Part 23

So the people assembled and heaped up great quantities of dry firewood; and they drilled fire from a stick, and lighted the mass. Then they cast the struggling Tarantula amid the flames, and he squeaked and sizzled and hissed, and swelled and swelled and swelled, until, with a terrific noise, he burst, and the fragments of his carcass were cast to the uttermost parts of the earth. These parts again took shape as beings not unlike Old Tarantula himself.

* * * * *

Thus it was in the days of the ancients. And therefore today, though crooked are the legs of the tarantula, and his habit of progress backward, still he is distributed throughout the great world. Only he is very, very much smaller than was the Great Tarantula who lived below the two rocky columns of Thunder Mountain.

Thus shortens my story.

ÁTAHSAIA, THE CANNIBAL DEMON

In the days of the ancients, when the children of our forefathers lived in Héshokta (“Town of the Cliffs”), there also lived two beautiful maidens, elder and younger, sisters one to the other, daughters of a master-chief.

One bright morning in summer-time, the elder sister called to the younger, “_Háni!_”

“What sayest thou?” said the _háni_.

“The day is bright and the water is warm. Let us go down to the pool and wash our clothes, that we may wear them as if new at the dance to come.”

“Ah, yes, sister elder,” said the _háni_; “but these are days when they say the shadows of the rocks and even the sage-bushes lodge unthinkable things, and cause those who walk alone to breathe hard with fear.”

“_Shtchu!_” exclaimed the elder sister derisively. “Younger sisters always are as timid as younger brothers are bad-tempered.”

“Ah, well, then; as you will, sister elder. I will not quarrel with your wish, but I fear to go.”

“_Yaush!_ Come along, then,” said the elder sister; whereupon they gathered their cotton mantles and other garments into bundles, and, taking along a bag of yucca-root, or soap-weed, started together down the steep, crooked path to where the pool lay at the foot of the great mesa.

Now, far above the Town of the Cliffs, among the rocks of red-gray and yellow--red in the form of a bowlder-like mountain that looks like a frozen sand-bank--there is a deep cave. You have never seen it? Well! to this day it is called the “Cave of Átahsaia,” and there, in the times I tell of, lived Átahsaia himself. Uhh! what an ugly demon he was! His body was as big as the biggest elk’s, and his breast was shaggy with hair as stiff as porcupine-quills. His legs and arms were long and brawny,--all covered with speckled scales of black and white. His hair was coarse and snarly as a buffalo’s mane, and his eyes were so big and glaring that they popped out of his head like skinned onions. His mouth stretched from one cheek to the other and was filled with crooked fangs as yellow as thrown-away deer-bones. His lips were as red and puffy as peppers, and his face as wrinkled and rough as a piece of burnt buckskin. That was Átahsaia, who in the days of the ancients devoured men and women for his meat, and the children of men for his sweet-bread. His weapons were terrible, too. His finger-nails were as long as the claws of a bear, and in his left hand he carried a bow made of the sapling of a mountain-oak, with two arrows ready drawn for use. And he was never seen without his great flint knife, as broad as a man’s thigh and twice as long, which he brandished with his right hand and poked his hair back with, so that his grizzly fore-locks were covered with the blood of those he had slaughtered. He wore over his shoulders whole skins of the mountain lion and bear clasped with buttons of wood.

Now, although Átahsaia was ugly and could not speak without chattering his teeth, or laugh without barking like a wolf, he was a very polite demon. But, like many ugly and polite people nowadays, he was a great liar.

Átahsaia that morning woke up and stuck his head out of his hole just as the two maidens went down to the spring. He caught sight of them while his eyes travelled below, and he chuckled. Then he muttered, as he gazed at them and saw how young and fine they were: “_Ahhali! Yaa-tchi!_” (“Good lunch! Two for a munch!”) and howled his war-cry, “_Ho-o-o-thlai-a!_” till Teshaminkia, the Echo-god, shouted it to the maidens.

“Oh!” exclaimed the _háni_, clutching the arm of her elder sister; “listen!”

“_Ho-o-o-thlai-a!_” again roared the demon, and again Teshaminkia.

