Part 7
Then one day he came to a place where he saw men with yellow skins and teeth like a dog, who gathered about him. Never before had he seen such people, who tore animals apart and ate of the flesh, who tore skins from living creatures and wore them on their own bodies. To make matters worse, these yellow-skinned ones seized Capa and took from him his glorious robes of gold and silver thread, tore the feathers from his hair and plucked away the ruby that he wore for its beauty. Then, greatly to his surprise, they fell on one another, fighting for the things that they had taken from Capa, so that the very robe they struggled for was torn and trampled under foot. At that Capa turned and fled back through the forest, never stopping day or night, until he came to his own people.
Straight to the prince he went and told his tale, hearing which, the prince was sad at heart.
“You have,” he said, “been where there are greed and selfishness and avarice, and it is bad for us. For those of the yellow skin will not rest until they have found us and brought sorrow into our midst.”
Then he called all his people together and they came, as they always did, singing and dancing and bearing flowers, and after them came the birds and animals, skipping and flying, calling. But a great silence fell upon all when they saw their Golden Prince, for his eyes were grave.
So he told the Gentle People all that Capa had seen, and Capa himself stood by the side of his prince and sang a sad song, so that the people knew of the evil on the other side of the dark forest, and the hearts of the Gentle People were as heavy as was the heart of the Golden Prince. And the prince told them that if they chose, he would arm them and lead them so that they could go forth and fight against the yellow-faced men when they came, “but,” he went on to say, “having learned to fight and to do hurt and to bring death, then you yourselves will turn on each other, will bring death to your own people. You will turn against the animals and they will turn against you. You will walk the land alone, and all things will avoid and hide from you. These things of the earth, these bright and shining things which to-day you take or leave as you wish, you will play with no more, but will hide in boxes and under stones so that others may not see them.” When he said this last he picked up a handful of diamonds and rubies, of emeralds and gold dust, and poured them from one hand to another, so that it was as a cascade that fell bright and dazzling in the sunlight.
Fearing that, the Gentle Folk looked at one another, and there was no doubt in their minds. “Far better,” said they, “is it that we should change in some manner and flee away than that we should do evil to the birds and beasts that are our friends.”
Then the Golden Prince called on his people to follow him, and as the yellow man broke through the forest as he had said they would, he led all of them away swiftly, and the multitude of animals and birds followed them. Having arrived at a great valley where was a river, he told his people that he would change their form so that they would become for a time other creatures, but creatures that would neither bite nor scratch nor spit poison, nor do any kind of harm. So he changed them into huanacos, animals of proud and graceful carriage, and their dress was of red and white like the gold and silver they wore. Then when he saw his people thus, friends of the birds and animals they loved, he changed himself into one also, but greater and more beautiful than any.
But there was a memory of that time, and even to this day when a herd of huanacos is seen, there also is one standing on a high rock as sentinel, keeping watch for the yellow men. And when at last the prince huanaco died, he died in the valley; seeing which, each of his people also laid down their bones in that place, as you may read in many books. So must it be until each and every huanaco has passed away. Yet remember this: Where dies a huanaco, there springs up a flower blue as the sky, its petals all gold-tipped. And when the day comes in which the last huanaco dies, then the yellow men will be gone. On that day each flower will bend to its neighbour and, at a word, there will stand a great host, for the spirit of the huanaco is in the flower that is blue and gold-tipped. Then, for ever and ever, the Gentle People will again have their land, and kindness and gentleness and beauty and joy will be theirs once more.
THE TALE THAT COST A DOLLAR
WE sailed for many a day, Bob and I, up narrow channels and down wide ones, twisting and turning this way and that, east, west, north, south, because of wind and tide and cape and bay, and then we came to a kind of S-shaped strait. Through it we went and found that it opened into a wide water, as smooth as glass and so clear that we could see down to the sandy bottom where seaweeds clung to rocks and fishes swam in a strange greenish light. Then, by great good luck, we found a place where was deep water and followed the channel landward, and it turned out to be the cutting made by a stream of very cold water that came down from the mountain. So there was strange rowing for us, for we worked our boat into the rivulet which was so narrow that very often both oars were on the grassy land. When at last we stopped, it was because the banks came so close together that our boat blocked the passage, so we stepped to land as easily as one might step onto a wharf.
