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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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IN the midst of the great desert rose a tremendous wall of stone, upon the ramparts of which stood the citadel of Taneen, chief of the Rock Clan.
Under the gold-banded, black-fringed table mountain, to the north and east, yawned an abyss of gorges, the unknown, the place of cliffs and shadows, through which rolled and thundered the red river of the gods. To the south stretched the wasteland--the long weathered slope leading down to bare ridges and colored buttes, out over the gray flats, and onto the dunes of clay and the white-shrouded distance. On the west side lay a shallow valley where patches of bleached grass and sere fields of corn stood out starkly from the green cedars.
Taneen paced to and fro on his stone-fenced terrace. A dry hot wind fanned his troubled face. It blew from the west. It bore evil tidings--that the rains would not come. The preceding year had been dry; the winter snows had been scant; and now the springs were failing, the streams running low, and the waterfall Oljato trickled like thin wind-swept grasses over the ledge.
These omens haunted Taneen. They recalled the beginning of the twelve-year drought, which in the end had dispersed the starving clans of the Sheboyahs to the four winds. The rains had come again with fruitful seasons, bringing back prosperity and happiness to the little people of the rocks. Taneen could look afar, with eagle gaze, to see on a distant craggy height the citadel of the Wolf Clan; and farther still, dim in the purple haze, a dark spur that marked the home of the Antelope Clan. Other clans were scattered far to the westward.
That summer no brave runner had yet crossed the hot, waterless sands and rocks with messages to Taneen. All was not well with the neighboring clans.
Taneen turned to gaze from his terrace down the many-stepped descent over the little brown dwellings with their dark, eyelike windows, down to the center of the stronghold, where the domed granaries and circular cisterns stood under the protecting arch of the great wall, and still farther down to the faded green squares and gray ovals of the playgrounds.
But the young braves of the Sheboyahs were not indulging in games this hot day. They lolled in the shade of the walls, or lay asleep inside the cool houses. Naked children swarmed like lazy ants on the courts and terraces. Only the squaws and the maidens were at work, grinding, baking, weaving, carrying, moving in and out of sun and shade. Taneen's Rock Clan had grown populous again, for which gift of the gods he was grateful and proud. But there seemed to be a shadow creeping over them.
He went below to the council chamber where his medicine men convened much of late, obsessed with their interpretations of the signs of the times, with their incantations to their guardian spirits.
A sacred fire of cedar fagots was burning on the east side of the chamber, where the door looked toward the sunrise. In the center of the floor a fine covering of wind-blown sand had been laid, and upon this space Declis, the painter, was sifting colored sands of white and copper, of blue and green and ocher. Old Benei, the star-gazer, was chanting. Clodothie, the chief medicine man of the clan, leaned on his staff with gaze of doubt and fear fixed upon the fourth inmate of the chamber. This was Dageel, the idiot of the tribe, a pink-eyed, red-haired, deformed young brave hideous to behold. He was hated and feared by all the Sheboyahs.
"What is he doing now?" demanded Taneen, aghast.
"Listen," replied Clodothie impressively.
Dageel, bending over the sand painting, was jabbering wild and whirling sounds, meaningless and fearsome to the chief. He made strange and violent gestures; he expelled a puffing breath, such as would be emitted by a watching deer.
"He tells of the First People, who came from animals," translated the medicine man. "Of the time when it was always night, of the coming of the sun, and then of water over all the land."
Taneen silenced the priest with a gesture of impatience. "What of this hot west wind?" he queried darkly.
"O Chief! It is the herald of more dry years," replied the medicine man sonorously, with a slow spreading of his clawlike hands. "Our corn did not ripen. Our melons parched on the vines."
"Give orders that my people conserve their grain and water. We shall not starve. Meanwhile you priests shall invoke the rain gods. You will seek council from your spirits, to learn what sacrifices we must make, what ceremonies will appease."
"O Chief, it is written! Return Nashta to her outcast clan!" thundered the priest.
Taneen shrank as from an inward stab.
"Wise man, you should know it is also written that my child Nashta, Daughter of the Moon, remains hidden from daylight with the Rock Clan forever," intoned Taneen imperiously.
"Your sin will be visited upon your people," said the priest.
"Be it so. She is my blood, my pride. Nashta is innocent, as is her mother. The fierce Antelope Clan would destroy her, the daughter of their queen."
"Then the devouring drought will come as before, like a swarm of grasshoppers that denude the land."
Taneen stood silent, watching the sandpainter.
"The ice will creep back upon us . . . or the land will be dark again . . . or the water will rise to the tallest treetop."
"No. Taneen does not believe. The ice and night and flood belonged to the time of the First People."
"Aye. . . . But O Chief! If there were a first people so there shall be a last. A race that will make us slaves. Clodothie sees them in the shadows. Their voice is as the thunder of the red river."
Taneen believed this prophecy to be true. He had heard it in the whispers of the wind through the cedars. Even the rock walls waited for the echo of the footfalls of the future. The earth, the sky and the stars remained in eternal fixity, but all living creatures changed. Each clan of the Sheboyahs lived on their rocky height in mortal dread of the unknown. Their old sages squatted beside the fires in the kivas and handed down to the younger generations the legends of the tribe--how the fathers of their fathers fought and overcame the First People, and how their progenitors battled with man before he was man. There were stealthy steps on the trail of the Sheboyahs. The time was not far distant when there would be justification for the old chiefs' custom of building their dwellings on the unscalable cliffs. Had not the Badger Clan vanished strangely off the far escarpment to the south?
Taneen left the chamber of the priests and repaired to his terrace where once more he leaned on the parapet to gaze with clouded vision over the lowlands.
The searing wind brought hot fragrance of the dry earth, the sand and cactus and cedar, the endless area of stone. On all sides, only that one to the west gave any hope of life. He could not endure that smoky northern abyss from whence at intervals rose a sullen roar. And the white-palled wasteland of shifting sands on the south only augmented his dread. Yet these regions seemed indeed to be insurmountable barriers for those vague hosts that threatened his people. Gray and lonely and monotonous sheered away the cedared valley to the west, solemn and stark under the noonday sun, a wide path to the other clans of the Sheboyahs, yet weirdly formidable at this hour.
The chieftain's gaze shifted to the shadow under the grand arch of the wall that flanked the end of the citadel below. Here, deep in a recess of the rocks, lay the kiva that hid Nashta, Daughter of the Moon. The light of day had never fallen upon this maiden's beautiful face. The secret of that kiva was held inviolate by the Rock Clan. Only the medicine men, and old women of the tribe, and the maiden attendants bound to secrecy, knew of the presence there of Taneen's child, by the queen of the outcast Antelope Clan. Nashta, Daughter of the Moon, whose skin was white as snow! Taneen's hold upon his tribe was no stronger than that precarious secret. There was catastrophe in the air. Whispers of the departed Sheboyahs came with the swallow's rustling flight. The chief's great love for the outcast queen was greater than that for his people. He would cherish Nashta, her daughter, even though through that bond he brought about the doom presaged by the priests.
Taneen liked not the desolate surroundings, nor the significance of the elements. Grieved and tortured, he sought the cool shade of his thick-walled house.
At sunset the medicine men brought to Taneen a runner from the Wolf Clan. Caked with dust and sweat, this brave carried strange tidings. The Antelope Clan was no more. The angry gods had destroyed them. Clouds of smoke rose above their citadel, and long rows of carrion birds sat upon the walls. The approach to their fastness had been broken away by powers beyond the ken of the sages of the Wolf Clan.
"Taneen, take heed," cried Clodothie, his voice filled with foreboding, "lest your people suffer the same accursed fate."
The chief did not hear. Between deliverance from mortal foes and the death of a woman still beloved, he stood racked to the very soul. Seeking the darkness, he lay wide-eyed and afraid. But the torture was for earthly loss of the dusky-eyed woman who had outlawed her people for love of him.
A low, sand-shifting wind moaned in the clefts of the rocks. Taneen heard and felt that he was not alone. Then soft, moccasined footfalls on the terrace attested to mortal activity, the tryst of braves and maidens who dared forbidden love, even as he had dared in the days of his youth. A nighthawk shrilled a bitter cry. At last in the dead hours silence lay like a heavy mantle over the citadel. Then Taneen stalked forth upon the terrace.
A pale moon gleamed down upon the innumerable facets of rock. The gorge to the north resembled the night, menacing, mystic, waiting. Those whom Clodothie called the First People might be there in the blackness. But Taneen was certain only of a monstrous beating heart in the oppressive silence. The air had cooled and he breathed deeply. It was the midnight hour of vigil that Taneen seldom missed, and never when the moon soared high. Pale forms moved noiselessly, like spirits, out of the shadow of the great arch. Taneen watched them, his heart full to bursting. Nashta, with the star-maidens, her attendants, was stealing out to bathe in the moonlit pool below the citadel.
The austere summer days dragged on. Taneen's high priests, for all their lore and boasted influence with the gods, failed to bring the rains. Rabbits and antelope left the valley. The Sheboyahs fell back upon their store of grain. The springs sank lower. Oljato no longer slid its pale lacy waterfall over the precipice. But the great pool under the wall, shaded from the thirsty sun, held to its shimmering level.
The mysterious fate of the Antelope Clan ceased to dominate the harangues of Taneen's medicine men. Jealous of their power and doubtful of their strength, they bent all their efforts into prayers for rain.
One day Taneen proved to himself that he still retained the keenness of eye which in his youth had been compared to that of the eagle. Far down on the ragged red slope he made out a moving dot. He watched from his terrace. The object might be a sheep or a cougar, but he thought it was a man, and therefore kept his counsel. The black speck moved, enlarged, vanished to reappear, and was always climbing. The time came when Taneen's fears were justified.
He called for his hunters, those of the clan who were farsighted. They came and looked long in silence.
"A tall man!"
"He is not a runner."
"Aie! From the north."
The braves came singly and in groups; the squaws left their tasks to line up along the ramparts; the medicine men heard and stalked forth to see. When the stranger appeared in plain sight on the slope below the base of the cliff, all the Rock Clan crowded the walls, the terraces, the roofs. The hour seemed momentous.
The stranger waved something that flashed in the moonlight. The gesture was friendly. Only the medicine men did not take it so. The maidens were in a flutter of excitement. Taneen waved an answer which was a gesture of welcome. Then old men, squaws, braves and the maidens followed their chief, and a long fluttering line of waving hands and arms could be seen along the parapets.
This visitor had the spring of a deerstalker in his stride. He came on. He climbed with no sign of weariness. He reached the first flight of cut steps in the ragged cliff. These he surmounted as one used to steep walls. Only those watchers who leaned over the ramparts could see him now. Low guttural murmurs flowed back to those behind.
Taneen saw the stranger halt at the second flight of cut steps. His upturned face flashed in the sun. He called aloft in a ringing voice. It was an unknown tongue that silenced the wondering onlookers! Then this daring visitor essayed the second stairway, soon to pass from view under the wall.
"Let down the ladders," commanded Taneen.
The priests made loud and wailing protest. But the chief waved them into silence.
"Bring him before me," ordered Taneen.
The high priest Clodothie raised his gaunt arms to heaven and from his cavernous chest rumbled a dolorous lamentation. It was the end. Taneen was about to receive the serpent into their midst.
Strong-armed braves slid the long spruce poles down over the parapet. Little crosspieces were bound on these poles for rungs. A brave of the Rock Clan could run up these ladders like a squirrel. It remained to be seen if this visitor could mount the walls. The silent crowd thronged twenty deep at that point, and waited breathlessly.
Taneen paced his terrace, erect and haughty, true to the nobility to which he owed his heritage; but the lament of his high priest rang like a knell in his ears.
Presently a shout went up. The stranger had surmounted the walls. Taneen turned to see the throng open to make way for a splendid striking figure of a man, striding forward between the priests. They brought the stranger before Taneen, silent, no doubt awed by his majestic presence. Taneen lifted his right hand high and voiced the welcoming words of his clan.
The visitor imitated the chief's gesture and replied in a language which none there understood. He was a head taller than the tallest brave of Taneen's clan. Round his eagle head and raven hair ran a beaded band, from which projected a long, graceful blue feather. His handsome face was of a markedly lighter shade than that of any brave of all the clans Taneen remembered, and its tinge of red was equally slight. His eyes, of a dark, piercing gray hue, held the secret of a great power. Taneen estimated his age to be under thirty years. His magnificent torso was naked to the waist. Below, he wore a short divided garment of buckskin, held in place by a braided girdle. From this hung a flint-headed tomahawk. Moccasins and leggings of buckskin, worn ragged, completed his attire. He carried a long bow, and at his back a quiver of arrows.
"Whence come you?" queried the chief, with slow signs correlating his question.
The stranger understood, for he answered by a sweep of his long arm to the north, indicating a far country beyond the chasms that no Sheboyah had ever crossed. He spoke again, and his speech, illustrated by signs made with his weapons, and his strong hands applied to his body, made plain that he was a hunter, that in the chase he had become lost, and had wandered across the gorges, starved and sore distressed.
Taneen indicated his watching braves, the shy-eyed maidens, the squaws, all his clan, and queried again with further sign.
"Your people?"
"Nopah!" replied the stranger, and touched the blue feather that crowned his raven hair.
"Blue Feather," interpreted Taneen, to his gaping listeners. "Taneen makes him welcome. Give him food and drink."