“Oh, oh! sister elder, what did I tell you! Why did we come out today!” and both ran away; then stopped to listen. When they heard nothing more, they returned to the spring and went to washing their clothes on some flat stones.

But Átahsaia grabbed up his weapons and began to clamber down the mountain, muttering and chuckling to himself as he went: “_Ahhali! Yaa-tchi!_” (“Good lunch! Two for a munch!”).

Around the corner of Great Mesa, on the high shelves of which stands the Town of the Cliffs, are two towering buttes called Kwilli-yallon (Twin Mountain). Far up on the top of this mountain there dwelt Áhaiyúta and Mátsailéma.

You don’t know who Áhaiyúta and Mátsailéma were? Well, I will tell you. They were the twin children of the Sun-father and the Mother Waters of the World. Before men were born to the light, the Sun made love to the Waters of the World, and under his warm, bright glances, there were hatched out of a foam-cup on the face of the Great Ocean, which then covered the earth, two wonderful boys, whom men afterward named _Ua nam Atch Píahk’oa_ (“The Beloved Two who Fell”). The Sun dried away the waters from the high-lands of earth and these Two then delivered men forth from the bowels of our Earth-mother, and guided them eastward toward the home of their father, the Sun. The time came, alas! when war and many strange beings arose to destroy the children of earth, and then the eight Stern Beings changed the hearts of the twins to _sawanikia_, or the medicine of war. Thenceforth they were known as Áhaiyúta and Mátsailéma (“Our Beloved,” the “Terrible Two,” “Boy-gods of War”).

Even though changed, they still guarded our ancients and guided them to the Middle of the World, where we now live. Gifted with hearts of the medicine of war, and with wisdom almost as great as the Sun-father’s own, they became the invincible guardians of the Corn-people of Earth, and, with the rainbow for their weapon and thunderbolts for their arrows,--swift lightning-shafts pointed with turquoise,--were the greatest warriors of all in the days of the new. When at last they had conquered most of the enemies of men, they taught to a chosen few of their followers the songs, prayers, and orders of a society of warriors who should be called their children, the Priests[22] of the Bow, and selecting from among them the two wisest, breathed into their nostrils (as they have since breathed into those of their successors) the _sawanikia_. Since then we make anew the semblance of their being and place them each year at mid-sun on the top of the Mountain of Thunder, and on the top of the Mountain of the Beloved, that they may know we remember them and that they may guard (as it was said in the days of the ancients they would guard) the Land of Zuñi from sunrise to sunset and cut off the pathways of the enemy.

[22] Here and hereafter I use this term _priest_ reluctantly, in lack of a better word, but in accordance with Webster’s second definition.--F. H. C.

Well, Áhaiyúta, who is called the elder brother, and Mátsailéma, who is called the younger, were living on the top of Twin Mountain with their old grandmother.

Said the elder to the younger on this same morning: “Brother, let us go out and hunt. It is a fine day. What say you?”

“My face is in front of me,” said the younger, “and under a roof is no place for men,” he added, as he put on his helmet of elk-hide and took a quiver of mountain-lion skin from an antler near the ladder.

“Where are you two boys going now?” shrieked the grandmother through a trap-door from below. “Don’t you ever intend to stop worrying me by going abroad when even the spaces breed fear like thick war?”

“O grandmother,” they laughed, as they tightened their bows and straightened their arrows before the fire, “never mind us; we are only going out for a hunt,” and before the old woman could climb up to stop them they were gaily skipping down the rocks toward the cliffs below.

Suddenly the younger brother stopped. “Ahh!” said he, “listen, brother! It is the cry of Átahsaia, and the old wretch is surely abroad to cause tears!”

“Yes,” replied the elder. “It is Átahsaia, and we must stop him! Come on, come on; quick!”

“Hold, brother, hold! Stiffen your feet right here with patience. He is after the two maidens of Héshokta! I saw them going to the spring as I came down. This day he must die. Is your face to the front?”

“It is; come on,” said the elder brother, starting forward.

“Stiffen your feet with patience, I say,” again exclaimed the younger brother. “Know you that the old demon comes up the pathway below here? He will not hurt them until he gets them home. You know he is a great liar, and a great flatterer; that is the way the old beast catches people. Now, if we wait here we will surely see them when they come up.”

