V
HOW HOWKAWANDA AND FRIEND-AT-THE-BACK FOUND THE TRAIL TO THE BUFFALOCOUNTRY TOLD BY THE COYOTE
"Concerning that Talking Stick of Taku-Wa-kin's,"--said the Coyote, asthe company settled back after Arrumpa's story,--"there is a Telling of_my_ people ... not of a Rod, but a Skin, a hide of thy people, GreatChief,"--he bowed to the Bull Buffalo,--"that talked of Tamal-Pyweackand a Dead Man's Journey--" The little beast stood with lifted paw andnose delicately pointed toward the Bighorn's country as it lifted fromthe prairie, drawing the earth after it in great folds, high crestbeyond high crest flung against the sun; light and color like the insideof a shell playing in its snow-filled hollows.
Up sprang every Plainsman, painted shield dropped to the shoulder, righthand lifted, palm outward, and straight as an arrow out of every throat,the "Hey a-hey a-huh!" of the Indian salutation.
"Backbone of the World!" cried the Blackfoot. "Did you come over that,Little Brother?"
"Not I, but my father's father's first father. By the Crooked Horn,"--heindicated a peak like a buffalo horn, and a sag in the crest below it.
"Then that," said Bighorn, dropping with one bound from his aeriallookout, "should be _my_ story, for my people made that trail, and itwas long before any other trod in it."
"It was of that first treading that the Skin talked," agreed the Coyote.He looked about the company for permission to begin, and then addressedhimself to Arrumpa. "You spoke, Chief Two-Tails, of the 'tame wolves' ofTaku-Wakin; _were_ they wolves, or--"
"Very like you, Wolfling, now that I think of it," agreed the Mastodon,"and they were not tame exactly; they ran at the heels of the huntersfor what they could pick up, and sometimes they drove up game for him."
"Why should a coyote, who is the least of all wolves, hunt for himselfwhen he can find a man to follow?" said the Blackfoot, who sat smoking agreat calumet out of the west corridor. "Man is the wolf's Medicine. Inhim he hears the voice of the Great Mystery, and becomes a dog, which isgreat gain to him."
Pleased as if his master had patted him, without any furtherintroduction the Coyote began his story.
"Thus and so thought the First Father of all the Dogs in the year whenhe was called Friend-at-the-Back, and Pathfinder. That was the timeof the Great Hunger, nearly two years after he joined the man packat Hidden-under-the-Mountain and was still known by his lair nameof Younger Brother. He followed a youth who was the quickestafoot and the readiest laugher. He would skulk about the camp atHidden-under-the-Mountain watching until the hunters went out. SometimesHow-kawanda--that was the young man he followed--would give a coyote cryof warning, and sometimes Younger Brother would trot off in thedirection where he knew the game to be, looking back and pointing untilthe young men caught the idea; after which, when they had killed, thehunters would laugh and throw him pieces of liver.
"The Country of Dry Washes lies between the Cinoave on the south and thePeople of the Bow who possessed the Salmon Rivers, a great gray land cutacross by deep gullies where the wild waters come down from theWall-of-Shining-Rocks and worry the bone-white boulders. The People ofthe Dry Washes live meanly, and are meanly spoken of by the People ofthe Coast who drove them inland from the sea borders. After the Rains,when the quick grass sprang up, vast herds of deer and pronghorn comedown from the mountains; and when there were no rains the people atelizards and roots. In the moon of the Frost-Touching-Mildly clouds cameup from the south with a great trampling of thunder, and flung out overthe Dry Washes as a man flings his blanket over a maiden. But if theRains were scant for two or three seasons, then there was Hunger, andthe dust devils took the mesas for their dancing-places.
"Now, Man tribe and Wolf tribe are alike in one thing. When there isscarcity the packs increase to make surer of bringing down the quarry,but when the pinch begins they hunt scattering and avoid one another.That was how it happened that the First Father, who was still calledYounger Brother, was alone with Howkawanda when he was thrown by a buckat Talking Water in the moon of the Frost-Touching-Mildly. Howkawandahad caught the buck by the antlers in a blind gully at the foot of theTamal-Pyweack, trying for the throw back and to the left which drops abuck running, with his neck broken. But his feet slipped on the grasswhich grows sleek with dryness, and by the time the First Father came upthe buck had him down, scoring the ground on either side of the man'sbody with his sharp antlers, lifting and trampling. Younger Brotherleaped at the throat. The toss of the antlers to meet the stroke drewthe man up standing. Throwing his whole weight to the right he drovehome with his hunting-knife and the buck toppled and fell as a treefalls of its own weight in windless weather.
