Part 9

“Get behind where you belong,” said the other; “I will precede the party.” So the elder brother went first, the maiden came next, and the younger brother followed behind, with his little bag of meat.

So they went home, and the maiden placed the meat to dry in the upper rooms of the house.

While she was doing this, it was yet early in the day. The two brothers were sitting together, and whispering: “And what will she say for herself now?”

“I don’t see what she can say for herself.”

“Of course, nothing can she say for herself.”

And when the meat was all packed away in the house and the sun had set, they sat by themselves talking this over: “What can she say for herself?”

“Nothing whatever; nothing remains to be done.”

“That is quite so,” said they, as they went in to the evening meal and sat with the family to eat it.

Finally the maiden said: “With all your hunting and the labors of the day, you must be very weary. Where you slept last night you will find a resting-place. Go and rest yourselves. I cannot consent to marry you, because you have not yet shown yourselves capable of taking care of and dressing the buckskins, as well as of killing deer and antelope and such animals. For a long time buckskins have been accumulating in the upper room. I have no brothers to soften and scrape them; therefore, if you Two will take the hair off from all my buckskins tomorrow before sunset, and scrape the underside so that they will be thin and soft, I will consent to be the wife of one of you, or both.”

And they said: “Oh mercy, it is too bad!”

“We can never do it,” said the younger brother.

“I don’t suppose we can; but we can try,” said the elder.

So they lay down.

“Let us take things in time,” said the elder one, after he had thought of it. And they jumped up and called to the maiden: “Where are those buckskins?”

“They are in the upper room,” said she.

She showed them the way to the upper room. It was packed to the rafters with buckskins. They began to make big bales of these and then took them down to the river. When they got them all down there they said: “How in the world can we scrape so many skins? There are more here than we can clean in a year.”

“I will tell you what,” said the younger brother; “we will stow away some in the crevices of the rocks, and get rid of them in that way.”

“Always hasty, always hasty,” said the elder. “Do you suppose that woman put those skins away without counting every one of them? We can’t do that.”

They spread them out in the water that they might soak all night, and built a little dam so they would not float away. While they were thus engaged they heard some one talking, so they pricked up their ears to listen.

Now, the hill that stands by the side across from the Village of the Yellow Rocks was, and still is, a favorite home of the Field-mice. They are very prolific, and have to provide great bundles of wool for their families. But in the days of the ancients they were terrible gamblers and were all the time betting away their nests, and the young Mice being perfectly bare, with no wool on them at all, died of cold. And still they kept on betting, making little figures of nests and betting these away against the time when they should have more. It was these Mice which the two gods overheard.

Said the younger brother: “Listen to that! Who is talking?”

“Some one is betting. Let us go nearer.”

They went across the river and listened, and heard the tiny little voices calling out and shouting.

“Let us go in,” said the younger brother. And he placed his foot in the hole and descended, followed by the other. They found there an enormous village of Field-mice in human form, their clothes, in the shape of Mice, hanging over the sides of the house. Some had their clothing all off down to their waists, and were betting as hard as they could and talking with one another.

As soon as the two brothers entered, they said: “Who comes?”

The Two answered: “We come.”

“Come in, come in,” cried the Mice,--they were not very polite. “Sit down and have a game. We have not anything to bet just now, but if you trust us we will bet with you.”

“What had you in mind in coming?” said an old Field-mouse with a broken tail.

They answered that they had come because they heard voices. Then they told their story.

“What is this you have to do?” asked the Mice.

“To clean all the hair off those pelts tomorrow.”

The Mice looked around at one another; their eyes fairly sparkled and burned.

“Now, then, we will help you if you will promise us something,” said they; “but we want your solemn promise.”

“What is that?” asked the brothers.

“That you will give us all the hair.”

“Oh, yes,” said the brothers; “we will be glad to get rid of it.”

“All right,” said they; “where are the skins?” Then they all began to pour out of the place, and they were so numerous that it was like water, when the rain is falling hard, running over a rock.

When they had all run out the two War-gods drew the skins on the bank, and the Field-mice went to nibbling the hair and cleaning off the underside. They made up little bundles of the flesh from the skins for their food, and great parcels of the hair. Finally they said: “May we have them all?”

“No,” said the brothers, “we must have eight reserved, four for each, so that we will be hard at work all day tomorrow.”

“Well,” said the Mice, “we can’t consent to leaving even so many, unless you promise that you will gather up all the hair and put it somewhere so that we can get it.”

The Two promised that, and said: “Be sure to leave eight skins, will you? and we will go to bed and rest ourselves.”

“All right, all right!” responded the Field-mice.

So the brothers climbed up the hill to the town, and up the ladder, and slept in their room.

The next morning the girl said: “Now, remember, you will have to clean every skin and make it soft and white.”