So, after quarrelling a little, the elder brother consented to sit down on a rock which overlooked the pathway and was within bow-shot of the old demon’s cave.

Now, while the girls were washing, Átahsaia ran as fast as his old joints would let him until the two girls heard his mutterings and rattling weapons.

“Something is coming, sister!” cried the younger, and both ran toward the rocks to hide again, but they were too late. The old demon strode around by another way and suddenly, at a turn, came face to face with them, glaring with his bloodshot eyes and waving his great jagged flint knife. But as he neared them he lowered the knife and smiled, straightening himself up and approaching the frightened ones as gently as would a young man.

The poor younger sister clung to the elder one, and sank moaning by her side, for the smile of Átahsaia was as fearful as the scowl of a triumphant enemy, or the laugh of a rattlesnake when he hears any old man tell a lie and thinks he will poison him for it.

“Why do you run, and why do you weep so?” asked the old demon. “I know you. I am ugly and old, my pretty maidens, but I am your grandfather and mean you no harm at all. I frightened you only because I felt certain you would run away from me if you could.”

“Ah!” faltered the elder sister, immediately getting over her fright. “We did not know you and therefore we were frightened by you. Come, sister, come,” said she to the younger. “Brighten your eyes and thoughts, for our grandfather will not hurt us. Don’t you see?”

But the younger sister only shook her head and sobbed. Then the demon got angry. “What are you blubbering about?” he roared, raising his knife and sweeping it wildly through the air. “Do you see this knife? This day I will cut off the light of your life with it if you do not swallow your whimpers!”

“Get up, oh, do get up, _háni_!” whispered the elder sister, now again frightened herself. “Surely he will not cut us off just now, if we obey him; and is it not well that even for a little time the light of life shine--though it shine through fear and sadness--than be cut off altogether? For who knows where the trails tend that lead through the darkness of the night of death?”

You know, in the speech of the rulers of the world and of our ancients,[23] a man’s light was cut off when his life was taken, and when he died he came to the dividing-place of life.

[23] One of the figures of speech meaning the gods.

The _háni_ tried to rally herself and rose to her feet, but she still trembled.

“Now, my pretty maidens, my own granddaughters, even,” said the old demon once more, as gently as at first, “I am most glad I found you. How good are the gods! for I am a poor, lone old man. All my people are gone.” (Here he sighed like the hiss of a wild-cat.) “Yonder above is my home” (pointing over his shoulder), “and as I am a great hunter, plenty of venison is baking in my rear room and more sweet-bread than I can eat. Lo! it makes me homesick to eat alone, and when I saw you and saw how pretty and gentle you were, I thought that it might be you would throw the light of your favor on me, and go up to my house to share of my abundance and drink from my vessels. Besides, I am so old that only now and then can I get a full jar of water up to my house. So I came as fast as I could to ask you to return and eat with me.”

Reassured by his kind speech, the elder sister hastened to say: “Of course, we will go with our grandfather, and if that is all he may want of us, we can soon fill his water-jars, can’t we, _háni_?”

“You are a good girl,” said the old demon to the one who had spoken; then, glaring at the younger sister: “Bring that fool along with you and come up; she will not come by herself; she has more bashfulness than sense, and less sense than my knife, because that makes the world more wise by killing off fools.”

He led the way and the elder sister followed, dragging along the shrinking _háni_.

The old demon kept talking in a loud voice as they went up the pathway, telling all sorts of entertaining stories, until, as they neared the rocks where Áhaiyúta and Mátsailéma were waiting, the Two heard him and said to one another: “Ahh, they come!”

Then the elder brother jumped up and began to tighten his bow, but the younger brother muttered: “Sit down, won’t you, you fool! Átahsaia’s ears are like bat-ears, only bigger. Wait now, till I say ready. You know he will not hurt the girls until he gets them out from his house. Look over there in front of his hole. Do you see the flat place that leads along to that deep chasm beyond?”

“Yes,” replied the elder brother. “But what of that?”