To the stern high priests Taneen said, "The Clan of the Rocks cannot change its creed because famine is abroad in the land. Or because there is a creeping cloud on the horizon. Taneen does by this strange visitor from a new people what he would ask for one of his own sons."
With glad acclaim the young braves surrounded Blue Feather to lead him away down the terraces, followed by the whispering, murmuring maidens.
While the summer waned Blue Feather idled with the braves in the cool shade of the walls or under the brush sun shelters. He let it be known that he was content to tarry there until the cold winds of autumn would temper the heat of his long journey back to his people.
Meanwhile he learned the language of the Sheboyahs. Quick and intelligent, he soon mastered the scant vocabulary of the Rock Clan, meeting difficulty only with the words that had many meanings, each of which depended upon the intonation with which it was spoken.
Blue Feather was a trusted spy of the great Nopahs, a tribe from a far country. They were warriors and not tillers of the soil. Nothis Toh, their chief, having destroyed the little people of the cliffs beyond the vast chasms of the red river, had turned his fierce eyes toward the corn growers, the grain grinders of the caves. Blue Feather's work was manifold. It was to make friends with this most populous Rock Clan of the Sheboyahs, to take stock of their possessions, their defenses and the approaches to their citadel, to deceive the medicine men and lastly to corrupt the braves by the subtle arts and games and herbs of which Blue Feather was master, and to work his wiles upon the young women so that they would fall into his power.
In all, the Rock Clan totaled two thousand members. A third of these were able-bodied men. Taneen's fortress appeared impregnable to attack from the outside. The wily Sheboyahs had chosen a great unscalable crag, from which height tribe after tribe could be repulsed. Only through strategy and surprise, through treachery within the citadel, could Taneen be overcome. The huge circular bins were bursting with grain, the cisterns were full, and the deep pool of water under the arch would not fail that year. Taneen could withstand a siege longer than even the Nopahs might sustain one.
From some untraceable source, Blue Feather had received a vague hint of an underground passage beneath the citadel. Inimitable actor that he was, he played his part, growing doubly sure of a conquest which would earn him great honor among the Nopahs.
The summer passed and the cool days came. Grass and grain in the valley below had withered. The springs had dried up. Blue Feather heard the exhortations of the medicine men, and they filled him with contempt. They did not know how to propitiate the rain gods. When the vine leaves and the lichens turned gold, Blue Feather resorted to his arts.
The braves of the Sheboyahs, and many of the matured men, were fond of games, especially those that called for fleetness of foot and the exhibition of strength. Blue Feather affected laziness and indifference, causing the young men to deride their guest from the unknown Nopahs. The bolder of the maidens, urged by their brothers and sweethearts, added their gay taunts. So at last Blue Feather let himself be persuaded to enter the races, but only on his condition that each competitor wager something. As Blue Feather had divined, this ultimatum of his greatly excited the braves. They were all born gamblers.
The racecourse and field for games lay outside the citadel, on a patch of level ground surrounded by steps of rocks, where the spectators sat. Blue Feather judged from the worn, smooth ground that the Sheboyahs passed much time at their games. Generations of the Rock Clan had played there. High above the desert, like a perch for eagles, with the forbidding lowlands far below, and a fringe of spear-pointed spruce trees standing all around the oval, this playground made a strong appeal to Blue Feather. Among the Nopahs, a tribe of exceeding prowess in all feats that developed fighters, he was pre-eminent.
So Blue Feather raced with the first brave chosen to compete, and ran away from him easily. Then one after another Blue Feather defeated the clan's fleetest runners to the number of five more. There arose a clamor from the discomfited braves.
"Tith-lei! Tith-lei!" they shouted. Blue Feather was to learn that Tith-lei, the Mole, was not only the fleetest runner of the Rock Clan, but champion of all the Sheboyahs.
"Blue Feather is not a bird that he can fly a seventh race in one day," replied the victor haughtily.
The defeated braves and their backers argued for a competition on the morrow, that they might recoup their losses. Blue Feather agreed to race, but only provided the stakes were larger. Then while he rested the braves indulged in their favorite games. One in particular attracted Blue Feather. In the center of a circle there had been imbedded a post of petrified wood so that about three feet of it projected above the ground. The top of the post was round and polished so smoothly that it shone in the sunlight. A long pole and a small hoop constituted the other implements needed for this game. From an established line the hoop had to be tossed or rolled, by the aid of the pole, and the object of the game was to put the hoop over the post. Blue Feather admitted the dexterity necessary to excel at this game, and resolved to come out in the dead of night to perfect himself at it. His plot called for the winning of all their games before he introduced those of the Nopahs.
That afternoon and night news of the race on the morrow and the size of the wagers went from lip to lip all over the citadel. It augured well for Blue Feather's plan to inflame the gambling passion of the Rock Clan.
Therefore he was not surprised, when in the morning he sallied forth, to find the populace streaming out to see the race. Blue Feather thrilled at sight of the hosts of maidens, brightly clad, and in the gay mood that befitted the occasion. So far it had suited his purpose to remain aloof, impervious to the many shy advances they had ventured toward him. But this occasion might well be an auspicious one to begin his conquest of the maidens of the tribe.
Taneen and his chiefs and priests occupied seats at the top of the rock ledge. Below them and to each side extended the colorful throng, halfway round the oval field. Braves were tossing a ball to and fro.
Blue Feather stalked proudly before the double row of maidens. His heart swelled and for the time being he forgot the evil design he had upon this peaceful tribe. He reveled in the fluttering awe and admiration that he excited in them. His quick and roving eye soon picked out Ba-lee, one of the prettiest maidens of the clan, whose dusky glances toward him had not passed unnoticed.
He made her a gallant bow.
"There is no maiden to wear this for me," he said, touching the blue feather in his hair.
"Perhaps the Nopah runner has not asked," Ba-lee replied, her dark eyes alight. They told Blue Feather that he had not far to go to awaken fire in their slumbering depths.
"Blue Feather has not yet been so bold--but . . . ," and he removed the long graceful ornament from its band.
Ba-lee gave a little gasp of expectant pleasure, while whispers and murmurs ran through the bevy of maidens with her.
At that moment Tith-lei, the Mole, rival runner to be paired with Blue Feather that day, came up escorted by many braves. He was little, and his mean, half-shut eyes no doubt had won him the sobriquet of "The Mole." His sight was keen, however, for he betrayed jealousy at the spectacle of Blue Feather before Ba-lee. The maiden reacted subtly to this encounter. Blue Feather's swift thought was that Tith-lei was deeply enamored of her, a passion which she did not return.
Blue Feather tendered his token to the maiden. "If Ba-lee will wear this the Nopah runner cannot lose the race."
She bent her glossy dark head while Blue Feather stuck the feather in her hair, so that it stood up proudly. Tith-lei hissed like a snake. If he had not been Blue Feather's enemy before, he instantly became so now. Ba-lee threw back her dainty head and laughed with her maidens. But the swift half-veiled glance she shot Blue Feather told him of his conquest.
Then the runners were called to the starting point. Tith-lei stripped to his buckskin breechcloth. Blue Feather cast an inquisitive and critical gaze over his antagonist. Tith-lei's wide and deep chest, his narrow loins and his thin sinewy legs convinced Blue Feather that in a long race of endurance the Rock Clan racer would prove a rival to be feared. In a short race, however, he could not contend with the Nopah.
Poised, the racers toed the line. They were instructed to run around the stake at the far end of the field and back to the starting point. He who first touched the starter's hand would be declared the winner. A brave raised his drumstick. When the boom resounded the runners leaped into action.
Blue Feather kept pace with Tith-lei and watched him cunningly. The faster Tith-lei went the faster Blue Feather ran to keep up with him. Thus they reached and rounded the far stake. Then like an arrow from a bow Blue Feather shot ahead into his marvelous stride, that was twice as long and quick as Tith-lei's. He left the boasted racer of the Sheboyahs as if he had been rooted to the earth.
The yelling of the braves and the screaming of the maidens rang sweet in Blue Feather's ears. He had heard that blended roar before. If the Rock Clan loved a runner, let them see the greatest of the Nopahs in all his glory.
Taneen's tribe uncrowned a champion that eventful day. The chief came down from his seat to place a hand upon Blue Feather's heaving shoulder.
"The Nopah runs like the antelope," he said. "Taneen would be proud of such a son."
But the high priests glowered upon Blue Feather, and the panting Tith-lei cast malignant eyes of jealousy and hate upon him. Yet among the braves, even those who had lost their wagers to the Nopah, he became more popular than ever. And among the maidens, when he sought Ba-lee to retrieve his blue feather, he was a hero. Coyly Ba-lee held the feather behind her back, and besought him to give it to her to keep.
"Someday, perhaps, when the Nopah has won all--and you," replied Blue Feather boldly.
In the still, smoky days that followed, Blue Feather played and won at all the games of the Rock Clan except those which involved feats of strength. He held back here, letting the braves imagine that he was weak of arm and back. Then he taught them a Nopah game the tempo of which was very fast and furious. To win a player had to drive a ball with a crooked stick through a hole in the wall. Another game he taught them the braves liked even better. It was to knock a ball made of a kangaroo-rat skin into a hole at the top of a mound in the center of the court.
Blue Feather always won. At any game or contest or wager he was invariably the winner. But the fact that he seemed to shun feats of great strength left him vulnerable at one point. The braves taunted him with the one thing at which they believed he could be beaten.
One bright afternoon all the Rock Clan was again out upon the open field. The center of attraction appeared to be a round stone a little more than knee-high. Blue Feather asked of the maidens what the stone was for.
"That is the Man-Rock," replied Ba-lee, earnestly. "At a certain age every boy of the clan has to go out each day and tug at this stone and try to move it. When he can roll it he becomes a brave, and when he can lift it off the ground he is a man, and when he can carry it he becomes a chief.
"Blue Feather, you carry the Man-Rock," pleaded Ba-lee, her little brown hands clinging to him. "Ba-lee knows you can. Have you not lifted her as easily as though she were thistledown? . . . Show them and make Ba-lee rejoice. Tith-lei is jealous. He swears that you are weak. That he will kill you in battle. And, oh, my Nopah, if he does, Ba-lee will die and her soul will wander lost forever!"
Blue Feather joined the circle around the lifting stone. One young Indian after another tugged and heaved; others, more mature, budged and moved it. Tith-lei bent over it and the muscles of his back corded and strained. But loud cries from the watchers attested to the fact that he had lifted it off the ground. The medicine men proclaimed the feat to all. Tith-lei staggered erect, spent and purple of face, sweat pouring off his shoulders. In triumph he confronted Blue Feather.
"No-pah!" he panted. "Winged foot--big talk--squaw hunter! . . . If you are--a man--lift the rock!"
Clodothie, the priest, gave vent to his long-damned up suspicion and hatred of this interloper from an unknown tribe.
"_Carry^ the rock--if you would stay longer among the Sheboyahs!" he demanded.
"Little people, you would learn if the Nopahs are strong?" queried Blue Feather contemptuously, for once giving way to anger at these taunting enemies of his tribe. "Behold!"
Bending over the stone, he lifted it without apparent effort and carried it all the way back to the spot where it had rested when first the forefathers of the Rock Clan had instigated this man-building custom. The spectators exclaimed in wondrous awe at the feat. Blue Feather had carried the stone as far as had the combined efforts of hundreds of braves throughout the years. Then with wrath upon his brow he bounded up the ledge, and laying hold of a dead spruce tree he lifted with slow and tremendous might, getting it on his bowed shoulder. Staggering, with whistling breath, he carried it down to crash it at the feet of those who had been taunting him.
The high priest raised his arms as if in the presence of one imbued with godlike powers. Tith-lei's ghastly face betrayed the end of the bold plan that he must now abandon. Fear in the breasts of the braves overpowered their awe and admiration. But the squaws screeched their delight at Blue Feather's prowess, and the maidens gave him wild acclaim.
To these admirers, and to the few braves who pretended not to have been too deeply impressed by the dramatic revelation of Blue Feather's power, he gave an explanation of the reason that he always won. His grandmother had taught him a ceremony, through which, if successfully performed, the gods of chance would throw all in his favor; but if he failed in the least detail of this exceedingly difficult legendary rite he would never win again at anything. Blue Feather told how he had dared. His ancient grandmother had bidden him take some corn pollen, and pollen from other plants, and lie down before the hole of a lizard, and place some of the pollen upon his hand, palm upward, and chant the four songs she taught him. He must wait until the lizard came out to eat the pollen, and the singer must not move while the lizard was out nor while he was singing, nor forget one single word of the songs.
"Teach us the songs," cried the ambitious braves. But Blue Feather shook his head.
Blue Feather had a great store of turquoise and jet, weapons of flint, bows and arrows, beaded buckskin moccasins and garments, sheaths and bags, necklaces of bone, skins and blankets, all of which he had won from the braves of the Rock Clan. They borrowed and begged and stole articles to pit against his acquired possessions, not that they dearly loved what they had lost, but because of their insatiable passion for gambling, which Blue Feather had encouraged.
This was what the crafty Nopah wanted. He refused to run more races or play more games, saying that it would be unfair to contest further with them in ways wherein he had established his superiority. But in gambling, which allowed them the same element of chance as himself, he would meet them halfway. So they fell to gambling, a practice which was forbidden by the medicine men. And as before, Blue Feather always won.