Next morning, having covered our things from the foxes and made all neat and shipshape, we set off on a walk, climbed a high ridge and looked for a while over a confusion of little islands and narrow straits, then wondered at the blue of sea and sky, and after that wandered down a long slope, to come soon to a pleasant valley, and the more we saw of it the better we liked it. It seemed to have everything desirable, soft grass, clear and cool water, shelter from the winds, and peaceful quiet. A half-dozen horses could be seen a little way off, and on a blue hill in the distance there were cows and sheep. Soon we heard the voices of children and the interlacing echoes. So we rounded the hill and came upon houses, four of them altogether and all thatched with yellow rushes. The children that we had heard we saw, and they were playing with a pet huanaco, and at one of the doors, seated on a rush-bottomed chair was an old woman whose face was wrinkled and brown though her body seemed as supple as that of a young person. Seeing us the children left their play and stood, their dove-eyes full of wonder.
For the rest of that day we rested, enjoying the place. In the evening, when men and lads returned from their hunting or their fishing or their herding or whatever they did, there was good fellowship in the pleasant December twilight, and as we talked and sang we became better acquainted. Of course, like all travellers in that or any other open country, we had to tell the tale of our wanderings, how we came to be there and why, and when we had done, one or the other of them told us what might be said to be the history of their people, one helping the other out, correcting the talker when he was at fault, and sometimes taking the tale from him to tell it better.
They talked Spanish, for all were originally from Chile, and we learned that the old woman’s husband, who was no longer living, had been a soldier who had fought against Peru and was on board a warship called the _Esmeralda_ which was sunk by another, and on that sad day, she said, more than a hundred were drowned. A merciful Heaven permitted her husband to get ashore after much danger, and wandering, he had found the valley in which we then were (for having found it he had gone to his own place, which I took to be Ancud or somewhere near there), and with three neighbour families they had wandered, delighted to find a place where were no din and clashes and war. “And,” said the old woman, lifting her hands and throwing them a little apart, “here by the grace of Heaven we are at peace.”
When she had done the children chattered a little, insisting that she had missed the most interesting part of all. She should, they held, tell the strangers the tale of how the valley had been made, of why there was a river, of how it had come to pass that there were woods through which the river flowed and especially why Laguna Viedma was salt. The caballeros, they were sure, would like to know all that, it being a tale most wonderful and strange. But the old woman shook her head and made herself a cigarette, saying that it was a tale told her by a very, very old Indian woman who was there when she first saw the place, and the Indian had heard it from her mother, and she from her mother, and she again from her mother, so the tale went so far back that whether it had truth in it or not none could tell. At that the young people said that, true or not, it was a good tale, and they were so politely insistent, especially a little girl who petted a blue-eyed kitten, that we heard the story which, so far as I know, has never yet been written, and were it not written now might be forgotten for ever. So here it is, and my daughters, Julia and Helen, like it better than any story in this book, though their brothers are in favour of the tale of the Noseless People.
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Long ago, said the old woman, south of the Laguna Viedma lived a bruja, or kind of witch, a mean and wicked creature who had a house at the foot of the cordilleras built of great slabs of stone, in which there were three rooms. In one of these rooms she had imprisoned a boy and in another a girl, and the boy she allowed to roam about in the garden in the daytime but locked him up whenever the sun set, and the girl she locked up whenever the sun rose, so that the boy had never known night and the girl had never seen day, nor had the boy or the girl cast eyes on one another.
The boy, growing out of childhood, grew restless, and one day he dug a passage in his stone cell under the wall and up on the other side, much as a rabbit might have done, so that after being locked up he could spend a little time in the twilight, watching the dancing green stars that were fireflies. Still, whenever it grew dark and the edges of the things that he saw were no longer sharp, he scuttled back to his stone room, not knowing what clawed horror might unfold from the dark. For we must remember, said the old woman who told the tale, in all his life he had seen no human being but the witch, and knew no more of the moving world than the horses that we use know of the horses that drag a thousand noisy wheels in the city streets. Nor did he know of the ten thousand silver lights in the sky at night, nor of the bright glory of the Southern Cross.
One evening when the boy was in the vega, he having crawled through his passage, his heart fell when he saw a strange creature dressed in white, with long black hair and soft eyes. When the strange thing walked towards him he was startled, for he also saw the gray mist from which she came, and in that mist he seemed to see other thickening shapes. So, for a moment, he had a mind to kill the long-haired creature as an evil thing, and picked up a sharp stone, but his heart somehow bade him do otherwise, and he turned and fled, running straight to his hole by the side of the bush, then dropped to his knees without a backward look, scrambled to his cell and put a big flat stone over the hole, lest the long-haired one should follow and kill him. As for the girl, seeing the swift-running lad, she watched in surprise for a little, then followed, and coming to the hole in the ground shuddered with fear, believing that under the earth she trod lived thousands of such creatures that, perchance, roamed in the daytime and did evil.