So they went down to the river and started to work. The girl had said to them that at midday she would go down and see how they were getting along. They were at work nearly all the forenoon on the skins. While the elder brother shaved the hair off, the younger one scraped them thin and softened them.

When the maiden came at noon, she said: “How are you getting along?”

“We have finished four and are at work on the fifth.”

“Remember,” said she, “you must finish all of them today or I shall have to send you home.”

So they worked away until a little before the sun set, when she appeared again. They had just finished the last. The Field-mice had carefully dressed all the others (they did it better than the men), and there they lay spread out on the sands like a great field of something growing, only white.

When the maiden came down she was perfectly overcome; she looked and looked and counted and recounted. She found them all there. Then she got a long pole and fished in the water, but there were none.

Said she: “Yes, you shall be my husbands; I shall have to submit.”

She went home with them, and for a long time they all lived together, the woman with her two husbands. They managed to get along very comfortably, and the two brothers didn’t quarrel any more than they had done before.

Finally, there were born little twin boys, exactly like their fathers, who were also twins, although one was called the elder and the other the younger.

After a time the younger brother said: “Now, let us go home to our grandmother. People always go home to their own houses and take their families with them.”

“No,” said the elder one, “you must remember that we have been only pretending to be human beings. It would not do to take the maiden home with us.”

“Yes,” said the other; “I want her to go with us. Our grandmother kept making fun of us; called us little, miserable, wretched creatures. I want to show her that we amount to something!”

The elder brother could not get the younger one to leave the wife behind, and like a dutiful wife she said: “I will go with you.” They made up their bundles and started out. It was a very hot day, and when they had climbed nearly to the top of Thunder Mountain, the younger brother said: “Ahem! I am tired. Let us sit down and rest.”

“It will not do,” said the elder brother. “You know very well it will not do to sit down; our father, the Sun, has forbidden that we should be among mortals. It will not do.”

“Oh, yes, it will; we must sit down here,” said the younger brother; and again his wish prevailed and they sat down.

At midday the Sun stood still in the sky, and looked down and saw this beautiful woman, and by the power of his withdrawing rays quickly snatched her from them while they were sitting there talking, she carrying her little children.

The brothers looked around and said: “Where is our wife?”

“Ah, there she is,” cried the younger; “I will shoot her.”

“Shoot your wife!” cried the elder brother. “No, let her go! Serves you right!”

“No,” said the younger, “I will shoot her!” He looked up and drew his arrow, and as his aim was absolutely unerring, _swish_ went the arrow directly to her, and she was killed. The power of life by which the Sun was drawing her up was gone, the thread was cut, and she fell over and over and struck the earth.

The two little children were so very small, and their bones so soft, that the fall did not hurt them much. They fell on the soft bank, and rolled and rolled down the hill, and the younger brother ran forward and caught them up in his arms, crying: “Oh, my little children!” and brought them to the elder brother, who said: “Now, what can be done with these little babies, with no mother, no food?”

“We will take them home to grandmother,” said the younger brother.

“Your grandmother cannot take care of these babies,” said the elder brother.

“Yes, she can, of course,” said the younger brother. “Come on, come on! I didn’t want to lose my wife and children, too; I thought I must still have the children; that is the reason why I shot her.”

So one of them took one of the children, and the other one took the other, and they carried them up to the top of Thunder Mountain.

“Now, then,” said the elder brother, “we went off to marry; we come home with no wife and two little children and with nothing to feed them.”

“Oh, grandmother!” called out the younger brother.

The old woman hadn’t heard them for many a day, for many a month, even for years. She looked out and said: “My grandchildren are coming,” and she called to them: “I am so glad you have come!”

“Here, see what we have,” said the younger brother. “Here are your grandchildren. Come and take them!”

“Oh, you miserable boy, you are always doing something foolish; where is your wife?” asked the grandmother.

“Oh, I shot her!” was the response.

“Why did you do that?”

“I didn’t want my father, the Sun, to take them away with my wife. I knew you would not care anything about my wife, but I knew you would be very fond of the grandchildren. Here they are.”

But she wouldn’t look at all. So the younger brother drew his face down, and taking the poor little children in his arms said: “You unnatural grandmother, you! Here are two nice little grandchildren for you!”

She said: “How shall I feed them? or what shall I do with them?”

He replied: “Oh, take care of them, take care of them!”

She took a good look at them, and became a true grandmother. She ran and clasped the little ones, crying out: “Let me take you away from these miserable children of mine!” She made some beds of sand for them, as Zuñi mothers do today, got some soft skins for them to lie on, and fed them with a kind of milk made of corn toasted and ground and mixed with water; so that they gradually enlarged and grew up to be nice children.