Now about this time Blue Feather imposed upon his victims a habit far more dangerous than gambling. He had brought in his large quiver a goodly supply of blue gum, which when chewed brought on a kind of intoxication. Blue Feather introduced this evil habit little by little, to one brave at a time. And the sweet and potent drug affected each so powerfully and ecstatically that he kept the use of it a secret. Blue Feather knew then that if he could brew the concoction in sufficient amounts it would not take long to corrupt the entire fighting force of the Rock Clan. This blue gum was made from the heart of a mescal plant boiled with a resinous pitch which exuded from some species of evergreen. Blue Feather knew how to make it if only he could find the ingredients.
His days then were consumed with gambling in secluded niches of the rocks or in abandoned kivas. His nights were devoted to exerting his powers of fascination upon the women.
One moonlight night Blue Feather waited for Ba-lee on a terrace at the lower end of the citadel. As he had arrived late at the rendezvous, he assumed that she had come and gone. He reflected wonderingly that Ba-lee seldom seemed to spend time with him late at night. The squaws were strict with their daughters; and upon Ba-lee especially there was a restraint that he could not understand.
Blue Feather gazed down into the black gulf of the chasms. He knew that his father, Nothis Toh, with his bravest warriors, was hidden in the green valley under the red walls, waiting for the spy to return and guide them to the massacre of the Rock Clan. But that hour had not yet come. Blue Feather's task was not yet accomplished.
On this night, as once before, there were spirits abroad on the cool wind; and their voices were unintelligible to the spy. They seemed not to bear messages from the gods of the Nopahs. Their presence around Blue Feather, as he waited for Ba-lee, weighed upon him and troubled him. Ruthless Nopah that he was, no remorse abided in his heart. But there was a mystery here that he could not fathom. And unknown terrible events to come seemed to bring warnings from the shadows.
Silence enfolded the scene, except for rustlings as of soft invisible wings on the air. It boded the death and loneliness and decay that hovered over this crag peopled with sleeping Sheboyahs. The silvered desert stretched away to the south, endless and desolate, untenanted by life or spirit.
Blue Feather shook off this nameless oppression and went his way. The next night when the moon was full he walked with Ba-lee along the western wall, and reproached her for her failure to meet him the night before.
"Ba-lee was there," said the maiden. "But the hours are not all hers."
He faced her in the moonlight and drew her close with swift and rude hands.
"Blue Feather will kill that blinking, mole-eyed Tith-lei," he whispered passionately.
Like a bird in the coils of a snake Ba-lee quivered. "Ba-lee is true. She cannot help it that Tith-lei watches and plots."
"Then if Blue Feather kills him?"
"Ba-lee will not care. Her love is--here," whispered the maiden, her dusky eyes shining, and she laid her cheek upon his bare breast.
Blue Feather's jealousy seemed appeased, but he was not yet completely satisfied. Ba-lee loved him wildly, yet he did not believe that she would ever betray the secrets of the Rock Clan.
"Blue Feather soon must go back to his people."
"Ah! . . . He will forsake the Sheboyah girl. He has played with Ba-lee and her sisters. They, too, love him. And they are afraid. They do not trust the warrior from the north. Blue Feather is the lover of many."
"Does Ba-lee fear the Nopah?"
"Ba-lee does not know where love ends and fear begins," she replied mournfully.
"What do the old men say?"
"That the Nopah has weaned our braves from play and work to drunkenness and gambling . . . that he has cast a spell upon our maidens."
"Blue Feather wants to leave by night . . . not by the ladders . . . not to be seen. Tith-lei would shoot an arrow into his back. . . . Will Ba-lee guide Blue Feather to the secret way down under the walls?"
The maiden shook in his arms. Her lips denied, but her eyes betrayed.
"Ha! So great is the love of Ba-lee for the Nopah! She will see him languish here."
"Not death for herself does Ba-lee fear. . . . But for others as well--if she betrays."
Blue Feather was answered, and cold thrills coursed his frame. The maiden knew the secret passage. But more than honor sealed her lips. More than life itself! He was content to let that knowledge suffice for the time. But he would break her to his will. Then, sustained by the knowledge that his perilous enterprise was soon to be accomplished, he caressed the maiden until she lay spent and rapt upon his breast. For once she forgot the fleeting hours. When the white moon had soared high above, riding serene in the dark blue sky, Ba-lee seemed to awaken as from a trance. She uttered a dolorous little cry.
"Oh, the moon is high! It is late. Ba-lee must go," she whispered, trembling as she slipped from him.
"The squaws and old men are deep in slumber."
"No!" she cried, eluding his long arm.
"All are asleep, Ba-lee. Stay with Blue Feather."
"No!" she breathed, and fled.
Blue Feather watched her glide away and it struck him again that something vastly more vital than fear of her mother had possessed her. The dark eyes opening suddenly to the moon had expressed an emotion close to actual terror. Blue Feather had no faith in these Sheboyah maidens, but that might have derived from his contempt for an inferior race. Her people wanted her to become the wife of Tith-lei. She had probably been promised to the Mole. Whatever actuated her piqued anew Blue Feather's jealousy, and for the first time he followed her.
The moonlight divided the citadel into bars of silver and ebony. The hour was midnight. Ba-lee's gliding form melted into the shadow of a wall, reappeared to steal across a white lane into blackness again. Blue Feather quickened his step. Ba-lee had gone toward her dwelling, and then she had turned abruptly away from the center of the citadel. She was not going home. Blue Feather muttered a sibilant curse. He would surprise Ba-lee with Tith-lei and strangle them both.
Blue Feather lost trace of Ba-lee after she had stolen like a specter down the west terraces. The great arched crags loomed there, and in their shadow lay the granaries and cisterns. Blue Feather had been satisfied to ascertain that they were full and sealed. A shaft of moonlight came down from a ragged notch in the wall, to pierce the gloom. The keen-eyed spy saw Ba-lee cross it. To Blue Feather's amazement she appeared to be going on under the very arch of stone. Perhaps the cunning Tith-lei had arranged with her to meet him there.
At length Blue Feather passed out of the silver moonlight into the deep shadow. He was approaching the rough west side of the huge eminence upon which Taneen maintained his citadel. The crags rose high and they were utterly unscalable. A blank space appeared hollowed out under the rached cliff. It was a shallow cavern that by day Blue Feather had noticed was filled with firewood. Below it the ledges dropped down like steps to the gorge on the west.
Suddenly Blue Feather gave a quivering start, like that of a panther when it sights its prey. Moving forms were gliding out of the shadow into the moonlight. Slight forms to the number of three, one of which was clad all in white. Blue Feather thought he recognized Ba-lee, her stature and walk. Sheboyah girls bent on a midnight lark! Or did Ba-lee have friends who met their lovers in secret? The figures passed out of sight around the corner of the wall.
The spy ran with softly padding feet down to the point where the maidens had disappeared. Peeping around the corner, he stood transfixed and thrilled. The dark pool shone like burnished silver in the moonlight. Ba-lee and her accomplices in this mysterious midnight adventure were gliding through a fringe of willows. Blue Feather's grim mood lightened and he laughed noiselessly. The little devils meant to bathe in the crystal pool banned by the priests. Blue Feather resolved to surprise them in the act. Stealthily he descended, keeping in the dense shadows. Reaching the willows, he crawled very slowly and silently to a slight aperture in the foliage and peered out.
On the silver sand at the margin of the shimmering pool, scarcely three strides distant, stood the three maidens in a glory of moonlight that seemed to magnify the beauty of the place. Blue Feather remembered a dream of his mother's. Once in Blue Feather's life he was to meet something of transcendent beauty, from which, if he succumbed to it, must come certain ruin and death.
Ba-lee was binding up the shining black tresses of the maiden in the pale robe. She was taller than Ba-lee and her little head was borne on her slender neck with regal grace. Blue Feather could not see her face. The third girl was kneeling on the sand at her feet.
"O my mistress," Ba-lee was murmuring, in poignant contrition, "forgive Ba-lee! She was late again."
"Child, as you are beloved, so are you forgiven," replied a flutelike voice. "But Nashta cannot answer for the gods that hideous Clodothie prates about so continuously."
"Our Daughter of the Moon," said the kneeling maiden, "it is not long after midnight."
"My gentle slaves, you know that only the full moon at midnight must shine on Nashta when she is disrobed."
"Oh, dare we risk the anger of the gods?" cried Ba-lee fearfully. "They may tell Clodothie. He will see only evil befalling the Rock Clan."
"Nashta would risk more than that . . . just to have one brief adventure like Ba-lee's with the Nopah!"
"Ba-lee begs the gods forbid. She should keep her lips sealed."
"But Nashta is also a woman. Tell her more of him--the racer with the blue feather."
"Tonight Ba-lee went from Tith-lei to Blue Feather. And her heart is heavy. She is pledged to one. She loves the other. Blue Feather swears he will kill the Mole."
"Does Blue Feather love Ba-lee?"
"Oh, woe! He swears it with a laugh on his lips. But he loves many. La-clos here will tell Nashta. _She^ also loves the Nopah."
"La-clos, are you too such a fool?" queried the Daughter of the Moon as she slipped a dazzling white arm and shoulder from her robe.
"He is a master of women," mourned the maiden. "He is not of our race. He is beautiful--and terrible!"
"Ah! La-clos--Ba-lee, you fear this stranger?"
La-clos bowed her dark head. Ba-lee answered in shame, "Ba-lee's soul is not her own."
"Nashta has seen no man save her father and the priests. Then only by night. She would see this Nopah by day, though the sun strike her blind!"
"Hush, Nashta! . . . What is it that Ba-lee hears?"
They gazed around fearfully. Only the silence and moon-blanched water and silvery rocks were there; Nashta turned toward the willows, revealing a lovely face white as the white lily that blooms in the gorges. Her eyes were like two dark pools in the moonlight. Then Ba-lee stripped the robe from Nashta, and the white maiden stepped out of it, upon the moonlit sand.
Blue Feather felt something enter his heart that was like a piercing blade. The beauty and the warning of his mother's dream both had come true. In that instant he knew that though he was mortal what he now beheld was a spectacle reserved only for gods. But this Nashta, this maiden called Daughter of the Moon, was not a goddess. She moved, she emanated an exquisite fragrance upon the still night air, she shone white as the driven snow in the silver light. She embodied all the loveliness of all the dreams and the legends of the Nopahs.
Blue Feather hurled his transfixed body out upon the sand. Ba-lee fell to her knees with an agonized cry. La-clos became a statue of stone. Nashta neither started back nor uttered a sound. The wondering, enveloping flash of her great black eyes all but sent the bold intruder into precipitate flight. Nashta stood naked before him and unashamed. She seemed like a child who had never known any distinction between being naked and being clothed.
"Ba-lee, cover her," commanded Blue Feather.
Both maidens were galvanized into immediate action. In another moment Nashta stood draped to her white face, out of which blazed her dark, proud, challenging eyes.
"Nashta, princess or maiden, you have your wish. It is the Nopah!"
"Oh, Ba-lee!" she faltered.
He no longer doubted that never before in this maiden's life had she gazed upon a young and ardent brave. When he enfolded her in his arms she let her lovely head fall upon his breast.
"Blue Feather," said the spy, his enraptured voice trembling with the great wonder that filled his heart.
TANEEN commanded the presence of Blue Feather.
"Nopah, whence this wager with Tith-lei?"
"Chief, your braves have driven the Nopah mad with their gibes. And Tith-lei is first among them. Can Blue Feather withstand their taunts forever? The Nopahs are proud. My father would disown me did he know of the taunts I must endure."
The Sheboyah chieftain believed the young warrior's accusations to be only too true, and he was a fair and just man. Generation after generation the Rock Clan had been addicted to the vice of gambling. In times of drought, when there was no hunting, no visiting other clans, the braves had nothing to do but play and gamble. Taneen had been accustomed to look upon this weakness with a tolerant eye. But his priests had been harping upon these present vices as indicative of the decline of their race. Some strange form of intoxication seemed to attend their gambling of recent weeks.
"Taneen's wisdom judges Blue Feather as having been sent by the gods to test his people. If they have grown soft and weak then a time of trial should be welcome. What is this latest wager that has made Declis and Clodothie mouth like the brave with twisted mind--Dageel?"
"The Mole wants to drive the Nopah away. Ba-lee had looked upon the Nopah with favor. Tith-lei wagers that Blue Feather cannot descend from the walls unaided, kill an antelope and climb back with it before the sunset of the third day."
The chieftain made a gesture of impatience. "Tith-lei is not cunning. He is a fool. He taunts, he dares only in his own interest. He is unworthy of Taneen's clan!"
"Blue Feather accepted the Mole's wager," replied the Nopah loftily.
"It is death. No brave could scale these walls burdened with the carcass of an antelope. . . . Taneen will cancel the wager."
"No, Chief. Blue Feather's word is given."
Taneen laid aside his long staff. He had never been blessed with a son. His only child was Nashta, Daughter of the Moon, precious as the ruddy drops of Taneen's heart's blood. But the sun was never to shine upon her beautiful face, and he could never stand before his clan proudly to acknowledge her. Now his sore and troubled breast received this Nopah, this alien, this blue-feathered young giant as he would receive a son. Taneen felt his love go out to him.
"What if the Nopah wins?" he asked.
"Tith-lei will meet him in mortal combat on the field."
"What if the Nopah loses?"
"Blue Feather returns all he has won and looks no more upon any maiden of the clan."
"Nopah, the antelope have gone from the valley," rejoined Taneen sternly.
