I wanted to see you once again.”
“You’ll see me in the morning,” Benoni said. He was embarrassed, yet touched. He knew she still grieved for his dead brother and that she was worrying about him.
“Yes, I know,” she said, “but I couldn’t sleep. It’s so hot, and I . . .”
“A mother’s tears cool the hot blood of the young warrior on his first warpath,” said Benoni. “A smiling mother is worth a dozen knives.”
“Don’t quote me proverbs,” she said.
She rose and looked down at him. “It’s because I love you,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t be crying over you; you’ll feel bad because I do. But I couldn’t help myself. I just had to see you once more, before . . .”
“You talk as if you’ll never see me again,” he said. “Think of death, and you’re a ghost.”
“There you go with your old proverbs,” she said. “Oh, I’m sure I’ll see you again. It’s just that you’ve been gone so long, hardly come home. And in no time at all, you’ll . . . never mind. I’m doing what I promised not to do. I’ll go now.”
She stooped over and kissed him lightly on the lips, then straightened up.
“I’ll stay home tomorrow and talk to you,” he said.
“Thank you, son,” she said. “I know how much you want to go into the marketplace and tell your friends about the Iron Mountains. And you will go tomorrow, act as if tomorrow is any other day. Besides, I’ll have too much work to do to talk. Thanks very much, anyway, son. I appreciate your offer and what it means.”
“Goodnight, mother,” he said. Her voice had trembled so much that he was afraid she was going to cry again.
She left the room. Afterwards, he had trouble getting back to sleep. It seemed to him that, when he did succeed, he had just fallen out of wakefulness only to be dragged back into it.
This time, the moonlight showed four shadowy figures of men around his bed. They wore carved masks of wood with long curving beaks of ravens and black feathers standing out from three sides. Though the faces behind the birdmasks were hidden, he knew they were his father, two brothers-in-law, and his mother’s brother.
“Get up, son of the raven,” said his father’s muffled voice. “It is time for you to try your wings.”
Benoni’s heart beat fast, and his stomach felt as if a dozen bowstrings were vibrating inside it. The time for his initiation had come sooner than he had expected. He had expected he would be given a week to rest from the long trip back from the Iron Mountains. But, he remembered, it was supposed to come unexpectedly, like a lion out of the night.
He rose from bed. His father secured a blindfold around his head. Somebody wrapped a cloth around his waist to cover his nakedness. Then he was taken by the hand and led out of the room into the hall. He heard a woman’s soft weeping and knew that his mother was crying behind the closed door of her bedroom. Of course, she would not have been allowed to see the men in their masks nor him blindfolded. Nor would she have been warned that tonight was his time. Somehow, she had expected this. Women were supposed to be able to sense such things.
Benoni was led down the steps and out into the open air. Here he was placed on a horse and then the horse began to canter. Another horseman—he supposed—had his horse’s reins and was pulling him along.
He gripped the horn of the saddle and felt very helpless riding in such a manner. What if his horse stumbled and fell and he, Benoni, were hurled off the saddle? Well, what of it? He could do nothing to prevent it.
Nevertheless, he felt uneasy. When, after perhaps half an hour’s ride, they stopped and told him to dismount, he felt better. Then he was helped into a wagon and placed on a bench which ran the length of the wagon. On both sides, naked shoulders and arms and hips pressed against his. These, he presumed, belonged to other initiates.
The wagon started with a jerk and began rolling and bumping and lurching over a rough road. Having been warned to be silent, he did not speak to his companions. The ride lasted for perhaps an hour. Then, the driver shouted, “Whoa!” and the wagon stopped. There was silence for about five minutes. Just as he was wondering if it was part of the ceremony to sit on the hard wooden bench all night, a man barked a command.
“Come on out! And keep silent!”
Benoni was helped off the wagon and guided to a spot where he was told to stand still.
A drum began beating a monotonous four-beat; this continued for about ten minutes.
Suddenly, a horn blew, and Benoni started. He hoped that no one had noticed his nervous reaction.
A hand ripped off the cloth around his waist; he opened his mouth to protest against being naked, then shut it. He did not know for sure, of course, but he had heard that when the unblooded were let loose in the desert, they wore nothing.
His blindfold was untied and removed, and he blinked in the full moonlight. Then, since he had not been forbidden to do so, he looked around. He was standing in the middle of a line of naked youths, twelve in all. In front of him were many adult men, their bodies clothed in furs and feathers, their faces hidden by the animal masks of the various frats. One of them was going down the line, giving each youth a drink of water from a gourd. When the gourd was handed to Benoni, he drank deeply. Unless he was mistaken, this would be the last water he would taste for a long time.
