Part 28

“Oh, yes!” responded the old woman. “My poor little children!” So she made a little nest at the bottom of the hole and laid them on it. Then she ran and fetched some green-corn ears and, picking the kernels off, made some gruel of them, and fed the little fellows. So the boy babies ate till they kicked their heels with satisfaction, and that night the old Badger-mother took one in her arms and slept with it, and the old Badger-father slept with the other.

Now, every day they grew as much as the children of men do in a year, so that in eight days they were as large and knew as much as children usually do in eight years. There was no little animal that they could not kill unfailingly, for they were the children of the Sun, you know. But, alas! they grew weary of killing birds around their doorway, and their old father kept telling them every morning never to go out of sight of their house; and the old woman kept watching them always for fear that they would run off and get lost, or somebody would find and claim them. Yes, they grew impatient of this. They wanted to kill prairie-dogs and cottontails, but they could not get near enough to them. So one night when the old Badger came home they said to him: “Father, come now; do make us some bows and arrows so that we can hunt rabbits, and you and mother can have all that you want to eat.”

“All right,” replied the old man. And the next day he went off to the Cañon of the Woods, and somehow he managed to cut down a small oak and get a lot of branches for arrows. He brought these home, and that night with a piece of flint, little by little he managed to make each of the boys a bow and some arrows. But when he tried to put feathers on the arrows he was very awkward (for you know badgers don’t have fingers like men), so he had to take a single feather for each arrow and split it and twist it around the butt of the shaft. That very night, do you know, it snowed; yes, a great deal of snow fell, and the little fellows looked out and said to each other and to the old Badgers: “Now then, tomorrow we will go rabbit-hunting.”

“O mother, make a lunch for us!” they exclaimed.

“Where are you going?” asked the old woman.

“We are going out among the hills and down on the plains where the trees grow, to hunt rabbits.”

“O my poor little boys! What will you do?--you will freeze to death, for you have no clothes and no wool grows on your backs.”

“Well, mother, we’re tough. We will get up tomorrow and wait until the sun shines warm--then we can go hunting.”

“How in the world will you carry your food? You have no blanket to wrap it in.”

“Oh, you just make some corn-cakes,” answered the boys, “and string them on a little stick, and we can take hold of the middle of the stick and carry them just as well as not.”

“_Hi-ta!_” cried the old woman. “Listen, father.” So she made the corn-cakes and strung them on little sticks, and the two boys went to bed. But they couldn’t sleep very well, being so impatient to go hunting rabbits, and they kept waking each other and peeping out to see how long it would be before daylight.

In the morning the old Badger got up early and collected a lot of bark which he rubbed until it was soft, and then he wove the boys each a curious pair of moccasins that would come half-way up to the knees. So the elder brother put on his moccasins and ran out into the snow. “_U-kwatchi!_” exclaimed he. “First rate!” So the other little boy put on his bark moccasins, and they took their strings of corn-cakes and bows and arrows, and started off as fast as they could. Well, they went off among the hills at the foot of Thunder Mountain. It was only a little while ere they struck a rabbit trail, and the first arrow they shot killed the rabbit. So they kept on hunting until they had a large number of rabbits and began to get tired. Although there was snow on the ground, the sun was very warm, so they soon forgot all about it until they began to grow hungry, and then they looked up and saw that it was noon-time, because the sun was resting in the mid-heavens. So they went up on top of a high hill, and carried their rabbits there one by one, to find a place where the snow was shallow. Here they brushed a space clear of the snow, and, depositing the rabbits, sat down to eat their corn-cakes, which they laid on a bundle of grass. While they sat there eating, the Sun looked down and pitied his two poor little children. “Wait a bit,” said he to himself, “I’ll go down and talk to the little fellows, and help them.” So by his will alone he descended, and lo! he stood there on the earth just a little way from the two boys,--grand, beautiful, sublime. Upon his body were garments of embroidered cotton; fringed leggings covered his knees, and he was girt with many-colored girdles; buckskins of bright leather protected his feet; bracelets and strings of wampum ornamented his neck and arms; turquoise earrings hung from his ears; beautiful plumes waved over his head; his long, glossy hair was held with cords of many colors, into which great plumes of macaw feathers were stuck. Fearful, wonderful, beautiful, he stood. Suddenly one of the boys looked up and saw the Sun-father standing there.