"Blue Feather did not know. But he will track them."
Taneen took up his staff and motioned his attendants to leave the Nopah with him alone.
"Taneen's sun is setting. There is a step on his trail. His clan is spent. His days are numbered. Blue Feather can make the outcome of this test a happy one. Let him win this unfair wager. Let him kill Tith-lei!"
The Nopah gazed long into the dark inscrutable face of the chief. He could see that the old chieftain's simple words were sincere. They heaped more coals of fire upon Blue Feather's head. Already his conscience had been flayed by gentler, sweeter words, from the lovely lips of this great chief's hidden daughter.
Blue Feather had accepted Tith-lei's wager because it offered an excuse for him to leave the citadel. He must flee--from himself, from the carrying out of this ruthless and terrible plot that had ripened under his craft, flee from the loveliest and most loving maiden in all this world and that beyond.
"Taneen honors the Nopah. Not yet has he deserved honor. But if Blue Feather returns. . . ."
He bowed himself out of the chief's presence. To utter still more falsehoods had become impossible. He had been stricken. He was no longer the infallible spy of the Nopahs.
Blue Feather took only time to fill his pouch with parched grain and dried meat, then snatching up his bow and quiver he ran out to leap down from the terraces, deaf to the plaudits of the braves, blind to the lament and the weeping of the maidens. Bounding along the ramparts like a mountain goat he chose a point on the south wall to descend. In that moment he could have bidden defiance to space itself. But his hands, his feet, clung like lichens to the rock, as down and down and down he went, swift and sure, to drop at last upon the slope at the base of the wall. Bobbing heads and flying hair and waving arms were silhouetted black against the sky line above. He waved in answer to the long shrill yells and bounded away over the rocks to the north, soon vanishing from sight.
That ragged slope was to Blue Feather as a multitude of enemies, every rock of which seemed a foe to spurn. He ran, he leaped. He set the avalanches rolling. He might have been pursued by the winged spirits of those who had died with twisted minds. That league-long slope of talus, ending in the red gorge, was as a short space of thin air to the Nopah. No feat of endurance in any game he had ever played, no race he had ever run to the plaudits of the clan, could compare to this descent alone, seen only by the spirits, driven as he was by his tortured conscience.
But at the mouth of the gorge, where Blue Feather halted, spent and hot and wet with perspiration, with the dust caked on his lips, he found that the demons he had fled from were beside him still. His labored heartbeats sounded in his ears like a muffled drum. Vain had been his pride, his vaunted boast, his blind conceit. He was no god. He was only a mortal Nopah. And death shuddered in his soul.
Far back up the endless slope, far above, he saw the gold-banded walls, the black-fringed line of the citadel of the Rock Clan. He had torn himself away from what was more precious than honor or glory or life itself.
The gorge below him was the gateway to the land of chasms. Down in there, in a green, watered valley, waited the Nopahs. Blue Feather spurred himself erect and strode on. He reached the bottom, where the dry stream bed wound, where the huge red rocks blocked the way, where the lizards basked in the sun. Gold faded off the rims of the walls; purple shadows fell like curtains; and the winding ribbon of blue sky above yielded to the deep blue of the night.
Blue Feather's violence had expended itself. He felt his way along in the pale gloom of the walls. His devils had lagged behind. He still heard them, threatening, whispering. But as he passed under the arch of stone there were silent voices that told him many things he had never dreamed before.
He had fled from Nashta and the love that had torn him asunder. All the hours of the many nights he had spent with her, under the dreaming walls, beside the shimmering pool, seemed to crowd upon him with their rapture. No maiden on earth or in heaven had ever been like Nashta. She was as lovely as the slender white blossom leaning to the wind from the side of the precipice. She was more innocent than any child. She was more loving than any woman. She knew but little. Fear did not abide in her, nor jealousy, nor temper, nor hate. The squaws who had taught her had left out knowledge of birth, death, battle, love, marriage--all the common things natural to a girl of the Rock Clan. The maidens who had attended her, after childhood, had only confused her with the legends, the games, the courtships of the tribe. Nashta had given to Blue Feather the wondrous worship of a strange and lovely creature born of the fatal and unquenchable love of a queen and chief whose clans were bitterly estranged. From the hour Blue Feather had clasped her to his breast she had begun to live; and afterward every one of her endless queries, the sweet proofs that she lived only for the time she could be with him, the kisses at which first she laughed and then yearned for insatiably, seemed mute and tragic evidences that if she lost him she would die. Blue Feather had known this, but it was better that she die than live to be carried a naked captive to a Nopah cave. And on his side Blue Feather, too had been transformed, riven as if by the lightning blast, so that his ruthless purpose, his callous degrading of the braves, his gay conquest of the maidens, burned a living hell of remorse in his soul, and a torture of love that ended for him all hope and joy and beauty and labor and life, unless he could share them with Nashta.
In the long night hours those voices of the walls attended Blue Feather, and forced upon him that which he had not dreamed of before his flight.
Day had broken gray when Blue Feather smelled smoke and heard the barking of half-wild dogs. The gorge opened into a green valley enclosed by rounded walls of red, billowing upward to craggy heights.
The lean-jawed scouts who sighted him first heralded his return by whoops, which were answered in kind by the waiting hosts, so that a veritable thunder assailed the walls, and re-echoed from side to side, at last to rumble away along the distant cliffs.
Blue Feather had not before seen the Nopah warriors through the vision now given him. A thousand strong were they, tall, gaunt, somber-eyed, hungry-jawed giants, eager to find, to slay, to take, to gorge. And his father, Nothis Toh, stern-visaged like a vulture, held war and blood in his commanding eye.
"Docleas," he said, with a kingly paternal pride in this great son, "the days were long. Nothis Toh gives welcome and rejoices. The Nopahs are hungry for corn and meat and squaws. What of the Little People?"
Blue Feather leaned on his bow. "Father, and chief, Docleas brings ill tidings. The Nopahs must hunt far across the red river, two moons away to the cedar plains of Shibeta. . . . Docleas found at last the Rock Clan of the Sheboyahs. Many little people, poor and sick in the midst of a famine. They live on a high cliff that Docleas could not climb without help. They have no meat, and the antelope have left their pastures. They have corn and water enough to last a siege, but for the Nopahs that siege would be folly. They have no treasure of turquoise, no skins, no blankets. The squaws are old and lean and shiftless. Their maidens have been married to a distant clan. . . . Docleas will try again, far to the west. But he must have many moons. Go home with your braves to our corn and meat and women. If Blue Feather does not return to his father before the green buds burst again--then he will never come."
"Docleas is a great son of a great chief," cried Nothis Toh, and gave order for his warriors to march to the north.
Before the sun descended that day Blue Feather stood upon a windy height, and with wet and gleaming eyes saw the Nopahs, like a slender column of marching ants, winding their way down a gorge toward the sullen river.
Both agony and joy stirred in his heart. He had failed his father, disowned his people, cast off forever the Nopah maiden who waited for him. He was lost to glory and wealth. He was a traitor to blood and creed.
With passion-shaken breath Blue Feather turned to the heights and swept a long arm upward.
"Docleas, the Nopah, is dead," he cried to the listening ears of the rocks. "Blue Feather will rise! He will have Nashta! He will save her people! He will bring the rains!"
His piercing cry pealed out over that lonely land. From the cedared ridge beyond, a band of graceful animals trooped out in alarm or curiosity. They had gray bodies and white rumps. They were antelope! Blue Feather started at memory of his wager with Tith-lei. Fixing an arrow to his bow, he let fly. The distance was too far and he missed. The antelope ran off and then stopped to gaze. Blue Feather sped another dart. Where was his vaunted skill, his uncanny power? The animals scampered off. The hunter trailed them over the gray ridges until at length he came upon one standing alone on a little rise of ground. At this distance there was little hope of killing the antelope, but Blue Feather thought of Nashta lying in the hollow of his arm, and he bent the bow prodigiously and held the notched arrow as steadily as if he had been turned to stone. Blue Feather did not see the flight of that arrow, but the antelope fell. He ran to find it pierced through the middle.
He rested that night on the far slope of the valley. Well Blue Feather knew the demand to be made upon his strength on the morrow. He ate and drank his fill. The darkness descended cool and restful to wrap him in slumber.
The wild dogs awakened him in the gray dawn with their sharp and wailing barks that cut the frosty air. They smelled the fresh meat of the antelope Blue Feather had hung in a cedar.
This was the third day, and destined to be the most momentous Blue Feather had ever lived. He arose to meet it, calm in the realization that it would bring death or glory. When the wolves had fled, absolute silence pervaded the valley, gray with shadows lifting, tingeing to rose where the east brightened. There were no voices on the dead air, no steps on his trail. He was a man alone in the desert, dependent upon his own strength, his own wit. The gods of his people now would have abandoned him to his fate. He must win the allegiance of other gods. But that valley was not tenantless. For Blue Feather the rocks had a soul, the cedars were ripening their purple seeds to green the slope after they were old and gnarled hulks, the bleached grass had a spark in its roots, the solemn waiting air, with its sting and tang, was peopled with the invisible life of all that had gone before.
Blue Feather lifted his burden and strode down the slope, out of the cedars upon the frosted sage. Sharp and black against the reddening sky towered the rock of Taneen, the uneven turreted line of its citadel rising above the ragged ramparts.
The sage slope ended in the sandy waste and the dry meandering stream bed, upon the far bank of which spread the field of withered melon vines and seared corn. Beyond these began the rock slope that led up to the base of the wall. Blue Feather had been seen from afar. From rock to rock he stepped, zig-zagging his way up slowly, conserving his strength. That the antelope seemed a light burden troubled Blue Feather. He did not trust this surging thing in his breast. Unless attended by superhuman power no man could hope to surmount this wall.
Sweat poured off Blue Feather's naked shoulders and breast, and like a bellows his broad chest heaved. The long jagged slope of weathered rocks at last lay beneath him, and the steep gray wall sheered upward. He laid down the antelope, and stripped bow and quiver from his back. Shrill cries reached him from above. Blue Feather craned his neck. Dark faces appeared along the rim. A maiden screamed his name. Blue Feather swept his gaze along the row of faces. Ba-lee! She alone was pale, with dark and staring eyes.
"Tith-lei relents," she called, wildly. "Go round to the ladders!"
"_No!^" he shouted upward. "Ba-lee, if Blue Feather falls. . . ."
Other faces crowded into that line, to peer over the rim--the eagle face of Taneen, the distorted face of Clodothie, the weazened face of Declis, the pink face of the albino, Dageel. A ball of thong came unrolling down. Blue Feather tied the flapping end to his bow and quiver, and bade those above to haul them up. They complied. Again the buckskin thong came whipping down. A stentorian voice stilled the shrill babble. Blue Feather gazed upward in silence.
"Tie on the antelope," commanded the voice. It was that of the chief.
"_No!"^
"Taneen has no son!"
"The Sheboyah may have Blue Feather, when he is worthy," called the hunter, through his hands. Then he passed along the base of the wall to find the best place to attempt the ascent. All along the west side he hunted, and far around to the south. The place where he had descended sheered up at an unscalable slant. Therefore he passed back along the west side toward the north, only to be confronted by the perpendicular buttress above which towered the arched wall and the crags. In all that half circle of the butte there was only one place that Blue Feather gave more than a single glance. It was a succession of bulging knobs, on a slight incline, one above the other, that led to a section where two walls met in a ragged right-angle corner. And at that instant a vision illumined Blue Feather's troubled mind. He saw himself carrying Nashta, and swift as a flash he ran back along the base of the wall. That which he prayed for swept over him, strong as the fire of the sun, unquenchable as life, as great as his love.
Blue Feather jerked the dangling thong from the wall, and bound the forefeet of the antelope, and then the hind feet. Next he drew the two pairs of feet toward each other, until they almost met, and made them fast. He carried the antelope to the point which he had chosen, and lowering it to the ground he filled his lungs to their uttermost depths, again and yet again. The clamor above fell upon his deaf ears. For a long moment he studied the steep ascent, marking his course to the rim. Then in his mind he was lifting Nashta instead of the antelope and slipping her bound arms over his head, and he was holding her with her body resting upon his breast. He made no more prayer to the unknown gods. Nashta was his goddess now. Then he began to ascend the wall.
His clawlike fingers clutched the rock; his moccasined toes clung to the all-too-scarce footholds. Up and up he climbed. He gazed only at the slanted wall before him. He held tenaciously with one hand and one foot while he reached out for some crevice or niche in the face of the rock. Up and up! It was nothing for Blue Feather, this climb, with the Daughter of the Moon on his breast.
The knobs on the cliff ended and so did the steep slant. He clung precariously at the base of the right-angled corner of two walls. They were farther apart than they had looked from below. He stretched a long leg across the void, and he was off balance when his toe touched the wall and froze there. Then, holding tight, he edged his body along inch by inch until he could brace his head and neck against the nearer wall. Quickly he shot his other foot across. Thus he formed a bridge with his body, his head higher than his feet, elbows and hands braced underneath, with the antelope (or was it Nashta?) upon his breast. He slid one foot upward and then the other. Then with tremendous muscular effort he shoved his back up a like distance.
Up! Up! The walls converged until he could brace himself with his knees, and the narrowing space permitted his broad back to fit tight against the stone. Up! The gray walls shortened and blurred against the bright blue of the sky where dark heads bobbed. Upward, faster now, he fought his painful way. Suddenly the deadening strain ceased. A multitude of hands dragged Blue Feather over the parapet where he fell with a swelling din in his ears.