* * * * *

Thus it was in the days of the ancients, and has been told to us in these days, that even the most cruel and heartless of the gods do these things. Even they took these helpless children to their grandmother, and she succored them and brought them up to the time of reason. Therefore it is the duty of those who find helpless babies or children, inasmuch as they are not so cruel and terrible as were the Gods of War,--not nearly,--surely it is their duty to take those children and succor and bring them up to the time of reason, when they can care for themselves. That is why our people, when children have been abandoned, provide and care for them as if they were their own.

Thus long is my story.

THE FOSTER-CHILD OF THE DEER

Once, long, long ago, at Háwikuh, there lived a maiden most beautiful. In her earlier years her father, who was a great priest, had devoted her to sacred things, and therefore he kept her always in the house secure from the gaze of all men, and thus she grew.

She was so beautiful that when the Sun looked down along one of the straight beams of his own light, if one of those beams chanced to pass through a chink in the roof, the sky-hole, or the windows of the upper part of the maiden’s room, he beheld her and wondered at her rare beauty, unable to compare it with anything he saw in his great journeys round about the worlds. Thus, as the maiden grew apace and became a young woman, the Sun loved her exceedingly, and as time went on he became so enamored of her that he descended to earth and entered on one of his own beams of light into her apartment, so that suddenly, while she was sitting one noon-day weaving pretty baskets, there stood before her a glorious youth, gloriously dressed. It was the Sun-father. He looked upon her gently and lovingly; she looked upon him not fearfully: and so it came about that she loved him and he loved her, and he won her to be his wife. And many were the days in which he visited her and dwelt with her for a space at noon-time; but as she was alone mostly, or as she kept sitting weaving her trays when any one of the family entered her apartment, no one suspected this.

Now, as she knew that she had been devoted to sacred things, and that if she explained how it was that she was a mother she would not be believed, she was greatly exercised in mind and heart. She therefore decided that when her child was born she would put it away from her.

When the time came, the child one night was born. She carefully wrapped the little baby boy in some soft cotton-wool, and in the middle of the night stole out softly over the roof-tops, and, silently descending, laid the child on the sheltered side of a heap of refuse near the little stream that flows by Háwikuh, in the valley below. Then, mourning as a mother will mourn for her offspring, she returned to her room and lay herself down, poor thing, to rest.

As daylight was breaking in the east, and the hills and the valleys were coming forth one after another from the shadows of night, a Deer with her two little brightly-speckled fawns descended from the hills to the south across the valley, with ears and eyes alert, and stopped at the stream to drink. While drinking they were startled by an infant’s cry, and, looking up, they saw dust and cotton-wool and other things flying about in the air, almost as if a little whirlwind were blowing on the site of the refuse-heap where the child had been laid. It was the child, who, waking and finding itself alone, hungry, and cold, was crying and throwing its little hands about.

“Bless my delight!” cried the Deer to her fawns. “I have this day found a waif, a child, and though it be human it shall be mine; for, see, my children, I love you so much that surely I could love another.”

Thereupon she approached the little infant, and breathed her warm breath upon it and caressed it until it became quiet, and then after wrapping about it the cotton-wool, she gently lifted it on her broad horns, and, turning, carried it steadily away toward the south, followed on either side by her children, who kept crying out “Neh! neh!” in their delight.

The home of this old Deer and her little ones, where all her children had been born for years, was south of Háwikuh, in the valley that turns off among the ledges of rocks near the little spring called Póshaan. There, in the shelter of a clump of piñon and cedar trees, was a soft and warm retreat, winter and summer, and this was the lair of the Deer and her young.

The Deer was no less delighted than surprised next morning to find that the infant had grown apace, for she had suckled it with her own milk, and that before the declining of the sun it was already creeping about. And greater was her surprise and delight, as day succeeded day, to find that the child grew even more swiftly than grow the children of the Deer. Behold! on the evening of the fourth day it was running about and playing with its foster brother and sister. Nor was it slow of foot, even as compared with those little Deer. Behold! yet greater cause for wonder, on the eighth day it was a youth fair to look upon--looking upon itself and seeing that it had no clothing, and wondering why it was not clothed, like its brother and sister, in soft warm hair with pretty spots upon it.

As time went on, this little foster-child of the Deer (it must always be remembered that it was the offspring of the Sun-father himself), in playing with his brother and sister, and in his runnings about, grew wondrously strong, and even swifter of foot than the Deer themselves, and learned the language of the Deer and all their ways.

When he had become perfected in all that a Deer should know, the Deer-mother led him forth into the wilds and made him acquainted with the great herd to which she belonged. They were exceedingly happy with this addition to their number; much they loved him, and so sagacious was the youth that he soon became the leader of the Deer of the Háwikuh country.

When these Deer and the Antelopes were out on the mesas ranging to and fro, there at their head ran the swift youth. The soles of his feet became as hard as the hoofs of the Deer, the skin of his person strong and dark, the hair of his head long and waving and as soft as the hair on the sides of the Deer themselves.