“Blood!” cried he to the other. “_Ati!_ Somebody’s coming!”

“Where?” asked the other. “Where?”

“Right over there!”

“_Ati!_” he exclaimed.

Then the Sun, with stately step, approached them, dazzling their eyes with his beauty and his magnificent dress. So the poor little fellows huddled together and crouched their knees close to their bodies (for they had no clothes on), and watched him, trembling, until he came near. Then one of them said faintly: “Comest thou?” as though he just remembered it.

“Yea, I do, my children,” said the Sun. “How are ye these many days?”

“Happy,” responded they; but they were almost frightened out of their wits, and kept looking first at the Sun-father and then at each other.

“My children,” said the Sun-father tenderly, “ye are my own children; I gave ye both life.” But they only gazed at him, not believing what he said.

“Ye are both mine own children,” he repeated.

“Is that so?” replied they.

“Yea, that is true; and I saw ye here, and pitied ye; so I came to speak with ye and to help ye.”

“_Hai!_” exclaimed they. But they still looked at each other and at the Sun-father, and did not believe him.

“Yea, ye are verily my children,” continued the Sun. “I am your own father. Around Thunder Mountain there is a city of men. It is called the Home of the Eagles, and there once lived a beautiful maiden who never left her home, but was always shut in her room. Day after day at midday, just at this time, I came down and visited her in my own sunlight. And a great Eagle always stood and watched her. Now, the townspeople grew anxious to see her, so they danced day after day their most beautiful dances, hoping to entice her to come forth; but she never looked out. So her father’s warriors went to the home of Áhaiyúta and his younger brother, Mátsailéma, where they lived with their grandmother, on the middle of Thunder Mountain, and the Twain said that they would go with them and compel her to come forth. Therefore, one day they went and led the dance of the Óinahe. Yet, although they danced four times, she would not come forth, but tried to escape to my home in the heavens on the back of her Eagle; so the two gods shot her, and she fell down the cañon. Then it was that ye two, my children, were born and rolled among the bushes. Now, the people ran down from the village to strive for your mother’s body, and an Acoma got her and carried her away to the home of his people. An old Badger found ye and brought ye home to his wife, and that is the way ye came to live in the home of the Badgers.”

Still the little ones did not believe him.

“Look!” said the Sun-father. “See what I have brought ye!” Then he continued: “Wait; in eight days, in the Home of the Eagles, where your aunts live in the house of your mother’s father, there will be a great dance. Go ye thither. Ye will climb up a crooked path and enter the town through a road under the houses. Do not go out at once into the plaza, but wait until the dancers come out. Then step forth, and over to the left of the plaza ye will see your grandfather’s house. It is the greatest house in the city, and the longest ladder leads up to it, and fringes of hair ornament its poles. On the roof ye will see, if the day be warm, two noisy macaws, and there ye will see your mother’s sisters--your own aunts. When ye go into the plaza the people will rush up to ye and say: ‘Whither do ye come, friends? Will ye not join in the dance?’ And ye must say ye will, and then your aunts will come down and dance for the first time, because they are the most beautiful maidens in the pueblo, and very proud. But they will take hold of your hands and dance with ye, and when they have done will ask ye to come into their house; and ye must go.