When the darkness passed and he could see once more, Blue Feather was lying with his head upon Ba-lee's lap. Her warm tears were falling upon his face. A ring of maidens knelt around them. A ring of warriors whose dark visages registered eagerness and relief stood beyond the maidens. A babel rose about him. Blue Feather drew Ba-lee's head down to whisper in her ear. The maiden whispered back that Nashta had fallen like a stricken deer when she had learned of the wager--that she lay waiting for him or death--that if he came he must be generous enough to spare the jealous Tith-lei.
Blue Feather rose like a bent sapling that springs erect when the weight that holds it is removed. The faces of the braves were now the faces of brothers. But the hideous Dageel was foaming at the mouth; Benei, the star-gazer, seemed to be seeing something inimical in the sky; Declis swung his bags of sand and looked upon the stones; Clodothie wore a scowl like a black and forbidding storm. They had heard the poignant words of their chieftain. And he, Taneen, stood hard by, too proud to reveal his deep emotion, his stern accusing gaze upon Tith-lei. That brave knew full well that the reckoning was upon him. Sullen, yet awed by what he could not comprehend, he met no eye, nor looked up when Blue Feather confronted him to point at the dead antelope.
"Blue Feather is here and the sunset of the third day has not yet come."
"The Nopah is more than mortal man," returned Tith-lei, respect for his hated rival wrenched from his very soul.
Taneen came between them.
"Stand one hundred steps apart," he thundered. "Faces away. When Taneen calls, turn and fight!"
It was Ba-lee who fetched Blue Feather's bow and quiver.
"Nashta says spare the Mole. But Ba-lee says kill him," she whispered, her dusky, eloquent eyes bespeaking unselfish concern for this stranger who had won her love and her fear.
Silence enfolded the field. All of Taneen's Rock Clan, to the naked and wondering children, lined up on the walls and ledges. Blue Feather took his stand. Tith-lei stood far out, facing the multitude, desperate and shaken, sure now of his fate. The two rivals turned their backs upon one another. A brooding mantle of stillness fell upon the watchers. Then Dageel broke the spell with a series of low mournful sounds. The medicine men stood with uplifted arms as if to direct attention to the curse that had fallen upon them. The maidens wept under covered eyes. Then Taneen uttered a cry that held no note of sorrow.
Tith-lei turned quickly to dispatch an arrow that flashed into the sunlight. As Blue Feather turned, strangely cool and deliberate, Tith-lei's arrow struck him high in his shoulder and quivered in the flesh, while a red stream poured down his bare breast. Tith-lei let out a savage and triumphant yell, and swiftly strode toward his wounded rival, shooting as he approached an arrow that whizzed over Blue Feather's head.
A murmur went through the tense crowd of watchers. Blue Feather astounded them with his deliberate action, as he fitted a long arrow to his great bow. Tith-lei came on, shooting again, a missile that grazed his foe's extended arm. But suddenly he halted, as if an invisible wall barred his progress. Blue Feather was bending his bow. It needed only one look to recognize in him the master archer. But the long arrow, slowly moving its bright flint head back toward the arching bow, was pointed far to one side. Blue Feather was not aiming at the Mole. To one side of Tith-lei and far beyond him, a sapling stood alone on the field. Blue Feather bent that prodigious bow until the tips almost met. He stood motionless as a stone image. _Twang!^ That arrow might have been a winged spirit. No spectator saw it. But all saw the sapling shake and then bend its graceful green top. Suddenly drooping, it fell to the ground. Blue Feathers shaft gleamed halfway through the broken trunk.
Shrill and high rose the yells of the Rock Clan. They were acclaiming the marvelous skill of the bowman, but even more so the magnanimity of Tith-lei's rival.
"_Begone!^" thundered Taneen to the stunned and cowering Mole.
Then the chief approached the bleeding Blue Feather, who stood quietly in the place where he had shot the arrow.
"May the enemies of Taneen find the Nopah upon his walls!"
Blue Feather waited in the shadows of the arch for Ba-lee. He feared the jealous maiden, knowing that both her dread and her love were beginning to wane. Would she betray to the chief his secret visits to the daughter of Taneen?
A half-moon shone past a gleaming silvered crag. The hour was late. Taneen's clan slept. A boding silence hovered over their dwellings. Blue Feather felt it, even though his rapt mind could think only of Nashta. What now menaced the Rock Clan? It was there in the cool gloom of the gorge.
Ba-lee came, slim in the moonlight, and stood before Blue Feather, with dusky unfathomable eyes. He importuned her about Nashta.
"She waits with La-clos. She bids you come. But Ba-lee tells you it is death to descend into the sacred kiva."
Ba-lee detained him with hand no longer timid. "Blue Feather spares Tith-lei, but kills the maiden." And she laid her hand over her heart. Dark doubt and yearning passion burned in her upturned gaze.
"You are Blue Feather's sister now," he whispered, taking her hands. "The Nopah is sorrowful that it cannot be more. He is changed. Nashta has visited upon him the sum of all that Blue Feather has made others suffer. He has spared the Mole. . . . Ba-lee, he has saved you, and Nashta, and La-clos and Taneen--all who are here on the great rock tonight."
The maiden turned her dark profile away. She did not want remorse in Blue Feather, or change, or generosity, or his strange new power to save. He felt a sinking of his heart.
Ba-lee gave a slight gesture for him to follow her. Keeping to the shadow of the arch, she stole silently far to the other side, beyond the corded stacks of wood and the domed granaries and cisterns, to the dark fissured wall. Here were the ceremonial houses, and farther on the place of the sacred kivas. Blue Feather trembled. No brave's foot had ever desecrated that spot. Ba-lee felt her way. A faint round patch of light shone on the black floor. It came from the open hole in the roof of a kiva. Ba-lee stepped down, whispering for him to follow. Blue Feather saw a ladder descending into this cavern in the rocks. Stepping carefully, he went down.
A little fire, blue-flamed and red-embered, dimly lighted a chamber so large that Blue Feather could not see the walls. He suspected that it was a subterranean cave utilized by Taneen for a sacred kiva. And herein must lie the secret of the underground passage which led down from the citadel to the open.
But Blue Feather had little interest in that or in the character of this kiva. Breathless and with bursting heart he strove to pierce the gloom. La-clos, beside the ladder, murmured a few words to him. She, as well as Ba-lee, was breaking the law of the tribe for Blue Feather, but she would be faithful.
"Nashta is there," said Ba-lee.
Blue Feather saw his goddess then, kneeling on pale robes of fur, with outstretched white arms like the opal marble in the chasms.
"Nashta lives again," she whispered, as swiftly he knelt to clasp her in his arms.
"Oh, Daughter of the Moon, my Nashta! Oh, joy and spirit--all that pierced the Nopah's blindness--he is here!" Blue Feather bent over the lovely face and felt that he held to his breast the link between his future and the voices down in the valley.
"Ba-lee, go above, and you, La-clos. Watch and listen. Blue Feather will be long here."
"Tith-lei hunts abroad at night like a bat," replied Ba-lee significantly, as she mounted the ladder.
Blue Feather placed Nashta's soft hand high up on his shoulder where a plaster of gum covered his wound. Nashta caressed the angry hot skin and placed her cool cheek upon it, and then her soft thrilling lips.
"Nashta was wrong. Never again will she beg Blue Feather to spare the Mole," she said, and it seemed that anger for the first time stirred within her.
"Ba-lee will tell Tith-lei and he will betray us."
"Taneen is my father. He would forgive."
"Yes, my princess. But Clodothie and Declis rule your tribe. They will throw me out to the wild dogs. Blue Feather must win your people to his side. He will bring the rains."
"Oh, my Nopah, Nashta believes that that of all things would overthrow Clodothie and his powers! You are a god to her, and her very breath, and beating blood."
"Nashta, it is little for the Nopahs to bring the rains. Blue Feather has learned. He has danced the rain dance many times. He knows the songs, and the drink of herbs that deadens the poison of the snakes."
"Snakes! The crawling things that rattle beside the pool? Ugh! The Daughter of the Moon has been taught to love everything. But her Nopah's kisses have made that teaching as if it were not. Nashta loves only Blue Feather. His smile, his voice, his touch are all of her world that matters now. She loves as her mother, the queen of the outcast Antelope Clan."
"Lonely maiden, do you know that sad history?"
"From Taneen himself. He, too, has broken the law of his tribe. He told me of my mother. Her love was great and true as the sun that has never shone upon Nashta. . . . Oh, my Nopah, consider. Nashta's fate will be like her mother's unless Blue Feather takes her away to his wigwam, to make her his bride, his people to be her people, his god her god."
"Nashta, never call him your Nopah again," replied Blue Feather. "He is no longer a Nopah. He has betrayed and disowned his people. He is an outcast. He has no name, no home, no treasure, nothing but his love for Nashta, for which he has lost all."
"Ah! What story is this? Let not Blue Feather bow his head! Nashta's love will recompense for loss of all."
"Listen. Blue Feather came first as a spy for the warrior tribe of Nothis Toh, his father. His work was to ply his cunning with the little people of the cliffs. He came, and the gods favored his work. The braves went crazy over the gambling games. They chewed the blue gum and found it sweet. The maidens fell into Blue Feather's power. Soon he would have gone forth in the night to lead the waiting warriors here to kill and destroy and capture and rape. But Blue Feather met Nashta, and his black soul went out into the darkness. He made excuse of Tith-lei's jealous wager, and accepting it he journeyed down into the chasm to find his father. Blue Feather lied. He told the greatest of all falsehoods. And he sent the Nopah warriors back across the red river to their far caves, and he returned to Nashta and her people forever."
Nashta's arms clung about his neck and she uttered a wail of the fear that had birth in her then. She besought Blue Feather to use all his mastery to take her far away from the Sheboyahs, to be his slave, to live as other maidens, to see the marvelous sun, to feel the wind upon her face, to have them change her white blue-veined skin to the natural hue of her people.
Blue Feather held her to his throbbing heart and found no answer. He had asked only to see her, to hold her as now, to serve her and her people. But Nashta was not a goddess, nor a spirit, nor a speaking moonbeam. She was flesh and blood; she was life and love. All her years she had been cheated of the things she longed for.
"Ba-lee has told Nashta what the squaws forbade her to know. Nashta laughed. She did not believe until Blue Feather's kisses were hard on her mouth. Nashta is a woman. She would be the outcast Nopah's bride, the proud mother of his children."
"Beloved," cried Blue Feather hoarsely. "Nashta breaks the outcast's heart. He is strong, he is swift, he is cunning. But he cannot change the law of your people."
"Blue Feather can carry the maiden down over the rocks. It is enough."
"Yes, in the dead of night he could lower Nashta, and follow. Will she have it so?" he whispered, weak in all his being.
"Nashta rejoices. The Nopah outcast and the Sheboyah princess will go. Blue Feather is a warrior. He knows what to do. Nashta has only beauty. She is not strong. The sun must shine on her only little by little."
"Blue Feather will plan," he replied ponderingly, the greatness of this plot weighing upon him. "Ba-lee . . . Tith-lei . . . Corn and meat and drink . . . A long rope. . . ."
"Nashta is not entirely helpless. She knows the hidden passage out under the walls. It has many arms. Taneen comes through it when he visits Nashta here."
"_Here!^" cried Blue Feather, leaping erect with the maiden in his arms.
"Yes, Blue Feather. The hole is there in the darkness of the kiva. It is covered. Only Nashta knows."
Blue Feather tossed Nashta lightly up and lightly caught her as she fell into his arms with a little cry. He was the giant that he had dreamed of. The valley voices filled his ears like distant music. He called Nashta every beautiful and loving and tender name that he had learned in the language of the Rock Clan.
"More! More! All the Nopah words!" she breathed ecstatically. "Talk to Nashta always in Nopah. She learns. There are not enough Sheboyah words to tell of her love, her happiness."
"Nashta must forget the Nopah language Blue Feather taught her."
"Taneen's daughter forgets nothing. Ah! She remembers all Ba-lee's gossip about Blue Feather. How he made Ba-lee's heart a fluttering captive bird. His laugh, his kiss! And her woe when he played with La-clos, and all the maidens. . . ."
"Enough. Nashta may be the Daughter of the Moon, but she is as other maidens. Forgive Blue Feather. . . . Tomorrow night we flee!"
Blue Feather mounted the ladder, gazing through the round door in the roof of the kiva, beyond which he saw the half-moon riding in a strange sky. A corner of the black arch projected out into the pale light. He paused silently at the opening, his sense of peril returning to cloud the joy that had been his. He whispered for Ba-lee and La-clos. There was no answer except for the sound of a cold wind that wailed over the kiva! The maidens should have been there. Blue Feather put his head out to peer around him. The cavern under the arch was dark in the gloom; outside a pale moonlight brooded over the domed granaries. He called out, his voice low. Only the wind answered. The Nopah sensed then that the very air was oppressive with catastrophe. He stole away from the kiva, his eyes those of a fox at night, his ears attuned to the menace on the wind.
The tall granaries clustered thickly in the foreground, one casting a round shadow against the pale gleam of another. Blue Feather distrusted them, but he had to pass. Suddenly, out of their dark shadows, came a swift rush of padded feet. A swarm of braves seized Blue Feather from all sides. Blue Feather heaved them off and, whirling about, he flung them back, only to be seized from behind. He had not time to draw his weapon. With silent fury, like giants they surged over him and bore him to the ground. They bound him and dragged him forth into the moonlight.