"'Now, for this,' said Howkawanda to my First Father, when they hadbreathed a little, 'you are become my very brother.' Then he marked thecoyote with the blood of his own hurts, as the custom is when men arenot born of one mother, and Younger Brother, who had never been touchedby a man, trembled. That night, though it made the hair on his neck risewith strangeness, he went into the hut of Howkawanda atHidden-under-the-Mountain and the villagers wagged their heads over it.'Hunger must be hard on our trail,' they said, 'when the wolves come tohouse with us.'
"But Howkawanda only laughed, for that year he had found a maiden whowas more than meat to him. He made a flute of four notes which he wouldplay, lying out in the long grass, over and over, until she came out tohim. Then they would talk, or the maiden would pull grass and pile it inlittle heaps while Howkawanda looked at her and the First Father lookedat his master, and none of them cared where the Rains were.
"But when no rain fell at all, the camp was moved far up the shrunkencreek, and Younger Brother learned to catch grasshoppers, and atejuniper berries, while the men sat about the fire hugging their leanbellies and talking of Dead Man's Journey. This they would do wheneverthere was a Hunger in the Country of the Dry Washes, and when they werefed they forgot it."
The Coyote interrupted his own story long enough to explain that thoughthere were no buffaloes in the Country of the Dry Washes, on the otherside of the Wall-of-Shining-Rocks the land was black with them. "Now andthen stray herds broke through by passes far to the north in the Land ofthe Salmon Rivers, but the people of that country would not letHowkawanda's people hunt them. Every year, when they went up by tribesand villages to the Tamal-Pyweack to gather pine nuts, the People of theDry Washes looked for a possible trail through the Wall to the BuffaloCountry. There was such a trail. Once a man of strange dress and speechhad found his way over it, but he was already starved when they pickedhim up at the place called Trap-of-the-Winds, and died before he couldtell anything. The most that was known of this trail atHidden-under-the-Mountain was that it led through Knife-Cut Canyon; butat the Wind Trap they lost it.
"I have heard of that trail, 'said the First Father of all the Dogs toHowkawanda, one day, when they had hunted too far for returning andspent the night under a juniper: 'a place where the wind tramplesbetween the mountains like a trapped beast. But there is a trail beyondit. I have not walked in it. All my people went that way at thebeginning of the Hunger.'
"'For your people there may be a way,' said Howkawanda, 'but formine--they are all dead who have looked for it. Nevertheless, YoungerBrother, if we be not dead men ourselves when this Hunger is past, youand I will go on this Dead Man's Journey. Just now we have otherbusiness.'
"It is the law of the Hunger that the strongest must be fed first, sothat there shall always be one strong enough to hunt for the others. ButHowkawanda gave the greater part of his portion to his maiden.
"So it happened that sickness laid hold on Howkawanda between two days.In the morning he called to Younger Brother. 'Lie outside,' he said,'lest the sickness take you also, but come to me every day with yourkill, and let no man prevent you.'
"So Younger Brother, who was able to live on juniper berries, huntedalone for the camp of Hidden-under-the-Mountain, and Howkawanda heldback Death with one hand and gripped the heart of the First Father ofall the Dogs with the other. For he was afraid that if he died, YoungerBr
other would turn wolf again, and the tribe would perish. Every day hewould divide what Younger Brother brought in, and after the villagerswere gone he would inquire anxiously and say, 'Do you smell the Rain,Friend and Brother?'
"But at last he was too weak for asking, and then quite suddenly hisvoice was changed and he said, 'I smell the Rain, Little Brother!' Forin those days men could smell weather quite as well as the otheranimals. But the dust of his own running was in Younger Brother's nose,and he thought that his master's mind wandered. The sick man counted onhis fingers. 'In three days,' he said, 'if the Rains come, the back ofthe Hunger is broken. Therefore I will not die for three days. Go, hunt,Friend and Brother.'
"The sickness must have sharpened Howkawanda's senses, for the next daythe coyote brought him word that the water had come back in the gullywhere they threw the buck, which was a sign that rain was fallingsomewhere on the high ridges. And the next day he brought word, 'Thetent of the sky is building.' This was the tentlike cloud that wouldstretch from peak to peak of the Tamal-Pyweack at the beginning of theRainy Season.
"Howkawanda rose up in his bed and called the people. 'Go, hunt! go,hunt!' he said; 'the deer have come back to Talking Water.' Then he laystill and heard them, as many as were able, going out joyfully. 'Stayyou here, Friend and Brother,' he said, 'for now I can sleep a little.'
