LITMIR.BIZ

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a moment or two Hannah and I could do nothing but stare at one another and at the young Hopi; we both felt that, compared with him, we were but little children in our knowledge of the world and its ways.

      And then he said: “I am going to try you out. Tell me which side you take in this matter — our side, or that of the men in Washington who force us to live according to their rules?

      “Your side! ” — “Oh, your side, of course! ’’ we cried.

      “Ah! I knew that you would,” he said, clapping his hands. “Yes, it is just as my good, wise archaeologist friend says. More than once he has told me that ours is a just plea for liberty!”

      We talked on, then, about other things, and finally I said to him that he had not yet told us his name. He laughed, and replied: “My first teachers gave me a name — no matter what it is; I do not like it. My real name is Singing Frog.

      “Ha! You laugh!” he went on, turning to Hannah, and smiling, too. “Well, with us that is a very old and honorable name. The frog is a bringer of rain. With us he is sacred: no Hopi would think of killing one. We have a Frog Dance that is a very beautiful ceremony. When our gardens parch from want of water, our priests take our young men to the head of a wash, and there, after they have prayed Ancient Frog for water, and have sung the song of the frog, the young men all start off down the wash, jumping like frogs, and rolling loose stones before them just as a cloudburst takes them rolling and grinding down. That ceremony often brings the rain.”

      Sister and I did not even smile when he told us that; we felt that it was not for us to try to talk him out of his strange beliefs. But mention of the frog brought back to me something that I had had in mind, and I said to him: ‘I guess you will say that we have done wrong, but anyhow I am going to tell you: we have hunted around, up on top, and found a lot of things, beads, arrow-points, some strangely carved sticks, and a turquoise frog, that now, since talking with you, we know must have been left there by your long-ago Hopi people.” And then I told Hannah to get the things. She brought them from under her bunk and spread them out on the table, and the Hopi gave a little cry when he saw the turquoise frog: ‘‘Oh, what would n’t I give to have one like that!” he said. “Not that one, for we may not take anything that has been given to the gods. That is a piece of very ancient work, and is itself a perpetual prayer for rain. The sticks are prayer sticks, offerings to Rain God, as are the beads and other things.”

      “What is the white material that the turquoise is set in?” Hannah asked.

      “You do not know? Why, that is a cutting from the half of a clam-shell from the Gulf of California; and that made the piece all the more powerful, for the clam, as well as the frog, is a bringer of water. Some priest of the long ago valued it as he did his life; our people of that time must have been in desperate need of rain, for him to have offered it here with his prayers.”

      “Oh, go on; do tell us more!” Hannah begged.

      “Yes, I will,” he answered. “I will tell you something that our priests never knew until it was told to them by my good friend — by the archaeologist I have mentioned. Do not ask me his name, for he has told me to give it to no one until I have made my trip to Washington, and perhaps not even then.

      “Before this great student came to us, learned our language, and at last was invited into our kivas to take part in the secret ceremonies of our priests, this much we knew about ourselves: we knew that we Hopis are a mixed people; a people of different clans. That our main clan, the Water Clan, came into this country from the south long before the coming of the first white man, and were here in time joined by clans of Shoshones, from the north, and clans of Pueblos from the east, all seeking refuge from the Apaches and Navajos, and at last together forming the Hopi tribe, the People-of-Peace. It was the greatest of these clans, the Water Clan, that furnished the religion for the tribe, and also the art of making beautiful pottery, and of weaving cotton cloth. The Water Clan was the last remnant of the numerous people who once had made irrigated gardens of the Salt River and Gila River valleys, and there built large pueblos in which to live. I, myself, have seen the ruins of one of these, the Casa Grande as the whites call it, about forty miles east of Phoenix. The main house of that pueblo was four stories high, with walls of concrete six feet thick, and the most of it, after hundreds and hundreds of years, still stands. Safe in their great houses, and with full canals of water for their plantings, the people were happy, there in that hot country — Giant Cactus Land. And then came the Apaches and the Navajos and drove them northward, up the rivers that you call the Verde, the Salt, the Gila, and the Tonto. In the valleys they built small pueblos, and homes in the cliffs, constantly attacked by their enemies, until, at last, after several hundred years of moving and building and abandoning, the few who survived made their last stand out there in the desert, where we are today. That much we knew about ourselves.

      ‘‘We know much more now. Our archaeologist friend tells us that away down in Old Mexico he has seen ruins, also named the Casas Grandes, where once lived the ancestors of the builders of the Gila River and Salt River pueblos. That he has proved by his finds there of pottery and other things. And why did our far-back fathers abandon that rich country? There was good reason for it, he says. When the first white men that entered Mexico, the Spaniard Cortez and his soldiers, came to the great city of the Aztecs and conquered it, they found stored there in houses twenty thousand human skulls, skulls of people that the Aztecs every year sacrificed to the sun. The Aztec warriors were, of course, as time went on, obliged to go farther and farther from home to capture people for these yearly sacrifices, and at last they began making attacks upon our fathers, and finally obliged them to flee from their homes and fields.

      ‘‘So, there you have the history of us as we know it. Is it not a pitiful story! From the earliest times down to this very day we have been a persecuted people, we whose one desire has been to live in -peace among our fields of com, and worship our gods as they command us to do.”

      Our friend’s face was very sad as he ended his tale, and Hannah and I felt sorry for him and his People-of-Peace. We told him that we did, but somehow could n’t put into words all that we felt. And we were glad that he had become friendly to us. He had given us a new and a true outlook: never again should we think that all Indians were la2y, worthless, treacherous, and cruel savages. The Apaches were all that, but the Hopis, People-of-Peace, why, they had many traits that some of our white people might well copy!

      “Well, I told you that I would stand watch for you to-night, and I think it is time for you to sleep,” our friend told us.

      “Oh, I don’t think there is any danger; that grub-stealing deserter has n’t the sand to make a night attack upon us,” I said.

      “But Henry King is n’t the only bad man in this forest. I am more afraid of those I.W.W. firebugs than I am of him. I say that we stand watch, by turns, all night!” cried Hannah.

      Of course we counted her out of that, and then our friend insisted upon taking the watch alone, and we went out, and sister barred the door behind us. We sat upon the edge of the little porch for some time, listening for any suspicious sounds, but heard none; heard nothing but the hooting of owls away down in the canyons. A faint light in the east told us that the moon would soon appear, and my friend said that he would go across the little clearing and into the thick spruces to keep his watch. He went, and I turned the corner of the cabin and got into my bunk.

      I awoke with a start, and the feeling that all was not well with us. The moon was shining straight down into the clearing and I could plainly see all that part of it not shut off from me by the cabin. Nothing was moving there, but I had no more than raised up when I heard’ something behind me, around on the west side of the cabin; something moving with footsteps so light that I could barely hear them: ‘‘The deserter, the firebugs are here!’I thought, as I looked back over my shoulder, at the same time lying back upon my pillow. I don’t know why I did that. I just did it, and of course just as soon as my head struck the pillow I could only look straight out from me, and eastward down the clearing to the spruces where — if he had n’t fallen asleep — our friend was watching the cabin.

      And now that I was back flat upon my bed, I dared not sit up again, for whoever was there behind the cabin was

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