“What but that there he cuts the throats of his captives and casts their bones and heads into the depths of the chasm! Do you see the notch in the stone? That’s where he lets their blood flow down, and for that reason no one ever discovers his tracks. Now, stiffen your feet with patience, I say, and we will see what to do when the time comes.”

Again they sat and waited. As the old demon and the girls passed along below, the elder brother again started and would have shot had not Mátsailéma held him back. “You fool of a brother elder, but not wiser. No! Do you not know that your arrow is lightning and will kill the maidens as well as the monster?”

Finally, the demon reached the entrance to his cave, and, going in, asked the girls to follow him, laying out two slabs for them to sit on. “Now, sit down, my pretty girls, and I will soon get something for you to eat. You must be hungry.” Going to the rear of the cave, he broke open a stone oven, and the steam which arose was certainly delicious and meaty. Soon he brought out two great bowls, big enough to feed a whole dance. One contained meat, the other a mess resembling sweet-bread pudding. “Now, let us eat,” said the demon, seating himself opposite, and at once diving his horny fingers and scaly hand half up to the wrist in the meat-broth. The elder sister began to take bits of the food to eat it, when the younger made a motion to her, and showed her with horror the bones of a little hand. The sweet-bread was the flesh and bones of little children. Then the two girls only pretended to eat, taking the food out and throwing it down by the side of the bowls.

“Why don’t you eat?” demanded the demon, cramming at the same time a huge mouthful of the meat, bones and all, into his wide throat.

“We are eating,” said one of the girls.

“Then why do you throw my food away?”

“We are throwing away only the bones.”

“Well, the bones are the better part,” retorted the demon, taking another huge mouthful, by way of example, big enough to make a grown man’s meal. “Oh, yes!” he added; “I forgot that you had baby teeth.”

After the meal was finished, the old demon said: “Let us go out and sit down in the sun on my terrace. Perhaps, my pretty maidens, you will comb an old man’s hair, for I have no one left to help me now,” he sighed, pretending to be very sad. So, showing the girls where to sit down, without waiting for their assent he settled himself in front of them and leaned his head back to have it combed. The two maidens dared not disobey; and now and then they pulled at a long, coarse hair, and then snapped their fingers close to his scalp, which so deceived the old demon that he grunted with satisfaction every time. At last their knees were so tired by his weight upon them that they said they were done, and Átahsaia, rising, pretended to be greatly pleased, and thanked them over and over. Then he told them to sit down in front of him, and he would comb their hair as they had combed his, but not to mind if he hurt a little for his fingers were old and stiff. The two girls again dared not disobey, and sat down as he had directed. Uhh! how the old beast grinned and glared and breathed softly between his teeth.

The two brothers had carefully watched everything, the elder one starting up now and then, the younger remaining quiet. Suddenly Mátsailéma sprang up. He caught the shield the Sun-father had given him,--the shield which, though made only of nets and knotted cords, would ward off alike the weapons of the warrior or the magic of the wizard. Holding it aloft, he cried to Áhaiyúta: “Stand ready; the time is come! If I miss him, pierce him with your arrow. Now, then--”

He hurled the shield through the air. Swiftly as a hawk and noiselessly as an owl, it sailed straight over the heads of the maidens and settled between them and the demon’s face. The shield was invisible, and the old demon knew not it was there. He leaned over as if to examine the maidens’ heads. He opened his great mouth, and, bending yet nearer, made a vicious bite at the elder one.

“Ai, ai! my poor little sister, alas!” with which both fell to sobbing and moaning, and crouched, expecting instantly to be destroyed.

But the demon’s teeth caught in the meshes of the invisible shield, and, howling with vexation, he began struggling to free himself of the encumbrance. Áhaiyúta drew a shaft to the point and let fly. With a thundering noise that rent the rocks, and a rush of strong wind, the shaft blazed through the air and buried itself in the demon’s shoulders, piercing him through ere the thunder had half done pealing. Swift as mountain sheep were the leaps and light steps of the brothers, who, bounding to the shelf of rock, drew their war-clubs and soon softened the hard skull of the old demon with them. The younger sister was unharmed save by fright; but the elder sister lay where she had sat, insensible.

“Hold!” cried Mátsailéma, “she was to blame, but then--” Lifting the swooning maiden in his strong little arms, he laid her apart from the others, and, breathing into her nostrils, soon revived her eyes to wisdom.