“Now, the one who sits over in the northern corner is the first sister of your mother, therefore your mother; and the one who sits next to her is your next mother, and so on. There will be eight of them, and the youngest will be like a sister unto ye. They will place stools for ye, and ye must sit down and call them aunts. They will say: ‘Certainly, we are the aunts of all good boys in the cities of men who are not our enemies.’ And then ye must tell them that they are your real aunts, that this is your house, that your mother used to live there--was the maiden who never went out, but always sat making beautiful basket-trays of many-colored splints. Then ye must lead them into the next room, and the next, and then into the next one, and point to the beautiful basket-trays on the walls. There on the northern wall will hang a yellow tray, on the west wall will hang a blue one, and on the south wall, a red tray, then on the east wall will hang a white tray, and fastened to the ceiling will be a tray of many colors, while a black one will stand under the floor. And then ye must point to the trays and say: ‘These our mother made.’ Then they will believe and embrace ye and will not want to let ye go; but after ye have sat and eaten with them, ye must come back to the home of the Badgers. And the next day ye must go to Acoma to get your mother. Just before ye arrive at the town of Acoma ye will meet an old, wrinkled hag carrying a big bundle of wood on her back. Ye must call her ‘grandmother’ and greet her pleasantly. She will tell ye she is the dance-priestess of Acoma. Then ye must ask her why she, a woman, comes out to gather wood, and she will reply that she gets the wood to make a light. Then ask her why she wishes a light, and she will say to ye that day after day she lights a fire in her ceremonial chamber and that when she reaches home with her wood the young men of her clan come together and give her food, and that at night she takes the wood to the ceremonial chamber and then sits on a stone seat by the side of the fireplace and builds a fire; that the young men gather in the chamber and prepare for a dance. And when they are ready she takes the bones of your mother from a niche in the west end of the chamber and distributes them among the young men, who carry them in the dance. She gives the skull to the first one, the breast-bone to the next, the ribs to another, and so on until they all have bones to carry in the dance. When the dance is over, she goes around and takes all the bones back again and replaces them in the niche. Then the young men depart for their homes, but some of them sleep there in the chamber, and then she lies down to sleep and to keep guard over the bones.

“Now, when she has told ye these things, ye must ask her if that is all. If she says ‘Yes,’ kill her; then skin her, and the younger brother must wave his hands over her skin and put it on, and he will look just like the old woman. And he must climb up to the town of the Acomas and enter and do just as the old woman said that she did.

“Now, after the dance is over and he has taken back all of the bones and replaced them in the niche, he must lie down and pretend to sleep, and some of the young men will go home; others will sleep there. When they all begin to snore, he must gather all the bones, and the two dried eyes, and the heart of his mother, and bring them away as fast as ever he can to where his brother waits. And when he gets there,--lo! she will come to life again and be just as she was before she was killed by the Twain. Now, mind, ye must not leave a single bone nor any part, for if ye do, your mother will lack that when she comes to life again.”

“Very well,” replied the boys, “we will do as you have told us; certainly we will.”

“Now, I have given ye with your birth the power to slay all game; but mind that not a single rabbit, nor deer, nor antelope, nor mountain sheep, nor elk--though he be the finest ye have ever seen--shall ye slay, for in that case ye shall perish with your mother.”

So the two boys promised they would not. “Of course we will not,” said the younger brother. “When one’s father commands him, can he disobey?”

“Come hither,” said the Sun-father to the younger brother. “Stand here.” So the little boy did as he was bidden.

“Lift up thy foot.” Then the Sun-father drew off the moccasin of bark and put beautiful fringed leggings upon it, and replaced the bark moccasins with buskins like his own, and tied up the leggings with many-colored garters, and dressed him as he was dressed, and placed a beautiful quiver upon his back. But the poor little boys were dark-colored, and their hair was tangled and matted over their heads. Then the Sun-father turned himself about as if to summon some unseen messenger, and created a great warm cloud of mist, with which he cleansed the boys, and lo! their skins became smooth and clear, and their hair fell down their backs in wavy masses. Then the Sun-father arranged the younger brother’s hair and placed a plume therein like his own, and beautiful plumes on his head.

“There,” said he to the elder; “look at thy younger brother.” But the poor little fellow was covered with shame, and dared only steal glances at his brother and the Sun-father. Then the Sun-father dressed the other like the first.