It chanced one morning, late that summer, that the uncle of the maiden who had cast away her child went out hunting, and he took his way southward past Póshaan, the lair of the Deer-mother and her foster-child. As he traversed the borders of the great mesas that lie beyond, he saw a vast herd of Deer gathered, as people gather in council. They were quiet and seemed to be listening intently to some one in their midst. The hunter stole along carefully on hands and knees, twisting himself among the bushes until he came nearer; and what was his wonder when he beheld, in the midst of the Deer, a splendid youth, broad of shoulder, tall and strong of limb, sitting nude and graceful on the ground, and the old Deer and the young seemed to be paying attention to what he was saying. The hunter rubbed his eyes and looked again; and again he looked, shading his eyes with his hands. Then he elevated himself to peer yet more closely, and the sharp eyes of the youth discovered him. With a shout he lifted himself to his feet and sped away like the wind, followed by the whole herd, their hoofs thundering, and soon they were all out of sight.

The hunter dropped his bow and stood there musing; then picking it up, he turned himself about and ran toward Háwikuh as fast as he could. When he arrived he related to the father of the girl what he had seen. The old priest summoned his hunters and warriors and bade the uncle repeat the story. Many there were who said: “You have seen an apparition, and of evil omen to your family, alas! alas!”

“No,” said he, “I looked, and again I looked, and yet again, and again, and I avow to you that what I saw was as plain and as mortal as the Deer themselves.”

Convinced at last, the council decided to form a grand hunt, and word was given from the house-tops that on the fourth day from that day a hunt should be undertaken--that the southern mesa should be surrounded, and that the people should gather in from all sides and encompass the herd there, in order that this wonderful youth should not escape being seen, or possibly captured.

Now, when the Deer had gone to a safe distance they slackened their pace and called to their leader not to fear. And the old foster-mother of the youth for the first time related to him, as she had related to them long ago, that he was the child of mortals, telling how she had found him.

The youth sat with his head bowed, thinking of these things. Then he raised his head proudly, and said: “What though I be the child of mortals, they have not loved me: they have cast me from their midst, therefore will I be faithful to thee alone.”

But the old Deer-mother said to him: “Hush, my child! Thou art but a mortal, and though thou might’st live on the roots of the trees and the bushes and plants that mature in autumn, yet surely in the winter time thou could’st not live, for my supply of milk will be withholden, and the fruits and the nuts will all be gone.”

And the older members of that large herd gathered round and repeated what she had been saying. And they said: “We are aware that we shall be hunted now, as is the invariable custom when our herd has been discovered, on the fourth day from the day on which we were first seen. Amongst the people who come there will be, no doubt, those who will seek you; and you must not endeavor to escape. Even we ourselves are accustomed to give up our lives to the brave hunters among this people, for many of them are sacred of thought, sacred of heart, and make due sacrifices unto us, that our lives in other form may be spared unceasingly.”

A splendid Deer rose from the midst of the herd, and, coming forward, laid his cheek on the cheek of the boy, and said: “Yet we love you, but we must now part from you. And, in order that you may be like unto other mortals, only exceeding them, accompany me to the Land of the Souls of Men, where sit in council the Gods of the Sacred Dance and Drama, the Gods of the Spirit World.”

To all this the youth, being convinced, agreed. And on that same day the Deer who had spoken set forward, the swift youth running by his side, toward the Lake of the Dead. On and on they sped, and as night was falling they came to the borders of that lake, and the lights were shining over its middle and the Gardens of the Sacred Dance. And the old Drama-woman and the old Drama-man were walking on its shores, back and forth, calling across to each other.

As the Deer neared the shore of the lake, he turned and said to his companion: “Step in boldly with me. Ladders of rushes will rise to receive you, and down underneath the waters into the great Halls of the Dead and of the Sacred Dance we will be borne gently and swiftly.”

Then they stepped into the lake. Brighter and lighter it grew. Great ladders of rushes and flags lifted themselves from the water, and upon them the Deer and his companion were borne downward into halls of splendor, lighted by many lights and fires. And in the largest chamber the gods were sitting in council silently. Páutiwa, the Sun-priest of the Sacred Drama (_Kâkâ_), Shúlawitsi (the God of Fire), with his torch of ever-living flame, and many others were there; and when the strangers arrived they greeted and were greeted, and were given a place in the light of the central fire. And in through the doors of the west and the north and the east and the south filed long rows of sacred dancers, those who had passed through the Lake of the Dead, clad in cotton mantles, white as the daylight, finely embroidered, decked with many a treasure shell and turquoise stone. These performed their sacred rites, to the delight of the gods and the wonder of the Deer and his foster-brother.