Tith-lei, malevolent of face and swelling with triumphant hate, confronted the captive.
"Nopah dog! Now his blue crest droops! Where now is his boasted strength, his power to win, his gum that stole the wits of the Sheboyahs? Blue Feather gambled on Ba-lee and lost. He has betrayed Taneen's secret to the clan. He has bared the great Chief's dishonor to his people. The accursed Nopah will be split in the middle, torn apart and cast to the wild dogs!"
They dragged him by his bound feet and tumbled him into a dungeon, where he rolled and bumped down a flight of stone steps to lie bruised and bleeding on the dank floor. A network of black bars crossed the door of his prison. A dim beam of moonlight shone in on the wall, brooding there with the silver sheen that had been the ruin of the Nopah. At last the prophetic dream of his mother had come true. A cold and bitter breath of resignation flooded over Blue Feather's soul. He deserved his fate. He had held the Daughter of the Moon to his breast. Yet to have been beloved by Nashta made him a king on earth and would be enough recompense for the beyond. She would wilt like a flower in her kiva and surely her spirit would meet his far down under the rocks where the voices came from.
All night Blue Feather lay there upon his back, with the pain of his racked body slowly numbing his agony of mind. His grief was only for the loss of other hours with the lovely Nashta. In the cold gloom of dawn he fell into a sleep of exhaustion.
Rude and violent hands awakened Blue Feather. He was being dragged up the stone steps, out into the sunlight, upon the terraces of the citadel. All of the Rock Clan were abroad, joining in the procession. Blue Feather was looked upon as no more than one of the poison-fanged wild dogs of the desert. While his captors dragged him along, the lines of braves struck at him, the squaws spat upon him, the maidens cast looks of hatred upon his face, and the naked children struck him with sticks and stones. The citadel was in an uproar.
At last Blue Feather's captors halted with him in the great court before Taneen's dwelling. The thongs around his ankles were cut and he was jerked erect by brutal hands to be thrust forward through the crowd.
The booming of a drum and a sudden shrill cry silenced the multitude. Blue Feather faced his judges, standing free now, his head high, his falcon eyes blazing.
La-clos lay groveling on the stone floor of the court. A brave with a long leather lash stood over her. Ba-lee stood back to one side with Tith-lei. She seemed stunned by the enormity of what she had brought about. The Mole appeared to be treading on air, to expand beyond the bulk of his fellows. This was his hour. Clodothie, Declis and Benei, with the other medicine men of the tribe, formed a line against the wall of Taneen's dwelling. All about, the roofs, the walls, the terraces were black with gleaming-eyed spectators. And at Blue Feather's back stood the dark-faced braves who had dragged him hither.
Taneen came forth from his dwelling, a stricken man, yet still with the bearing of a chief.
"Nopah," began Taneen, in stern and rolling voice, "Tith-lei bears testimony that you dared to enter the sacred kiva of the Daughter of the Moon."
"Blue Feather is loved by Nashta. For her he would dare wind and fire and death."
"The Nopah does not deny?"
"_No!"^
"He made Ba-lee and La-clos traitors to their sacred trust?"
"Taneen, the maidens are innocent. They feared the Nopah."
"Blue Feather speaks bold words of his entrance to the secret kiva of Taneen--of his violation of the law of the Sheboyahs--of an alien's passion for an outcast and sacred princess upon whom the sun never shone and eye of brave should never have rested!"
Blue Feather replied proudly to the chieftain. "The Nopah was dishonest till he saw Nashta. He was a Nopah spy, the son of Nothis Toh. And while the Nopah warriors with their great bows and long arrows waited down in the chasms Blue Feather worked his wiles upon the Rock Clan. Always he played, always he gambled, always he gave the sweet blue gum to the braves, always he won the love of the maidens. Always he waited for the time to go down and lead the Nopahs up to destroy Taneen's people. But one night by the moonlit pool he met Nashta. And the evil in him fled. Blue Feather went below, back to his father and the tall hungry-eyed warriors. And he lied to the great chief his father. The Sheboyahs, he told them, were poor. They lived amidst famine. They had no store of corn and meat. They had no treasure of turquoise and jet. Their squaws were old and lean and shiftless, their maidens given in marriage to another clan. And the Nopahs must return far across the red river to wait until Blue Feather found a richer clan! So he told them."
The listening priests smote the stones with their staffs and shouted: "Liar! Spy! Dog of a Nopah! The tall people with their great bows will come!"
Taneen stilled the tumult. "Does the Nopah speak truth?"
"Blue Feather ended with falsehood when he looked into the eyes of Nashta. He gave up his people. Now he is an outcast."
Taneen lifted his lean arms in tragic acceptance of a fate that he could not avert.
"Too late, Nopah!" he thundered, in a terrible denunciation of Blue Feather, of Nashta, of himself and the people who were abandoning him to the rule of the priests. "Taneen believes. He sees himself in the Nopah. He burns again in the love for which Blue Feather must die. But his power ends this day."
Taneen passed within his dwelling and suddenly the doorway darkened with moving figures.
"Death to the Nopah!" they cried.
Clodothie pounded a drum, and in the ensuing silence he harangued his fellows. At length the high priest turned to the Mole.
"Tith-lei, speak the death sentence of the Nopah spy."
The brave leaped up transfigured, knowing that in due time he would be made chief of the clan.
"Tie ropes to the Nopah's feet," he shrilled. "Spread them wide and split him asunder and throw the halves to the wild dogs."
"It is spoken. So the Nopah dies," solemnly stated Clodothie.
Then burst the pent-up fury of the populace, and around Blue Feather wheeled and screamed a mad circle of braves.
Tith-lei danced in a transport of joy before the proud rival whom he had doomed to a hideous death. Braves and maidens spread out before him in frantic evolutions. The Mole was as one possessed by devils of bliss. Wildly he ran across the court to leap upon the rampart of the outer wall. And there magnificently he spread his arms to the desert below, as if to acclaim his rise to rule nature and clan and god.
Suddenly the plumed spear in his right hand fell, to vanish into the depths below. An awful frenzied yell suddenly smote the ears of that watching, singing, dancing throng. Tith-lei's form drew back with terror. Then came a rustle as of a swift swallow's wings in flight--a slender gleam of light from below the wall--then a strange and solid thud.
From the center of Tith-lei's naked back protruded a dripping arrowhead. He screamed in mortal agony, and swung as if on a pivot to face the tribe he had been given to rule. A long feathered shaft of blue quivered in his breast. A dark crimson tide flowed down his convulsed body. His hands, like claws, clutched at the air. His distorted face told that in the instant of glory it had been transfixed with horror. His utterance strangled in a blood-choked throat.
Blue Feather pierced the air with a resounding cry.
"Behold! The long arrow of the Nopahs! Tith-lei dies!"
THE savage Tith-lei swayed upon the wall of the citadel. And the stunned spectators, switching from wild exultance to sudden silence, gazed mutely upon the stricken brave, waiting for him to fall.
Backward he swayed until the shaft of the fatal arrow, plunged into his breast, pointed up at the sky. Then swiftly Tith-lei plummeted out of sight. From below the walls rose a prolonged and hideous shouting. The Sheboyahs had never before heard such a frightening sound.
Clodothie rushed at Blue Feather: "Who comes?"
"It is the war cry of the Nopahs," replied Blue Feather bitterly.
Braves raised aloft their stone-headed clubs to brain the Nopah captive.
"Hold!" commanded the high priest. "Save the cursed spy. He shall be torn limb from limb in the sight of his people."
They bound Blue Feather and left him lying beside the beaten La-clos under the court wall.
Those of the Sheboyahs who had courage enough to peer over the parapet raised their hands above their heads in terror. The hour that had been presaged by the medicine men had struck at last. Clodothie shouted for their chief.
"Taneen! Taneen!"
The old Sheboyah came forth into the light. Clodothie and his followers confronted him.
"It has come!"
"Woe! Woe! The fate of the Antelope Clan is upon us."
"That Nopah dog of a spy lied to blind Taneen. The Nopah warriors are here. They shot Tith-lei off the wall. Their war cry is as the red river in flood!"
Taneen strode out to look over the parapet. The rough gray slope of weathered rocks, as familiar to Taneen as the terraces of his citadel, was not as he had known it all his life. It was like the slope of an ant hill, magnified by the gods, a moving colorful pageant frightful to behold. Taneen, too, as had his braves, threw aloft his arms in tragic awe.
Every rock held a giant with a great bow and a long quiver of arrows. They stood tall and menacing, watching the walls. Like Blue Feather, they were lighter in color than the Sheboyahs. All wore feathers sticking from their headbands. Lines of warriors were ascending the tortuous trails up the slope. They climbed with burdens upon their shoulders of baskets and bags, and some had bundles with curious platforms on their heads. These were scaling ladders and shields to protect the tops of the ladders from missiles from above. Other warriors in smaller groups carried thin flattened poles with baskets at their tops. These, and other contrivances of war unknown to Taneen, proved the strength and cunning of a superior race.
Taneen's medicine men, cowards now that their doleful predictions had borne fruit, importuned the chief to save them and his tribe.
"Slink into your holes and pray!" cried the chief with a disdainful wave of his arm. Then he beat the drum to gather all the braves in to hear him.
"Taneen's people are besieged by an army of Blue Feathers!" he shouted. "It is the end of the Rock Clan of the Sheboyahs. . . . Fight! Let them find our bodies on the walls when they come."
Rows of boulders lay all along the inside of the citadel walls, placed there for purposes of defense. When a thousand braves each lifted a rock to heave over the parapet the number of boulders in that long row appeared not to have decreased. Taneen joined his forces, giving command not to waste their precious ammunition. The archers of the clan stood ready with their small bows. When the chief's loud cry rang out all the defenders sprang up to throw rocks and shoot arrows.
This was the signal for a shining slant of arrows from below. Many found their mark in the chests, heads and arms of the brave Sheboyahs. Their rocks crashed harmlessly at the base of the wall, to clatter down the slope, and their arrows fell far short of their mark. Again that terrible war cry of the Nopahs sounded from below, only nearer now. The defenders had the advantage of position, but the besiegers were vastly more powerful and resourceful and numerous.
Taneen peered over again, sweat in his eyes and cold in his marrow. What he saw confirmed the foreboding in his heart. Here and there under the wall, lines of Nopahs to the number of ten in each band were advancing up the last slope with the long scaling ladders on their shoulders and the shieldlike platforms held forward to protect them from the rolling rocks. These ladders could be leaned and held against the wall, while the Nopahs swarmed up protected except for one last leap over the wall. Then Taneen ran to and fro along the parapet, driving his braves to stand and to shoot and throw while there was yet time to halt the storming warriors.
Like bees the defenders swarmed upon the walls, and the rocks rained down and their arrows were as wind-driven hail. It was then that the real battle began. The sight and smell of flowing blood, the shrieks of the wounded and the maledictions of the unscathed, the din of the avalanche of rolling rocks, the terrible flight of the long arrows upward and the war cry that accompanied them, the bravery of the squaws coming out to help, and lastly the knowledge that it was a matter of life or death now--these inflamed the Sheboyahs to a fury that surpassed fear, to a wildly inspired defense.
The Nopahs at last got their ladders against the wall, and climbed them as far up as the shields. Here the storm of arrows and deluge of rocks at close range held them.
Dabeel, the idiot, the red-headed albino, appeared upon the wall. No brave could have told whence he came. His weapon was a long pole. With this he reached down to the platform of the nearest scaling ladder. Mightily he shoved, while the glancing arrows passed him. As he had no mind, so he had no fear. And he shoved that ladder away from the wall. It stood upright with its score of Nopahs, swayed for a moment, and then fell with a resounding crash. The yell of the Sheboyahs equaled that of the Nopahs. A hail of rocks accompanied the ladder's fall; those besiegers low down were maimed and broken by the stone missiles that fell from above.
The albino, his hair erect like a red mane, ran along the wall to the next scaling ladder. He seemed to bear a charmed life. The unerring aim of the Nopahs failed to stop him. Out from the wall he shoved the second ladder, his strength that of a Nopah. The fifty-foot ladder bore a man upon every rung. It stood upright an instant while many leaped off, like nuts falling from a tree. Then ponderously it fell with a crash, carrying death along with it.
Dageel ran on to the next ladder. The archers below had now concentrated upon his striking figure. A cloud of arrows sped upward. When he halted to shove at the third ladder his body seemed to give a sudden jerk. Then an arrow appeared sticking in his side. Another caught him in the leg. But Dageel did not hesitate. He sent the scalers on that ladder to their deaths. As he started on again, however, it was seen that he had been crippled. He hobbled. He fell. He dragged himself to the fourth ladder and, now on his knees, he savagely thrust it away from the wall. This one, also, went crashing down amidst the uproar of the fighting Sheboyahs. Suddenly Dageel lost his ferocity of action and his head drooped upon his breast. A long arrow had struck through his throat. From his kneeling posture he plunged off the wall.
Braves were eager to emulate the albino. Two fought for possession of the pole. But they did not bear Dageel's charmed life. A flight of arrows ended their struggle and dropped them with the long pole into the abyss.