"So the First Father of all the Dogs lay at his master's feet and whineda little for sympathy while the people hunted for themselves, and themyriad-footed Rain danced on the dry thatch of the hut and the bakedmesa. Later the creek rose in its withered banks and began to talk toitself in a new voice, the voice of Raining-on-the-Mountain.
"'Now I shall sleep well, 'said the sick man. So he fell into deeper anddeeper pits of slumber while the rain came down in torrents, the grasssprouted, and far away Younger Brother could hear the snapping of thebrush as the Horned People came down the mountain.
"It was about the first streak of the next morning that the people wakedin their huts to hear a long, throaty howl from Younger Brother.Howkawanda lay cold, and there was no breath in him. They thought thecoyote howled for grief, but it was really because, though his masterlay like one dead, there was no smell of death about him, and the FirstFather was frightened. The more he howled, however, the more certain thevillagers were that Howkawanda was dead, and they made haste to disposeof the body. Now that the back of the Hunger was broken, they wished togo back to Hidden-under-the-Mountain.
"They drove Younger Brother away with sticks and wrapped the young manin fine deerskins, binding them about and about with thongs, with hisknife and his fire-stick and his hunting-gear beside him. Then they madeready brush, the dryest they could find, for it was the custom of theDry Washes to burn the dead. They thought of the Earth as their motherand would not put anything into it to defile it. The Head Man made aspeech, putting in all the virtues of Howkawanda, and those that hemight have had if he had been spared to them longer, while the womencast dust on their hair and rocked to and fro howling. Younger Brothercrept as close to the pyre as he dared, and whined in his throat as thefire took hold of the brush and ran crackling up the open spaces.
"It took hold of the wrapped deerskins, ran in sparks like little deerin the short hair, and bit through to Howkawanda. But no sooner had hefelt the teeth of the flame than the young man came back from the placewhere he had been, and sat up in the midst of the burning. He leaped outof the fire, and the people scattered like embers and put their handsover their mouths, as is the way with men when they are astonished.Howkawanda, wrapped as he was, rolled on the damp sand till the fireswere out, while Younger Brother gnawed him free of the death-wrappings,and the people's hands were still at their mouths. But the first step hetook toward them they caught up sticks and stones to threaten.
"It was a fearful thing to them that he should come back from beingdead. Besides, the hair was burned half off his head, and he wasstreaked raw all down one side where the fire had bitten him. He stoodblinking, trying to pick up their meaning with his eyes. His maidenlooked up from her mother's lap where she wept for him, and fledshrieking.
"'Dead, go back to the dead!' cried the Head Man, but he did not stop tosee whether Howkawanda obeyed him, for by this time the whole pack wassquealing down the creek to Hidden-under-the-Mountain. Howkawanda lookedat his maiden running fast with the strength of the portion he had savedfor her; looked at the empty camp and the bare hillside; looked once atthe high Wall of the Pyweack, and laughed as much as his burns wouldlet him.
"'If we two be dead men, Brother,' he said, 'it may be we shall haveluck on a Dead Man's Journey.'
"It would have been better if they could have set out at once, for rainin the Country of Dry Washes means snow on the Mountain. But they had towait for the healing of Howkawanda's burns, and to plump themselvesout a little on the meat--none too fat--that came down on itsown feet before the Rains. They lay in the half-ruined huts andheard, in the intervals of the storm, the beating of tom-toms atHidden-under-the-Mountain to keep off the evil influences of one who hadbeen taken for dead and was alive again.
"By the time they were able to climb to the top of Knife-Cut Canyon thesnow lay over the mountains like a fleece, and at every turn of the windit shifted. From the Pass they dropped down into a pit between theranges, where, long before they came to it, they could hear the windbeating about like a trapped creature. Here great mountain-heads had runtogether like bucks in autumn, digging with shining granite hooves deepinto the floor of the Canyon. Into this the winds would drop from thehigh places like broken-winged birds, dashing themselves against thepolished walls of the Pyweack, dashing and falling back and cryingwoundedly. There was no other way into this Wind Trap than the wayHowkawanda and Younger Brother had come. If there was any way out onlythe Four-Footed People knew it.
"But over all their trails snow lay, deepening daily, and great riversof water that fell into the Trap in summer stood frozen stiff like icevines climbing the Pyweack.