“_Ti!_” exclaimed they, as they looked at each other and at the Sun-father.

“You are just like Him,” they said to each other. But still they did not call him father. Then they fell to conversing.

“Why; he must be our father!” said they to each other. “Mother’s face has a black streak right down the middle of it, and father’s face is just like it, except that his chin is grizzly.” Then they knew that the Sun was their father, and they thanked him for his goodness.

Then said the Sun-father to them: “Mind what I have told ye, my children. I must go to my home in the heavens. Happy may ye always be. Ye are my children; I love ye, and therefore I came to help ye. Run home, now, for your father and mother who reared ye--the Badgers--are awaiting your coming. They will not know ye, so ye must roll up your bark moccasins and take along your strings of corn-cakes together with the rabbits ye have slain.”

“How can we carry them?” asked they; “for they are heavy.”

Then the Sun-father turned about and passed his hands gently over the heap of dead rabbits. “Lift them now,” said he to the children; and when they tried to lift them, lo! they were as light as dry grass-stalks. So they bade their father farewell and started home. When they had gone a little way they stopped to look around, but their father was nowhere to be seen.

Sure enough, when they neared home there were the two old Badgers running around their hole, and the old Badger-father was just getting ready to go out and search, for fear that they had perished from cold. He had just gone down to get some rabbit-skins and other things with which to wrap them, when the old woman, who was up above, shouted down: “Hurry, come out! Somebody is coming!”

“Look!” said one of the children to the other. “There’s our poor mother waiting for us. Hurry up! Let’s run, or else our father will come out searching for us.”

As they approached they called out: “Poor mother, here you are in the cold waiting for us.” But she did not recognize them, and only hid her face in her paws from shame, for they were too beautiful to look upon--just like the Sun-father.

“Don’t you know us, mother?” asked the Two to the old woman just as the old Badger came out.

“No!” answered she.

“Why, we are your children!”

“Ah! my children did not look like you!”

“We are they! Look here!” said they, and they showed the bark moccasins and the strings of corn-cakes.

“Our poor children!”

“Yes, our father is no other than the Sun-father, and he came down to speak to us today, and he dressed us as you see, just like himself, and he said that our mother used to live over in the Home of the Eagles, that our aunts still live there, and our grandfather, and that our mother used to live there, but the Twain killed her as she was trying to escape on the back of an Eagle. And when she fell into the Cañon of the Coyote we were born, and father here found us and you both reared us.”

“Yes, that is very true,” said the old Badger. “I know it all; and I know, too, that there will be a dance at the Home of the Eagles in eight days. Tomorrow there will be only seven left, and when the eighth day comes you will both go there to see it. Come up and come down,” said he.

So the two entered, but they were ill at ease in their clothes, which they were not used to. And when the old mother had placed soft rabbit-skins on the floor, they doffed their clothing and carefully laid it away. Then the whole family ate their evening meal.

“Keep count for us, father, and when the time comes, let us know,” said the boys.

So the days passed by until the day before the dance, and that morning the old Badger said to the Two: “Tomorrow the dance will come.”

“Very well,” replied they; “let us go out and hunt today, that you and mother may have something to eat.” So they went forth, and in the evening came back with great numbers of rabbits; and the old mother skinned the rabbits and put some of them to cook over night, so that her children might eat before starting for the town under Thunder Mountain.

At sunrise next morning both dressed themselves carefully, put on their plumes, and started on the pathway that leads around the mountain. They passed the village of K’yátik’ia on their way, and the people marvelled greatly at their beauty and their magnificent dress. And so they followed the road through the Cañon of the Coyotes, thence by the crooked pathway and the covered road under the house into the court of K’iákime. Just as the Sun-father had told them, they found everything there. There was the great house with the tall ladder and the two macaws, and there were the young maidens, their aunts, sitting on the house-top.

