LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter VI.

       The Wrongs of the Hopis

       Table of Contents

      I dropped my bucket and started up the trail as fast as I could go, and as a runner found that I was nothing: with a few leaps the young Hopi and his four old priests were ahead of me, leaving me, snatching up here and there a stone as they ran. After Hannah’s cry of “George! George! Come quick!” we heard her no more. Something terrible had happened to her, I was sure. It was but a little way — a hundred yards — to the little clearing on top of the ridge. As I came into it, well behind the others, I saw that the cabin door was closed. Hannah’s cry for help had been in the open, or we should not have heard it so plainly, if at all. I believed that she had gone out into the timber; that she had been suddenly overpowered there by some one, or, maybe. Double Killer, or she would have kept calling me. I was in a terrible state of mind. And then, what relief! The cabin door swung open and she came running to us, pistol in one hand, my rifle in the other.

      ‘‘I went out in there,” she cried, as I took the weapon from her, —out into those spruces for dry twigs to start the fire, and a man was lying there. He sprang up, and I turned and ran to the cabin, screaming for you, and got inside and barred the door. Oh, how frightened I was! I was sure the man would catch me before I could get to the cabin!”

      ‘‘He chased you?” I cried.

      “When he sprang up he came straight toward me. How far he followed I don’t know. I did n’t dare look back. I just kept running until I got inside, and when I turned to shut and bar the door he was not in sight.”

      “But you saw him! Was he white, or an Apache?

      “I don’t know. It was all so dim in there, the branches were so thick that I did n’t get a good look at him. I did n’t have time to look at him: I had to run!” she answered.

      I did n’t know what to say to this. I sure was mad. Not afraid, though; I just wanted to get sight of any one who would chase my sister.

      The young Hopi had been telling his priests what we were saying, and one of them now asked: ‘‘Have you any enemies?”

      “There are some bad men in the forest,” I answered, and went on to tell them about the deserter, who, we believed, had stolen our food, and about the I.W.W. firebugs. And when I had finished, one of the old men spoke to the others in a low, sad voice.

      “What did he say?” I asked the interpreter. “These were his words,” he solemnly replied: “Whites, Apaches, Navajos, all of the tribes we know, are murderers, thieves, liars! We alone are People-of-Peace. We do no wrong to any of them, yet how they make us suffer!'”

      Now, what answer could we make to that ? None. It was true. Hannah and I stood ashamed before those gentle old men. Not for ourselves, but for those of our kind who were mean to them.

      “Well, let us all try to learn who was the man in the timber, whether Apache or white,” the young Hopi proposed.

      ‘‘But your old men have no weapons — they will be afraid to go in there,” I said.

      He spoke to them and they all nodded assent, gripping more tightly the rocks they held. We went across the clearing and into the spruces, and Hannah showed us just where she had seen the man. Under the low-branching tree the dead needles were packed as though he had lain there a long time; all night, perhaps. Along the way that he had chased her, only a few yards, the needles were only slightly pressed by his footsteps. We cut a circle around the place; then a larger one, and, down on the slope of the ridge, one of the old men called us to him and pointed to tracks in a bare stretch of ground; broad-heel shoetracks far apart, leading down into the canyon. I needed but one look at them: “The deserter! He is back again!” I said to Hannah. She did not answer; she just shivered a bit as though she were cold. I explained to the others that I knew the tracks; that they were made by the man who had camped down in the canyon, and several times stolen our food.

      “It is well for us that he was n’t an Apache, to come again with a lot of his people to take our scalps and dance over our bodies,” one of the old men remarked.

      “Sister, this sure does settle it! I can’t fireguard all day and watch all night for this thieving deserter! I am going to call for help,” I said.

      “Don’t you do it!” she cried. “I am not afraid, now. If I had had my pistol when I first came out, you would have heard my shot instead of my scream for help.”

      “No! Don’t call people up here; I will help you, stand watch nights for you, the young Hopi pleaded. “With you two, we feel at ease; we know that your hearts are right. But with a lot of white men up here, laughing, sneering at us, oh, my old men could not do that they have come so far to do. To fail now would just about kill them!”

      “All right! All right! We ’ll just go on as we are,” I told him.

      Our Hopi friends, of course, refused to eat with us. They would go back to the spring for a time, they said. Hannah and I had a hurried breakfast and a silent one. Just before seven o’clock, while we were washing the dishes, the telephone rang my call, rang it twice before I could get to the receiver, and when I answered, my ear ached with the Supervisor’s shout: ‘‘Big fire somewhere near the sawmill! Go up top as fast as you can leg it, and report!”

      “Yes! Right away!” I shouted back. Hannah had heard him as plainly as I. “Oh, the firebugs again! And the wind blowing! This is terrible!” she cried, flinging the dishcloth upon its nail and stuffing some bread and things into our lunch sack, and her pistol into the holster at her hip.

      We locked the door behind us, although that was almost useless; without doubt Henry King had a key to fit the lock. I had noticed as well as Hannah that there was a stiff southwest wind, and had hoped that there was no fire in the forest for it to spread. As we neared the top of the trail it blew Stronger, and, once we were clear of the spruces, it was that hard we had to lean against it the rest of the way up to the lookout.

      We scrambled up into the little house, and I swung the chart sight onto the fire, and stepping across to the telephone, gave the Supervisor the degree.

      “The firebugs again! Describe it!” he shouted.

      ‘‘Set in four places in a line of maybe a mile north and south, and spreading fast! The sky that way is black with smoke!” I thought that I heard him swear as he hung up.

      For a time Hannah and I by turns watched the fire with the glasses, and now and then could see the awful red flames break skyward up through the rolling black blanket of smoke. With the aid of the strong wind, the I.W.W. firebugs were at last carrying out their threat. If they did not succeed in burning the sawmill, they were anyhow destroying the great firs and pines that it was to turn into lumber, and it would have to be moved — at great expense — to another locality. I tell you that we sure felt bad, watching that wicked burning of our beautiful forest. And the meanness of it! Out there in the great world, why were people so mean? Why were they always fighting, stealing, doing everything that was mean to one another?

      We presently saw the Hopis coming up on the summit, and said Hannah: thought that I could never like Indians, but they are different. I just love those Hopi Indians, those People-of-Peace, because, George, they are just like us, here in these little mountain settlements. We do no wrong to one another, nor to outsiders. Why can’t all the world be like us?”

      You’ve sure got me! All I

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