"The two travelers made them a hut in broad branches of a great fir, forthe snow was more than man-deep already, and crusted over. They laidsticks on the five-branched whorl and cut away the boughs above themuntil they could stand. Here they nested, with the snow on the upperbranches like thatch to keep them safe against the wind. They ran on thesurface of the snow, which was packed firm in the bottom of the Trap,and caught birds and small game wintering in runways under the snowwhere the stiff brush arched and upheld it. When the wind, worn out withits struggles, would lie still in the bottom of the Trap, the two wouldrace over the snow-crust whose whiteness cut the eye like a knife,working into every winding of the Canyon for some clue to the DeadMan's Journey.
"Shot downward to the ledge where Howkawanda and YoungerBrother hugged themselves"]
"On one of these occasions, caught by a sudden storm, they huggedthemselves for three days and ate what food they had, mouthful bymouthful, while the snow slid past them straight and sodden. It closedsmooth over the tree where their house was, to the middle branches. Twodays more they waited until the sun by day and the cold at night hadmade a crust over the fresh fall. On the second day they saw somethingmoving in the middle of the Canyon. Half a dozen wild geese had beencaught in one of the wind currents that race like rivers about the HighPlaces of the World, and dropped exhausted into the Trap. Now they roseheavily; but, starved and blinded, they could not pitch their flight tothat great height. Round and round they beat, and back they dropped fromthe huge mountain-heads, bewildered. Finally, the leader rose alonehigher and higher in that thin atmosphere until the watchers almost losthim, and then, exhausted, shot downward to the ledge where Howkawandaand Younger Brother hugged themselves in the shelter of a wind-drivendrift. They could see the gander's body shaken all over with the pumpingof his heart as Younger Brother took him hungrily by the neck.
"'Nay, Brother,' said Howkawanda, 'but I also have been counted dead,and it is in my heart that this one shall serve us better living thandead.' He nursed the great white bird in his boso
m and fed it with thelast of their food and a little snow-water melted in his palm. In anhour, rested and strengthened, the bird rose again, beating a widecircle slowly and steadily upward, until, with one faint honk offarewell, it sailed slowly out of sight between the peaks, sure of itsdirection.
"'That way,' said Howkawanda, 'lies Dead Man's Journey.'
"When they came back over the same trail a year later, they werefrightened to see what steeps and crevices they had covered. But forthat first trip the snow-crust held firm while they made straight forthe gap in the peaks through which the wild goose had disappeared. Theytraveled as long as the light lasted, though their hearts sobbed andshook with the thin air and the cold.
"The drifts were thinner, and the rocks came through with clusters ofwind-slanted cedars. By nightfall snow began again, and they moved,touching, for they could not see an arm's length and dared not stop lestthe snow cover them. And the hair along the back of Younger Brotherbegan to prick.
"'Here I die, indeed,' said Howkawanda at last, for he suffered mostbecause of his naked skin. He sank down in the soft snow at YoungerBrother's shoulder.
"'Up, Master,' said Younger Brother, 'I hear something.'
"'It is the Storm Spirit singing my death song,' said Howkawanda. Butthe coyote took him by the neck of his deerskin shirt and dragged hima little.
"'Now,' he said, 'I smell something.'
"Presently they stumbled into brush and knew it for red cedar. Patchesof it grew thick on the high ridges, matted close for cover. As thetravelers crept under it they heard the rustle of shoulder againstshoulder, the moving click of horns, and the bleat of yearlings fortheir mothers. They had stumbled in the dark on the bedding-place of aflock of Bighorn.
"'Now we shall also eat,' said Younger Brother, for he was quite empty.
"The hand of Howkawanda came out and took him firmly by the loose skinbetween the shoulders.
"'There was a coyote once who became brother to a man,' he said, 'andmen, when they enter a strange house in search of shelter and direction,do not first think of killing.'
"'One blood we are,' said the First Father of Dogs, remembering howHowkawanda had marked him,' but we are not of one smell and the rams maytrample me.'
"Howkawanda took off his deerskin and put around the coyote so that heshould have man smell about him, for at that time the Bighorn had notlearned to fear man.
"They could hear little bleats of alarm from the ewes and the huddlingof the flock away from them, and the bunting of the Chief Ram's horns onthe cedars as he came to smell them over. Younger Brother quivered, forhe could think of nothing but the ram's throat, the warm blood and thetender meat, but the finger of Howkawanda felt along his shoulders forthe scar of the Blood-Mixing, the time they had killed the buck atTalking Water. Then the First Father of all the Dogs understood that Manwas his Medicine and his spirit leaped up to lick the face of the man'sspirit. He lay still and felt the blowing in and out of Howkawanda'slong hair on the ram's breath, as he nuzzled them from head to heel.Finally the Bighorn stamped twice with all his four feet together, as asign that he had found no harm in the strangers. They could feel theflock huddling back, and the warmth of the packed fleeces. In the midstof it the two lay down and slept till morning.