The ceremony that followed was short and simple; so much so that Benoni could not help feeling disappointed. He had not known what to expect, but he had thought that there would be much beating of drums, long speeches exhorting them to go into the Navaho country, take as many scalps as possible, and return to their honor and that of Fiiniks. He had also expected that their heads would be shaved, leaving only a roach of hair and that their bodies would be daubed with warpaint. Or even that there would be a bloodletting ceremony during which his blood would be mixed with that of the adults of his frat.
Chief Wako, in a few words, dissolved those preconceptions.
“You boys
will go as you are, naked as when you came into this world. You will go East or North or South until you come to enemy territory. There you will take at least one man’s scalp. How you get food, water, shelter, and weapons is your problem. After you return—if you return—you will be initiated as men into the frat. Until then, you are only fledglings.
“If this seems hard to you, to let you loose with bare hands and feet, remember that this custom was established many many years ago. The first warpath weeds out the unfit. We want no weaklings, cowards, or stupid ones to breed their kind among us.
“Later, in the fall, the eighteen-year-old women will go through a similar test in the desert, the main difference between their tests and yours being that they do not have to go into enemy land.
“Now, when the drum begins beating, your ciders in the clan will drive you into the desert with whips. You will run a mile, will be dispersed in all directions so you will not band together. Not that we can forbid you to band together afterwards, for you may do anything outside the area of Fiiniks. Even kill one another, if you wish.”
Benoni heard a youth near him snort and mutter, “Good!” and he did not need to look to know that Joel Vahndert had spoken.
He did not have time to think about the implications of the remark, for Chief Wako raised his hand, held it a moment, then lowered it.
The drums broke out into a frenzy. The men in the masks, whooping and screaming, raced behind the youths. Then, whips cracked, and Benoni leaped into the air at the burn of a whiplash on his buttocks. He began running, and he felt no more cuts, for there was not a man in Fiiniks who could run as fast. But, behind him, the whips cracked and the yelling continued, and he ran for at least a mile until his pursuers had dropped far behind. Then he continued dog-trotting for several more miles, heading northeastward.
Benoni planned to trot for about five more miles, then hunt a while for a kangaroo rat or a jackrabbit to furnish him with blood and meat. Afterwards, he would find a place to sleep during the day. Travel by night was the only sane way. The sun would burn up the water in his naked body and make him more easily seen by any Navahos who might be in the area. Besides, hunting was better in the night when most of the beasts were out.
He paused on top of a high hillock of malapi to get his bearings, and then he heard, or thought he heard, somebody in the rocks below. At once he slipped behind a huge black malapi boulder and gripped a stone as a weapon. The man, or whoever it was, seemed to be in a hurry, which puzzled Benoni. He did not think it likely that a Navaho would be this close to Fiiniks, though it was possible. And if the follower were a Navaho, he would not be making this much noise. Chances were that it was one of the initiates. Either one who had happened to be taking the same path as himself, or one who was purposefully tracking him.
Joel Vahndert?
If it were Joel, he would not be one bit better armed than himself. It would be better to face him now, get it over with, rather than wait until he had fallen asleep and Joel could take him by surprise.
Benoni crouched behind the boulder. And he, whose ears could detect the lizard running over the sand and whose nose could smell a rabbit a quarter mile away upwind, knew at once that this was a sweating man. There was tobacco in the odor, which relieved him. It could not be Joel; youths were not allowed to moke until they took their first scalp.
However, if this were the case, then the man could be a Navaho. And he might be careless because he thought that he, Benoni, was much further ahead.
The man came by the boulder, Benoni leaped around it, ready to catch him in the side of the head with a thrown stone.
He stopped, restrained his arm, and said, “Father!”
Hozey Rider jumped away, whirled, his long knife in hand. Then he relaxed, put the knife back in its sheath, and smiled.
“Good work, son!” he said, “I knew you must be some place close. I’m glad I didn’t catch you unawares. I’d have felt very bad about your chances among the Navahos.”
“You made a lot of noise,” said Benoni.
“I had to catch you,” said Hozey.
“Why?”
Benoni looked at the knife and wondered, for a second, if his father planned to give him the blade so he would have a better chance. He dismissed the thought as dishonorable.
“What I’m doing isn’t according to ritual,” said his father. “And it’s actually a last-minute thought on the part of the chiefs. I’ll be brief, because it’s not good to hold a young unblood back from the warpath.
“You know, son, that your older brother went out with a scouting party about two years ago, and we never heard of him again. Possibly, he may be dead. Then, again, he might just not have come back from wherever he went to. You see, the mission he went on was secret, because we didn’t want to stir up our own folk. Or let word to the Navahos what we might be doing in the future.”