The next day when the witch let the lad out after shutting the girl in her stone place, she was surprised to see fear in his eyes, for all that night he had lain awake in his dread of the long-haired one, trembling at every sound, lest the unknown should find the passage and creep through into his cell of safety.
All that day he worked hard, rolling a great boulder up from the valley so that he might close the outer opening of his burrow, but so heavy was the rock and so far the distance, that the sun set before he had rolled it to its place. Still, he moved it a long way and got it over his burrow and close to the bush. Then he sought the witch so that she might lock him up for the night, but to his grief she did not come, and this is why:
After she had unlocked the girl’s door that evening she remembered the look of fear that had been in the lad’s eyes, so went into his cell to see if anything harmful was there, and her foot struck the flat stone. Then she found the opening of the hole. Wondering greatly, she crawled into the passage, pushing hard because it was too small for her. At one place she had to remove much dirt above her head because the roof was so low, and pulling away a stone, down came a shower of little stones and of earth, then more and still more, until with a thundering noise the big boulder, which the lad had rolled and left, fell into the hole and very narrowly escaped the witch. So she was stuck fast, deep buried in the ground, her onward way blocked by the boulder against which she butted her head in vain. As for getting back by the way she had come, that was impossible, for, finding night coming on and no guardian witch, the boy fled to his cell. There he saw the black, uncovered hole and the flat rock he had placed over it, and listening he heard sounds in the tunnel. In his fear of the long-haired creature he pulled the flat rock over the hole again and on it piled rock upon rock. That done he gave a sigh of relief and straightened himself, but his heart sank when he saw in his cell the very thing that he most dreaded. For the girl, being brave in the dark and glad in the silence, sought a companion in her loneliness, and found the boy’s cell with its open door. But with the lad night brought fear. In the golden sunshine he met danger gladly enough, but in the soft moonlight when the true forms of things were lost, the world seemed baseless and dreamlike and unsubstantial. So, seeing the creature of the night in his cell, he threw up his arms and, not daring to look, fled into the garden and into the ghostly world.
The whispering stillness of what he saw made him tremble violently, for it was a dead world and not the world throbbing with the sweet song of friendly birds and the noise of busy insects. The green and gold of day had strangely gone and the brave hardness that he knew in his world was not in the sky, but instead, a soft black roof hung with strange lights. And even his feet were robbed of speed, and trees and bushes clawed him. As he fled he looked over his shoulder in affright because of the long-haired pursuer. Not far did he go before a creeping vine caught him about the ankle and his foot struck a root, so that he fell headlong, striking his head against a tree-trunk. The silver-sprinkled sky whirled wildly and then all went black.
He woke to the touch of delicate light hands bathing his face with cool water, but lay with fast-closed eyes, believing, hoping that it was a dream. Presently, though still faint and weary and in pain, he opened his eyes to see the face of the maiden as she bent over him, and the cloud of soft hair that rippled as silk grass ripples when touched by the breeze. As he looked, finding something gentle and kind in the face, he chanced to see the white moon, great and cold, rushing swiftly through an army of silver clouds. The sight was new and terrible and he grew dizzy and faint. Something evil seemed to have stolen the warmth from the sky so that the birds had died and the flowers withered.
With eyelids closed he wrestled with his fear and heard the golden voice of the girl saying again and again:
“Am I not your friend in this lonely place? Am I not your friend? Why then do you run from me?”
In spite of his fear he was wrapped in happiness at the words, for he knew that he had been long lonely, though he had not told himself so until then. Yet the darkness stretching wide and the stars and the shadows made him chill at heart, though like a true man he strove to master his fear. While he kept his eyes closed it was well enough, but to open them on the sunless world was pain. For all that, he nerved himself to speak.
“Yes. Let us go,” he said, “from this world of shadows,” and she, thinking that he meant the place of the witch, took his hand and said, “Yes. Let us go, my new-found friend.”
He rose to his feet then and said that he was ready, though he covered his eyes with his hand. Then she told him to wait, saying she knew of a hollow place in a tree in which was a flint the old witch had hidden, and the armadillo had told her there was some magic in it, though what that magic power was he did not know, except that it had the power to cut down trees. It would be well, she added, for them to take it with them.
Great was his loneliness while she was away, and though he opened his eyes once, all things were so strange and cold and silent that he closed them again. Once he heard the shrieking voice of the witch-woman under the ground and he wondered why the sound was so muffled. Had she, too, come near to death in the black world? Again he heard the voice of the owl, melancholy and solemn.