"They were alone in the cedar shelter when they woke, but the track ofthe flock in the fresh-fallen snow led straight over the crest under theCrooked Horn to protected slopes, where there was still some browse andopen going.
"Toward nightfall they found an ancient wether the weight of whose hornshad sunk him deep in the soft snow, so that he could neither go forwardnor back. Him they took. It was pure kindness, for he would have diedslowly otherwise of starvation. That is the Way Things Are," said theCoyote; "when one _must_ kill, killing is allowed. But before theykilled him they said certain words.
"Later," the Coyote went on, "they found a deer occasionally andmountain hares. Their worst trouble was with the cold. Snow lay deepover the dropped timber and the pine would not burn. Howkawanda wouldscrape together moss and a few twigs for a little fire to warm the frontof him and Younger Brother would snuggle at his back, so between twofriends the man saved himself."
The Blackfoot nodded. "Fire is a very old friend of Man," he said; "soold that the mere sight of it comforts him; they have come a long waytogether." "Now I know," said Oliver, "why you called the first dogFriend-at-the-Back."
"Oh, but there was more to it than that," said the Coyote, "for the nextdifficulty they had was to carry their food when they found it.Howkawanda had never had good use of his shoulder since the fire bit it,and even a buck's quarter weights a man too much in loose snow. So hetook a bough of fir, thick-set with little twigs, and tied the kill onthat. This he would drag behind him, and it rode lightly over thesurface of the drifts. When the going was bad, Younger Brother would tryto tug a little over his shoulder, so at last Howkawanda made a harnessfor him to pull straight ahead. Hours when they would lie storm-boundunder the cedars, he whittled at the bough and platted the twigstogether till it rode easily.
"In the moon of Tender Leaves, the people of the Buffalo Country, whenthey came up the hills for the spring kill, met a very curiousprocession coming down. They saw a man with no clothes but a few tattersof deerskin, all scarred down one side of his body, and following at hisback a coyote who dragged a curiously plaited platform, by means of twopoles harnessed across his shoulders. It was the first travoise. The menof the Buffalo Country put their hands over their mouths, for they hadnever seen anything like it."
The Coyote waited for the deep "huh-huh" of approval which circled theattentive audience at the end of the story.
"Fire and a dog!" said the Blackfoot, adding a little pinchof sweet-grass to his smoke as a sign of thankfulness,--"Friend-on-the-Hearth and Friend-at-the-Back! Man may go far with them."
Moke-icha turned her long flanks to the sun. "Now I thought the talebegan with a mention of a Talking Skin--"
"Oh, that!" The Coyote recalled himself. "After he had been a year inthe Buffalo Country, Howkawanda went back to carry news of the trail tothe Dry Washes. All that summer he worked over it while his dogs huntedfor him--for Friend-at-the-Back had taken a mate and there were fourcubs to run with them. Every day, as Howkawanda worked out the trail, hemarked it with stone and tree-blazes. With colored earth he marked it ona buffalo skin; from the Wind Trap to the Buffalo Country.
"When he came to Hidden-under-the-Mountain he left his dogs behind, forhe said, 'Howkawanda is a dead man to them.' In the Buffalo Country hewas known as Two-Friended, and that was his name afterward. He wasdressed after the fashion of that country, with a great buffalo robethat covered him, and his face was painted. So he came toHidden-under-the-Mountain as a stranger and made signs to them. And whenthey had fed him, and sat him in the chief place as was the custom withstrangers, he took the writing from under his robe to give it to thePeople of the Dry Washes. There was a young woman near by nursing herchild, and she gave a sudden sharp cry, for she was the one that hadbeen his maiden, and under the edge of his robe she saw his scars. Butwhen Howkawanda looked hard at her she pretended that the child hadbitten her."
Dorcas Jane and Oliver drew a long breath when they saw that, so far asthe rest of the audience was concerned, the story was finished. Therewere a great many questions they wished to ask,--as to what became ofHowkawanda after that, and whether the People of the Dry Washes everfound their way into the Buffalo Country,--but before they could beginon them, the Bull Buffalo stamped twice with his fore-foot for a sign ofdanger. Far down at the other end of the gallery they could hear thewatchman coming.