“I never did know what the party Rafe went out on was looking for,” said Benoni.
“It was looking for a good place for us to move to,” said his father. “A place where there is no valley fever, no earthquakes, no volcanoes, and plenty of water, grass, and trees.”
“You . . . mean out of the valley?”
Hozey Rider nodded, and he said, “You must not tell anybody. The Council sent the scouting party out two years ago but told nobody why they went. We thought that there might be emotional upsets. After all, Fiiniks is our home. We have lived within the shadow or the sacred Kemlbek Mountain for hundreds of years. Some people might not want to leave, even if Fiiniks was knocked flat by a quake twenty years ago and ten volcanoes not over thirty miles away formed in the last twenty years. They might make a lot of trouble. But we decided that it would be for the good of the people if we did find another home. For one thing, besides the fever, which has been getting worse since I was a child, and the threat of quakes and of volcanoes, there is another thing. That is, that this valley can only feed so many people because there is only so much water available. Despite our heavy mortality, the population has been expanding. Food is getting increasingly scarce. Oh, you haven’t suffered, because you’re the son of a rich farmer and slaveholder. But there are plenty of poor people who go to bed hungry every night. And if they keep getting hungrier and more numerous, well . . . I saw the Great Slave Revolt of thirty years ago.”
“But those were slaves, father!”
Hozey Rider smiled twistedly and he said, “That’s what you’ve been told, son. That lie has been spread about so successfully that even those who know better believe it now. But the truth is that the lower classes tried to storm the granaries. And only after much blood-shed on both sides was the revolt settled. The granaries were opened, the courts and laws were reformed somewhat, and the lower classes were given more privileges.”
“Lower classes?” said Benoni.
“You don’t like to hear that word? Well, it’s part of our way of life to deny that there are such things as classes. But any man who wants to blink two or three times can clear the mist away from his eyes. Would you think about marrying the daughter of a cotton-chopper? No, you wouldn’t. And there are other things. Some people don’t like the idea of slaves.”
“Any slave who serves fifteen years gets his freedom and becomes a citizen,” said Benoni.
“That’s very fair. The Navahos never give their slaves freedom.”
“And so the ex-slave joins the ranks of the poor, is not fed, and loses all his security. No. Anyway, I didn’t puff and pant after you just to discuss our social system.
“Shortly before you and the others were initiated, we Councilmen talked about asking some of you to extend your first warpath.”
“Extend?”
“Yes. Remember, this is not an order. It’s a suggestion. But we would like some of you young bucks, after you’ve taken a scalp or two, not to return at once. Put off your moment of glory. Instead, go east. Look for a place where there is water, perhaps the Great River so many talk about but have never seen.
; “Then, when you report, we can start thinking about moving our people, starting anew there.”
“Everybody?”
“Everybody!”
“But father, if I do this, I may not get back for a long, long time. And . . . and . . . well, what about Debra Awvrez?”
His father smiled and said, “You think Joel Vahndert may have married her by the time you get back? Well, what about it? She isn’t the only good looking girl in the valley.”
Benoni gasped in astonishment. He said, “Weren’t you ever in love?”
“Six or seven times,” said Hozey Rider. “And I loved both my wives. But if I hadn’t married them, I would have met some other women and married them and loved them just as much. You think I’m cynical, son. But that’s only because you’re so young. Anyway, if you have your fiery young man’s heart set on this particular blonde, think of the honor that will be yours if you discover a new country. How can a Navaho scalp compare with this? She will be yours for the asking; any girl in the valley would be yours.”
“But Joel may have returned and have her! You forget that!”
“If Joel’s father can catch his son, and he shouldn’t have any trouble following the tracks of that lumbering bear, he will tell him the same thing I’m telling you. If I know Joel, the idea of so much glory will be irresistible. He’ll go on to the East, too.”
“Perhaps. Why didn’t the Council think of this before?”
“Then we wouldn’t have to be tracking you down? As I said, it was decided suddenly. It was ridiculous doing it so impulsively and so late. But a suddenly made-up mind moves quickly, and Wako told us to track our sons down if we could and ask them.”
Benoni envisioned the older ones frantically chasing down the young men to give them a last-minute message. He did not know whether to feel sick or to laugh. All the dignity and importance of the ceremony was gone; he doubted the wisdom of the Council, which he had looked up to all his life. His father, as if he had read his thoughts, said, “Yes, I know. It’s ridiculous, but when you take your place on the Council, son, you will find yourself doing just such stupid and hasty things.”