But his new-found friend came soon, to his joy, and she gave him the flint and took his hand to lead him, for he dared not open his eyes because of the moon, and she thought him sightless. So all that night they ran thus, hand in hand, over places where there were cruel sharp stones, across mist-blown swamps and pantano lands, and where the way was hard he carried the maiden, though he always kept his eyes closed and trusted to her guidance.
So the girl was strong and helpful to him until the dark began to pass, then, with the rose of dawn the lad cried joyfully, “I fear no more now and am strong again. Perhaps it is the magic of the flint that makes me so.”
But she said, “Alas! I fear that the stone we carry is not good but evil. Let us throw it away, for I grow weak and afraid and ill at ease. Greatly I fear the sky so hard and blue, my new-found friend.”
Hearing that, he laughed a little and called her his Golden One and bade her trust in him, so she was comforted a little, though still afraid. Then, as the rose and gold of sunrise sped across the sky and the thousand birds awoke and burst into song, his heart was full of happiness, but she, having heard no such noise before, wept with the utter pain of it, clapping her hands over her ears. Her eyes, too, were full of burning pain because of the growing flood of light. Still, she fought with her fear for a while, though she was sadly longing for the world with its friendly dark. But when the sun came up in his brilliancy and the boy greeted it with a great shout of joy, she was as one stunned and said:
“Alas! Go, dear lad, and leave me to die all parched and withered. For into the burning light I cannot go. My eyes are scorched and my brain is on fire. The sweet silence is no more and the heart of night is dead.”
At that sad speech the lad was full of grief lest he should lose his new-found friend, so he pulled from the trees light-green branches and wove them into a canopy and bound about her brow a veil of cool greenness, then lifting her in his arms, he went on happy in the singing sunshine, yet sad because she was white-faced and full of strange tremblings. At noon, when the heat of day was like brass and the sky was fierce with light, they came to a place of tender green coolness where was a vine-hung hollow in the mountainside, and there they rested awhile. The lad made for the maid a seat of matted leaves and mosses and brought to her berries and fruits and tender roots, and for drink, cool water in a leaf.
So at last came the light between day and night when neither was afraid, she brave at heart because of the passing of the burning light of day and he fearless because the night of sorrow had not yet come. Hand in hand they went towards a great plain all flower-spangled and smiling.
The witch they had forgotten, or thinking of her had supposed her to be fast in her own place. Yet it was not so, for deep in the burrow in which she had vainly tried to go back and as vainly tried to go forward she had her mind made up to escape by some means. With a mighty heave, for she was of great strength, she burst her way out of the ground and then stood, shaking the dirt out of her eyes and her ears and her hair. That done she sought the boy and the girl, but found no trace of them. At last the armadillo who always tells secrets, told her of what had happened, so she sought the magic flint, the terrible cutting flint which she could throw to kill. Finding it, too, gone, she was in mad rage, whirling, leaping, and screaming. Another moment and she left the place, going in mighty leaps, her bow and arrow in her hand, and soon from the top of a hill she saw the boy and girl as they stood looking at the smiling valley.
Now that valley was the valley of the huanacos wherein the witch was powerless, and that she well knew. Did the two once gain the shelter of the mountains, all her witcheries would be of no avail. Indeed, that very thing the sentinel huanaco was telling the children at the very moment the witch caught sight of them, and the animal bade them haste lest the witch touch them before they crossed the plain. So hand in hand boy and girl ran, and seeing them so near safety the witch went over the ground like a horse, bounding over bush and stone, taking five yards at each stride.
Then to help the children, from right and from left came huanacos, by tens and twenties and hundreds, their proud heads held high, their soft eyes full of loving kindness, and they ran by the side of the two who fled, and some formed in a body behind them so that the arrows shot by the witch could not touch boy or girl, though many a good huanaco laid down his life, thus shielding them.
Seeing the pass to which things had come, the old witch bethought her of another plan, and taking her magic arrow she shot it high in the air so that it passed over the herd of huanacos and fell to earth far in front of the boy and girl. As soon as the shaft touched the ground it split into a thousand pieces, each no thicker than spider silk, and each fragment took root and became a tree. In a single moment the whole plain was covered with a thick, solemn tangle of forest through which no living creature could hope to pass, and sadly enough, boy and girl turned to behold the witch coming toward them fast. But all about her feet were the animal friends of the boy and girl, foxes and small creatures, while about her head flew many tinamou-partridges, so that soon she was forced to slacken her pace. Then to boy and girl came a puma, smooth and beautiful, and it said, “El pedernal! El pedernal!” and they at once remembered the magic flint.