And as the dancers came into the court they stepped forward, and then it was that the people first saw and hailed them. The chief of the dance came forward and asked them whither they came and if they would not join in the dance. So they assented and came forward to the center of the plaza, and as they began to dance, the young girls arose and the dance chiefs went and escorted them to the dance plaza.

Although they told them, “Dance here,” they did not obey. They ran right over to where the two young men were dancing, and took hold of their hands just as the Sun-father had told them it would come to pass. And, in fact, everything happened just as he had said. Yes, they all ran down and grasped the two boys’ hands, and when the dance was over and they let go, they said to the two handsome young strangers: “Come up; come in.”

“It is well,” said the two young men. So they all went up into the house and sat down. Now, all these girls were young, and they were very much pleased with the young men. In fact the two youngest were in love with them already; so they smiled and made themselves very pleasant. Then the first brother arose and went over to the eldest one, and said: “Mother-aunt.”

“What is it?” she replied, “for of course throughout the cities of men we, as the daughters of a great priest, are the mothers of children,”--and so on until they came to the last and youngest one, whom they called “little mother-aunt,” and she also replied that, however young they might be, still they might be counted the mothers of the children of men.

“No, verily, ye are our parents,” replied the Twain. “Beyond this room is another, and beyond that another, and beyond that yet another where lived our mother, who never went forth from her house, but sat day after day making sacred trays. And there even now, according to the colors of the parts of the world hang her trays on the wall.”

And so, as the Sun had told them, they finished their story. Then the people were convinced, and sent for the grandfather, the great priest-chief, and when he came they all embraced their new children, admiring greatly their straight, smooth limbs and abundant hair. Then the grandfather dressed them in some of the beautiful ornaments their mother used to wear, and when evening approached they feasted them. And after the meal was over, as the Sun was setting, the two boys arose and said, “We must go.”

“Stay with us, stay with us,” the young girls and the grandfather said. “Why should you go away from your home? This is your own home.”

“No; we said to our mother and father, the Badgers, that we would return to them; therefore we must go,” urged the boys. So at last they consented and wished them a happy journey.

“Fear not,” said the Two as they started, “for we shall yet go and get our mother. Even tomorrow we shall go to Acoma where the people dance day after day in her memory.” Then they departed and returned to the place of the Badgers.

When they arrived at home, sure enough, there were their Badger-mother and Badger-father awaiting them outside their holes.

“Oh, here you are!” they cried.

“Yes; how did you come unto the evening?”

“Happily!” replied the old ones. “Come in, come in!” So they entered.

When they had finished eating, the elder brother said: “Mother, father, look ye! Tomorrow we must go after our mother to Acoma. Make us a luncheon, and we will start early in the morning. We are swift runners and shall get there in one day; and the next day we will start back; and the next day, quite early, we will come home again with our mother.”

“Very well,” replied the Badger-father; “it is well.” But the Badger-mother said, “Oh! my poor children, my poor boys!”

So, early next morning, the Badger-mother rolled up some sweet corn-cakes in a blanket, for she did not have to string them now, and together the Twain started up the eastern trail. Their father, the Sun, thought to help them; therefore he lengthened the day and took two steps only at a time, until the two boys had arrived at the Springs of the Elks, almost on the borders of the Acoma country. Then, with his usual speed journeyed the Sun-father toward the Land of Night; and the two boys continued until they arrived within sight of the town of the Acomas--away out there on top of a mountain. Sure enough, there was an old hag struggling along under a load of wood, and as the two brothers came up to her they said: “Ha, grandmother, how are you these many days?”

“Happy,” replied the old woman.

“Why is it that you, a woman, and an old woman, have to carry wood?”

“Why, I am the priestess of the dance!” answered the old woman.

“Priestess of the dance?”

“Yes.”

“What dance?”

“Why, there once lived a maiden in the Town of the Eagles, and the two Gods of War shot her one day from the back of an Eagle who was trying to run away with her, and she fell; and one of my young men was the first to grasp her, therefore we dance with her bones every night.”