“_This day have we, through the power of sawanikia, seen[24] for our father an enemy of our children men. A beast that caused unto fatherless children, unto menless women, unto womenless men (who thus became through his evil will), tears and sad thoughts, has this day been looked upon by the Sun and laid low. May the favors of the gods thus meet us ever._”

[24] To “see” an enemy signifies, in Zuñi mythology, to take his life.

Thus said the two brothers, as they stood over the gasping, still struggling but dying demon; and as they closed their little prayer, the maidens, who now first saw whom they had to thank for their deliverance, were overwhelmed with gladness, yet shame. They exclaimed, in response to the prayer: “_May they, indeed, thus meet you and ourselves!_” Then they breathed upon their hands.

The two brothers now turned toward the girls. “Look ye upon the last enemy of men,” said they, “whom this day we have had the power of _sawanikia_ given us to destroy; whom this day the father of all, our father the Sun, has looked upon, whose light of life this day our weapons have cut off; whose path of life this day our father has divided. Not ourselves, but our father has done this deed, through us. Haste to your home in Héshokta and tell your father these things; and tell him, pray, that he must assemble his priests and teach them these our words, for we divide our paths of life henceforth from one another and from the paths of men, no more to mingle save in spirit with the children of men. But we shall depart for our everlasting home in the mountains--the one to the Mountain of Thunder, the other to the Mount of the Beloved--to guard from sunrise to sunset the land of the Corn-priests of Earth, that the foolish among men break not into the Middle Country of Earth and lay it waste. Yet we shall require of our children the plumes wherewith we dress our thoughts, and the forms of our being wherewith men may renew us each year at mid-sun. Henceforth two stars at morning and evening will be seen, the one going before, the other following, the Sun-father--the one Áhaiyúta, his herald; the other Mátsailéma, his guardian; warriors both, and fathers of men. May the trail of life be finished ere divided! Go ye happily hence.”

The maidens breathed from the hands of the Twain, and with bowed heads and a prayer of thanks started down the pathway toward the Town of the Cliffs. When they came to their home, the old father asked whence they came. They told the story of their adventure and repeated the words of the Beloved.

The old man bowed his head, and said: “It was Áhaiyúta and Mátsailéma!” Then he made a prayer of thanks, and cast abroad on the winds white meal of the seeds of earth and shells from the Great Waters of the World, the pollen of beautiful flowers, and the paints of war.

“It is well!” he said. “Four days hence I will assemble my warriors, and we will cut the plume-sticks, paint and feather them, and place them on high mountains, that through their knowledge and power of medicine our Beloved Two Warriors may take them unto themselves.”

Now, when the maidens disappeared among the rocks below, the brothers looked each at the other and laughed. Then they shouted, and Áhaiyúta kicked Átahsaia’s ugly carcass till it gurgled, at which the two boys shouted again most hilariously and laughed. “That’s what we proposed to do with you, old beast!” they cried out.

“But, brother younger,” said Áhaiyúta, “what shall be done with him now?”

“Let’s skin him,” said Mátsailéma.

So they set to work and skinned the body from foot to head, as one skins a fawn when one wishes to make a seed-bag. Then they put sticks into the legs and arms, and tied strings to them, and stuffed the body with dry grass and moss; and where they set the thing up against the cliff it looked verily like the living Átahsaia.

“Uhh! what an ugly beast he was!” said Mátsailéma. Then he shouted: “_Wahaha, hihiho!_” and almost doubled up with laughter. “Won’t we have fun with old grandmother, though. Hurry up; let’s take care of the rest of him!”

They cut off the head, and Áhaiyúta said to it: “_Thou hast been a liar, and told a falsehood for every life thou hast taken in the world; therefore shall thou become a lying star, and each night thy guilt shall be seen of all men throughout the wide world._” He twirled the bloody head around once or twice, and cast it with all might into the air. _Wa muu!_ it sped through the spaces into the middle of the sky like a spirt of blood, and now it is a great red star. It rises in summer-time and tells of the coming morning when it is only midnight; hence it is called _Mokwanosana_ (Great Lying Star).