Suddenly there came from below a tremendous twang, such as might have been made by a bow of the gods. Then a rock hurtled up to strike the rim of the wall with a resounding crack. Taneen gazed fearfully down at a new instrument of the war-skilled Nopahs. It appeared to be a kind of stationary sling. A thin flattened sapling seemed to project from behind a rock. It stood almost upright, with a basket on the end. A Nopah was in the act of placing a stone in the basket. Then other Nopahs below hauled on a rope and bent the sapling until their backs touched the ground. Then they let go their hold. With a loud twang the catapult hurled a heavy rock upward. It shot over the parapet, crushed a brave in passing, and smashed a section of the thick wall of a house above the terrace.
The long arrows, the scaling ladders, the slinging catapults were proofs of the Nopahs' greatness in battle. But they brought out in the Sheboyahs a heroism of the flesh which, while it lasted, made the two forces almost equal. If Taneen's manpower could hold out he might be able to drive off the besiegers. Nothis Toh reserved his scaling ladders while the catapults twanged incessantly. There were four of them, placed forty paces apart, and they hurled three rocks a minute. After the marksmen got the range few of these missiles struck the rim. They went over to maim and crush, to break the walls, to cave in the roofs. Dust rose in clouds and blood flowed in streams down the terraces.
The defenders behind the parapet grew skilled at dodging the catapults' whistling rocks. They hurled many of them back at the enemy. The Nopahs were furnishing them with ammunition. Dust clouds along the walls handicapped the archers below, and favored those above. Then the squaws came with pots of scalding water and vessels of burning fagots, which the braves emptied over the wall, along the line of the besiegers. Thus again when it appeared that Nothis Toh's warriors were about to take the citadel, Taneen's braves were able to turn the tide of battle.
It waged hottest at the sunset hour. The huge missiles still came crashing over. All of the citadel along the north and east walls lay in ruins. Fire added to the terror of the besieged. The Nopahs were hurling over red-hot rocks, that broke through the walls and set aflame the interior of the dwellings. The enormous row of stones along the parapet was now half exhausted. Taneen, with broken arm and bleeding head, moved among his men and besought them to die on their feet.
Then at dusk the attack of the Nopahs ceased as suddenly as it had begun. The warriors of Nothis Toh withdrew to eat and drink, to look after their wounded and to rest. The stubborn resistance of the Rock Clan had surprised them. The Nopah chief took counsel with his priests. Were the stores and treasures of the citadel, of which they had received assurance despite the word of Docleas, worth further sacrifice?
Taneen had lost more than half his fighting force, and many of his squaws. The dust cloud lifted, the smoke cleared away, revealing ruin and agony and death. Clodothie lay in the court, dark-faced and still. Declis would paint no more sand pictures on the stone floor. Benei, the star-gazer, was dead. While the squaws prepared food and drink the crippled were cared for. When night fell, cold and clear, with the moon coming pitilessly over the crags, all of Taneen's force lay prone. Even the exhausted guards had succumbed to sleep.
Nashta lay wide-eyed in the silence and darkness of her kiva. The recollection of Blue Feather's kisses throbbed on her lips. Her blood raced in the transport of rapture that anticipation of her escape with him stirred within her. For long she had revolted against the mystery of her confinement, against the name Daughter of the Moon, the living maiden upon whom the sun must never shine. But, gentle and loving, she had accepted the decree of Taneen. Then worship of the Nopah had burned away all that had been taught her.
Her wondering mind had no conception of a future outside of that kiva, except the glory of freedom with Blue Feather. He would take her far away. She would see the earth and the sky by day, and the waters, the trees, the flowers, the birds, the tasseled corn and the golden melons--all that her maidens had told her of. The terrible sun would shine upon her face. That thought shook her heart.
Ba-lee and La-clos did not come back, a strange omission that Nashta noted, but did not consider in the enchantment of the hour. Sleep at last claimed her.
When Nashta awoke the round hole of her kiva let in a shaft of light that was gold instead of silver. It hurt her eyes. Nashta had never seen that before, or the door of her prison uncovered by day. She had slept late. Ba-lee and La-clos were not there. Suddenly Nashta sat up on her bed of furs. The habitual routine of her life had been broken.
She dressed in new garments of buckskin, a costume of long fashioning and a labor of love, over which she and the maidens had dreamily toiled, and for which the squaws had sent beads and bits of colored thong and buttons of turquoise. This gaudy garb, destined for the idle pleasure of the prisoner princess of the Rock Clan, must serve for the bride of an outcast Nopah. Would Blue Feather take pride in her? How good that her milk-white skin, through which the dark veins showed, would be hidden from his sight! She brushed and braided her black hair, whose long plaits hung down to her waist.
Still her attendants did not come. Nashta, unused to neglect, soon began to feel the pangs of hunger. She ate and drank of the remains of the cold meal of yesterday. Then she paced in the dim light of her kiva, vaguely conscious that all was not well.
A low, hollow roar suddenly floated down to her. It swelled, it rose and fell like thunder in the sky. She had never heard the like. But it bore a faint resemblance to the cheers of the Rock Clan on the singing days. Therefore it must come from men's voices. Nashta listened, slowly sinking down upon her knees. The disturbing sound died away, only to return, a concerted yell of many braves, with a discordant note that held no music. Taneen's people were not singing. Nashta often had heard the songs, coming dimly to her from the terraces. She knelt there perplexed and troubled, realizing at last that there was some unusual reason for this strange uproar, and the absence of her maidens. Finally the tumult ceased.
Then the silence of her kiva seemed pierced by a single distant scream. Nashta had no memory of sound with which to compare it, yet her intuition connected it with things inimical to life--tragedy and pain and death.
That scream seemed to give birth to a veritable thunder of sound. But this was not the season of the rains. Had Blue Feather invoked the gods of the storm cloud? No--he would be concerned solely with Nashta.
Thunder indeed it seemed to be, but of a varying kind, rising and falling, now shrill, now low, a rumble as of rolling rocks, the trampling of many feet, the boom of drums and the chorus of yelling voices, and now and then a muffled crash.
"War!" gasped Nashta. "Taneen's enemies have come! The Antelope Clan--my mother's people! . . . Oh, woe to the Daughter of the Moon! The child of Taneen will be dragged into the sun!"
And Nashta fell upon her bed of furs, with the thunder in her ears and the prophecy of the priests whirling in her mind. They had foretold that she was to be the doom of the Rock Clan. She would be dragged into the great court, and stripped in the sunlight, so that all eyes could gaze upon her accursed white beauty, and she would be torn apart by the Antelope braves. A darkness filmed her sight and hitherto unknown anguish brought her close to oblivion. The hours passed.
"Nashta! Nashta!"
The kiva seemed to reverberate with the frantic call. Nashta started up. A canopy of twilight shaded the aperture above. In the glare of a torch La-clos appeared at the foot of the ladder. She moved as one crippled, and knelt to kindle the fagots on the floor. Nashta roused herself from her lethargy.
"La-clos! La-clos!"
"O mistress, forgive the maiden," came the mournful reply. "She could not come sooner."
"Ba-lee?"
"Last night she fought with La-clos. . . . She betrayed Blue Feather to Tith-lei. . . . The cunning Mole betrayed him to the priests. . . . They waited for him and seized him. La-clos was beaten. This morning Blue Feather was brought before Taneen and his medicine men. The Nopah did not deny. He told how he had deceived his father, and the Nopah warriors, and set their faces away from the Sheboyahs. But the secret of the Daughter of the Moon dishonored Taneen before his clan. Tith-lei was given power. . . . To him was given to bespeak the manner of the Nopah spy's death. He proclaimed it. Blue Feather was to be torn apart and thrown to the wild dogs. Tith-lei leaped upon the wall to dance his joy. And suddenly as he gazed down from the wall a great arrowhead pierced his breast. Blue Feather cried out in a voice of the storm wind, 'Behold! the long arrow of the Nopahs!' "
Nashta sprang up vibrant with quickened, passionate life.
"Nopahs!--Blue Feather's warriors? . . . They make war on Taneen's citadel?"
"War! They are strong and terrible. They have great bows and long arrows and ladders with shields and things that throw rocks over the walls. But all day the Sheboyah braves held them below. Taneen's chiefs are dead, the medicine men are dead, half the braves and squaws are dead. Only Taneen lives to command. In another day he will live to drive the Nopahs off."
"_Blue Feather?"^
"They bound him and cast him under the court wall. La-clos lay beside him. When the battle is over the Sheboyahs that are left will make a holiday with the torture of the Nopah. They will drag Nashta into the sun and force her to see the rending of his beautiful body, the flowing blood, the broken bones, and the flesh thrown over the walls to the wild dogs."
"_Never!^" prayed Nashta, in a whisper to the gods of the outcasts.
"Listen. The battle ceases. Night comes. . . . Oh, Nashta, save the Nopah! Lose no time. When the sun rises again they will kill him."
"But how? Can La-clos lead Nashta to Blue Feather?"
"The maiden faints. . . . She is hurt unto death. . . . But that way for Nashta must not be. The Nopah lies on the court among the braves."
Nashta supported the tottering maiden. In the blaze of the fagots La-clos drooped with pale and dripping face.
"Nashta, my princess!" she whispered. "Ba-lee struck--a blade of flint--at La-clos' heart."
"La-clos! . . . Oh, to be without god or friend or knowledge! What can this poor Nashta do? Princess?--Ha! Nashta is the lowest--"
"Hush! . . . The Daughter of the Moon--will save the Nopah. It was--written. . . . La-clos can only--die!"
Nashta kept the fire alive while she paced her kiva like a caged lioness. She waited for the dead of night when the moon was waning in the sky. La-clos lay covered in the shadow.
At last she threw around her the white robe of deerskin and, taking up a torch of pine cones, she lighted her way into the secret passage under the rock. A branch led to the right, where in the darkness Nashta knew not. She crept along at a snail's pace, feeling the ragged wall. The passage opened wide and high. A cold wind blew in Nashta's face. She clung to the wall and moved around the chamber until she came to an abrupt descent. She who had neither strength nor skill climbed down with the same spirit that had enabled Blue Feather to surmount the face of the cliff. The torch went out. Suddenly the pitch blackness was split by a pale gleam. Nashta stole on. A narrow slit between sharp corners of rock let her out into the open. She faced the north. Night was Nashta's day and she knew the stars. Far across the valley, the dim moon was sinking behind the black horizon. She stood upon a ledge some distance above the slope. High behind her rose the north side of Taneen's rock, the precipitous side of crags. Far to the right Nashta saw the dying fires of the Nopahs. She climbed down to the base of the cliff, feeling no pain in her bleeding hands and feet. From below she could see the crack through which she had emerged. It was concealed in the gray obscurity of the rough stone face. She marked her position by a notch in the crags along the rim. Then she crept forward under the base of the wall.
Suddenly a giant sentry rose in her path. At the sight of the pale princess he dropped his weapons and fled. Soon Nashta encountered two tall Nopahs with drawn bows. Imperiously she raised her hand.
"Nashta, daughter of Taneen! She seeks Nothis Toh!"
Slowly the bows unbent, the glinting arrowheads descended. The Nopah guards appeared to be uncertain, muttering to each other. Another dark form loomed up, as if out of the ground. Piercing eyes, with the gleam of the moon in their black depths, peered from along the base of the wall. These sentinels obviously were terrified by the white apparition. They whispered among themselves. Then the leader cautiously extended his long bow, to touch Nashta's garment. She was real.
Nashta drew back her robe haughtily. "Touch not Taneen's Daughter of the Moon. She has come to save the Nopah spy."
"Docleas!" whispered the leader to his comrades, in tense excitement. Then he pointed the way for Nashta to go.
The girl stepped over bodies of the dead sprawling on the slope, past smoldering fires where Nopahs slept in rows, passing from rock to rock, to the camp of the chief. There fire burned. Warriors stood on guard. A murmur passed among them. Sleepers awakened to leap erect, to stare, to back away in fright.
"Nothis Toh," announced the leader of the three warriors who accompanied Nashta, "a maiden of the Sheboyahs dared alone to seek the chief."
Up from the blanketed ground rose the giant chieftain, his visage cruel like that of a vulture, his eyes of lightning flashing upon the maiden. With slow stride he confronted her, in the flickering light of the fire, while his warriors closed a weaponed circle around them.
"Squaw?" he rasped, haltingly.
"Nothis Toh speaks to a princess of the Sheboyahs."
He made a fierce gesture of impatience.
"Squaw, maiden, princess! All one to the Nopah. . . . Does the Sheboyah chief still live?"
"Yes, Taneen lives."
"Who dares seek Nothis Toh?"
"It is Nashta, daughter of Taneen."
"Ha! Does the chief send terms of surrender?"
"No. Taneen will fight. The Nopahs cannot scale the walls."
"What does the white maiden want of Nothis Toh?"
"She is the beloved of Blue Feather," cried Nashta proudly.
"Then Nothis Toll's son is there?" demanded the chief, his fierce gaze turning aloft.
"Yes."
"He is a spy no longer?"
"No."
"Docleas, the proud, the great! Swiftest of the Nopahs! Only son of Nothis Toh! He betrays his father--he disowns his people! . . . Would he had never been born!"
The chief's great breast labored and his dark face bowed in grief.
"What message sends he, no longer son of the Nopah?" he demanded presently.
"None. Blue Feather lies bound under the wall above. At sunrise he will be torn to pieces by the braves of Taneen."
"That is well. But why, since he failed the Nopahs?"
"Blue Feather dared to love the Daughter of the Moon, Taneen's child by an outcast queen. When he entered the sacred kiva of Nashta he brought ruin upon Taneen."
"Ah! Then what is it that the maiden with the white skin wishes?" asked Nothis Toh, his lean head shooting forward like a striking hawk.
"Nashta will betray her people for love of the Nopah."
The chief drew himself up sharply, striking his breast, his dark countenance strangely lighting. He gazed around the silent circle of priests and warriors who understood this message yet, as he could not believe its import.
"Speak again, Sheboyah squaw! The Nopah is deaf!"
"Let the great chief gaze upon Nashta--into her eyes--her heart--to see the love and agony there," cried Nashta piteously. "She is an outcast princess upon whom the sun has never shown. But she would not lie. . . . Blue Feather betrayed his people for love of Nashta. She will betray her people for love of him."
The chieftain stroked his lean pointed chin, obviously convinced against his own will.
"Nothis Toh was not blind to love--long ago," he said, nodding solemnly. "Why could the Princess of the Moon betray Taneen?"
"She would save her lover."
"How will Nashta betray the great little people of the cliffs?"
"She will lead the Nopah warriors up through a secret passage under the wall."
A long silent column of tall dusky warriors moved along the base of the cliff. A slim white form led the way. The moon had gone down and the weird dark hour before the dawn had set in. Down in the valley the wild dogs were waiting. And out of the gulf of chasms came the faint roar of the sullen red river. Like a long shadow the column moved around the wall. Pale stars topped the rim above. A cold wind blew from across the wasteland. Low down in the east a pale gray softened the black. Dawn was not far off. A lonely nighthawk whirred above with melancholy cry.
The column moved, each member close upon the heels of the one before. Each carried a long bow, and a quiver of arrows slung on his back, and a stone-headed hatchet in his girdle.
Under the notched crag on the north wall the white-clad leader halted. Silently the long file of warriors came on, to mass at that point, to wait until all the column stood, dark faces raised upward, keen, like wolves on a scent.
A voice broke the silence, low but distinct, fearless yet respectful.
"One word, Nothis Toh?" asked a chief.
"Speak," came the stern reply.
"Is it well that Nopahs follow a squaw into the bowels of the rock?"
"Nothis Toh thinks it well."
"How does the great chief know that she is not sacrificing her life to draw the Nopahs into a trap?"
"He does not know."
"What then bids him follow?"
"Nothis Toh yields to that which made a traitor of a Nopah."
The white-clad leader above called, "Come, hand in hand. The way is short but dark."
Single file and linked together by hand clasps, the Nopahs entered the secret passage and wormed a tedious way up the steep ascent, through the cavern and the sacred kiva, up through the opening and under the shadow of the arches. They were still coming when the gray dawn broke over the sleeping citadel. And when the red light flushed in the east Nothis Toh and his warriors crouched grim and silent behind their coverts, ready to rush out to prevent the sunrise execution of their faithless spy.
The gray pall of night and the smoky mantle of war slowly lifted above the citadel. Soon along the bleak eastern horizon beyond the wasteland there appeared a red glow, sinister herald of a sunrise that would burst upon a day of blood. No birds sang. Only the vultures sailed in the paling sky, ever circling down and down. A cold stillness pervaded the morning atmosphere.
Suddenly this somber silence was rent by the wild yell of a Sheboyah brave. It rang clear with a triumphant note of joy, of deliverance. He had been the first to gaze down over the wall.
"The Nopahs are gone!" he screeched, awakening the guards who had slept on duty. They too started up, first in terror and then in glee, to overrun the terraces, shouting like madmen, "The Nopahs are gone! . . . They have abandoned their dead. . . . They have left their ladders. . . . The Rock Clan of the Sheboyahs has beaten the giants with the long bows."
All were awakened by these shrill cries of victory. The crippled lifted their weak voices to join in the rejoicing. Above the long rows of blanketed dead the squaws chanted, and the braves shouted their savage yells. The children screamed, though they did not understand what all the uproar was about. It had been the first siege laid against the Rock Clan, their first battle, their first victory; and it was a vindication of their medicine men, of the sagacity of their chiefs, of the truth of the legends handed down to them.
A maiden with torn and blood-stained garments leaped high upon a wall, her black hair flying, her eyes like the hot bursts of jet in the lava below. She waved and screamed to silence the wild mob. It was Ba-lee.
"Blue Feather lives! The cursed Nopah spy lies unhurt! Kill him! Let the lover of the false Nashta die the death Tith-lei willed upon him!"
Her fury took hold in the breasts of braves, and they began to dance, breaking into the frenzy of a leaderless clan gone berserk.
"There under the wall--lies the Nopah!" shrieked the maddened Ba-lee as she tore her hair and her garments. But hate was stronger than grief. "Drag him forth--and Nashta--the moon-faced maiden who has disgraced the Sheboyahs!"
A knot of braves savagely split the jostling, screeching mob, and dragged into the center of the great court the prostrate form of the Nopah.
Taneen appeared in the doorway of his dwelling, tottering forth leaning upon his staff, a spent old man with death in his visage. He raised a shaking hand to still the tumult. Those who saw him quieted others, until the court became silent, standing in awe of the old man, and Blue Feather was left in the center. Taneen stood trembling, striving to gather the little strength that remained in his shrunken form. His people watched in respect for his courage, if not for his rank. In his weary eyes there was a last message to his clan. But though his lips moved, no utterance came forth, and he fell as the tree that is severed at the roots.
"Taneen dies!" screamed the wild Ba-lee upon the wall. No wail, no chant for the fallen! "This day the Rock Clan chooses a chief! A brave who is young and fleet and bold shall lead the new Rock Clan! . . . He whose hate is greatest for the Nopah spy!"
From the open mouths and expanded lungs of all, as one single brave, there arose to the skies a magnificent, united yell. In that cry every brave proclaimed himself a chief. Silence fell. Who would lead the Rock Clan?
In that instant of shocked and waiting stillness Ba-lee, the wily, projected once more her flaming jealous spirit.
"He who first drags forth Nashta, the false! . . . He who first strips her white beauty to the sun . . . who dashes her there, to be torn apart with her Nopah spy!"
Blue Feather raised his head from the stones of the court, and those who met the blaze of his eyes drew back.
"Sheboyah dogs! Fools!" he thundered, in a voice none of the Rock Clan had ever heard. "Little people of the cliffs! Little braves with little minds! The Nopahs do not run away. They have not fled. Nothis Toh is on the rock!"
Stricken dumb and appalled, his listeners stood like the gnarled cedars on the slopes.
Over their heads whizzed a level streak of blue, dark against the sky. Its flight, swifter than a swallow's, ended in quick death. The eyes of the braves turned in sudden terror. Then an awful scream smote their ears. Ba-lee staggered on the wall, falling backward, her little hands clutching at her breast, where gleamed the feathered shaft of a Nopah arrow. She fell. And the dumb watchers wheeled to hear the soft rushing sound of padded feet, to see the lanes, the roofs, the terraces glitter with a solid phalanx of giant archers, to face a swift and shining sheet of flying arrows.
The foremost line of Taneen's braves, appalled by the startling onslaught of the Nopahs, stood transfixed to receive that blue-streaked flight of arrows; and then they fell, as brittle reeds before the wind, with the broken shafts standing erect in their breasts.
Then the remaining Sheboyahs, massed in the courts and on the terraces and the roofs, sprang out of their tracks with wild shouts and screams that merged in the tragic wail of a doomed people. This sound was lost in the clarion war cry of the on-rushing host. Once again the giant archers twanged their bows, and like hail before the blast the feathered arrows sped.
The Nopahs fell upon their victims, hatchets held high. Pandemonium reigned within the walled citadel of Taneen. The last of the Rock Clan made its last stand, in the courts, in the dwellings, on roofs and terraces. Surprised without weapons, many of them resorted to tooth and nail. Some charged to meet their foes, yelling defiance, swinging clubs or shooting with their little bows, soon to fall dead under the invaders' blows. Those frenzied by fright fled to the darkest holes, only to be dragged forth and slaughtered. Dust rose thick above the walls, and the terraces flowed with blood. The hoarse yells of combatants, the clash of flint, the dull blows on flesh and bone and the swift tread of many feet--these filled the morning air. It was a battle to the end.
Out on the playground retreated the last of the Rock Clan, and there before the empty stone seats, where often the chiefs, the squaws, the maidens had sat to award their heroes, they fought to the death. In the arena only puffs of dust rose from under warriors' feet. The brown bodies of the little men appeared dark against the lighter forms of the larger race. The eagle plumes of the Nopahs swept proudly, fiercely on.
Nothis Toh paced the court, amidst the dead and dying, awaiting his victorious warriors as they returned in companies, in smaller groups, in straggling twos and threes, and one by one. Among them were the bleeding and the crippled, but on the face of each gleamed the light of triumph. They had left on the stones many warriors upon whose dark faces no light would ever shine again.
Nothis Toh, majestic in mien, fierce of visage, terrible with the lust of battle still upon him, received the reports of his chiefs. The citadel had fallen. The Sheboyahs were destroyed. Weapons and garments, all the treasures of turquoise and jet and flints, the full granaries and the sealed cisterns--none of these had been lost or hidden, burned or emptied--a rich store for the hungry Nopahs.
But Nothis Toh glared like a baleful wolf who has been trapped with his whelps.
"Throw the Sheboyahs over the wall," he commanded. "The dead and the living! . . . This day Nothis Toh perpetuates for his tribe. Every year on this day the Nopahs will throw the little men over the cliffs, until all are gone!"
The dust and smoke lifted from the sacked and desolate citadel.
Nothis Toh stood before the dwelling of Taneen, facing the court, where all around the wide walls his warriors, ten deep, leaned upon their bows and awaited with glittering eyes their great chief's decree.
"Bring the Nopah traitor here," he ordered, his long, lean arm designating the empty center of the court.
With spears thrust out four giant warriors shoved Blue Feather into the open and left him standing there. The Nopah spy stood upright, his arms still bound behind his back. His scant garment was torn and caked with blood and dust, his leggings were ripped and hanging. Barefooted he stood, his splendid bared breast red with the blood of wounds. His once proud blue feather drooped defiled. But on his pale set face and in his grim gray eyes burned the spirit of the untamed.
A chief in revolt with his soul, Nothis Toh thundered at his son.
"Faithless son! Traitor to the Nopahs! . . . Speak!"
"Nothis Toh, the spring of Blue Feather's words is dry."
"Docleas will not beg for mercy?"
"No."
"What if he is thrown over the wall, to join the dead of the people he chose?"
"It is well."
Nothis Toh shook in his rage, and raised his long arms in despair, and dashed his stone mace to the floor.
"God of my forefathers--what has changed the blood of this boy!"
But only silence answered his passionate importuning. He bowed his vulture head to forces beyond the ken of his priests. He had sacked the citadel of Taneen, he had destroyed the Sheboyahs. Yet he was defeated. There was something here too great for Nothis Toh, and it expressed itself in his hate.
"Docleas failed his father?" he asked in loud and solemn voice.
"Yes," rang out Blue Feather's reply.
"The son of the Nopah does not bow his head?"
"No!"
"All for a squaw of the little people?" cried Nothis Toh, his face black with passion.
"All for Nashta, princess of the Sheboyahs, Daughter of the Moon, upon whom the sun has never shone!"
The chief made a fierce gesture to his guards. "Drag this wondrous squaw into the light!"
Blue Feather uttered a cry, and his form shook as a leaf on the bough.
"Father . . . then Nashta--"
"Does the traitor dare call Nothis Toh his father?"
A whisper ran through the waiting throng of warriors. Eager sloe-black eyes searched the terrace lane down toward the kivas. Silence as of the night before and as potent reigned over the ruined citadel. The white sun blazed piercingly down from the clear blue sky. Solemn and austere, the hour seemed to wait.
A white-robed maiden appeared, groping her way in front of guards no longer bold. They had to guide her steps. She sheltered her eyes under a mantle, and stumbled up the steps to the court. They placed her before the chief.
"Can the Sheboyah woman who betrayed her people see the Nopah?" asked the chief.
"She sees, Nothis, but not clearly. The sun burns and darkens her eyes."
"Blue Feather stands there, glad to be thrown over the wall to join the Sheboyah dead. . . . What would Nashta?"
"Throw the maiden, O great chief, but spare him!"
Nothis Toh turned to his attendant counselors, and spread wide his hands. They were mute. Was it the soul of this outcast princess that had possessed the great spy of the Nopahs? For Nothis Toh the bewilderment passed. It was what could be seen by the eye that had transformed his son, that vessel of flesh and blood which could be felt.
"Strip the maiden!" he commanded. "Let Nothis Toh see that which lost him a son!"
The warriors stared above dilating nostrils. These grim-lipped Nopahs, used to the hard fare of the trail, abstinent in all ways of the flesh, indifferent to their squaws, quivered under the new birth of a worship of beauty. They saw a slim form, white as driven snow, fragile, like the flower that leaned from the wall of the precipice.
Blue Feather wrenched mightily to burst the thongs that bound him. Snatching up the buckskin robe, he covered Nashta and held her close, while his stern face, like that of a god, mutely bade his father to visit upon them both the death they welcomed.
"It is enough!" cried the chief. "Nothis Toh forgives his son. He spares this outcast maiden, the last of the Sheboyahs, so that her blood may run in Nopah veins."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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