LITMIR.BIZ

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As soon as he had gone, Hannah put on her heavy coat and lay down upon the boughs in her bunk, and I stretched out on the floor. We awoke three or four times during the night, and each time I got up and built a fresh fire in the stove, for we were very cold. Rain fell steadily until near morning, when it began to come down with driving gusts of wind, a sure sign, we thought, that the storm was about over. It did pass a little later, and the sun came up in a partly cloudy sky.

      During our wakeful hours we had talked a lot about our plan to capture the outlaws. It seemed to be a terribly risky venture, and I told Hannah that she had better keep out of it; that we should take her home, and get Uncle John, and maybe one or two other men to go on with us to the Conaro Creek cave.

      ‘‘Yes, I see you going there after mother and Uncle John learn about this! she exclaimed. “And as to myself, have n’t I my automatic and can’t I shoot it? I am going to that old cave with you! ”

      Well, that settled it. I told her that she should go with us. And then, when morning came and the sun shone and all was bright and clear, I thought our plan not near so desperate as it had seemed in the dark night. In fact, not at all desperate: we could certainly take care of ourselves.

      We had more broiled meat and corn cake for breakfast; then washed the dishes, swept out the cabin, locked the door, and sat on the porch waiting for our friends to appear. They soon came up from their camp, each one with his little pack, and we all went up on to the summit, and along it to the north end of the mountain. As we were passing the cave hole, the old men called a halt, and White Deer told our young friend that he had a few words for us:

      ‘‘You two of good heart,” he said, ‘‘although this place is nothing to you, it is very sacred to us, as you have learned. You have seen what a very powerful place it is: that here, through our prayers and offerings to Rain God, we have brought rain, heavy rain, and saved our plantings out there in the desert. So, to us this kiva here in the mountain is a very sacred place. As we found it so have we left it, putting back into the passage the broken roof rock just as Rain God dropped it there. And now we ask you not to remove that rock, not to go into that place, lest by doing so you make our god angry with us, and with you, too. He might make you prisoners there, as he did the Apache, whose bones we found.”

      ‘‘We shall do as you ask,” I promptly answered.

      “Yes. Of course we shall!” said Hannah.

      And then how the old men smiled as they one by one shook hands with us.

      We went on to the end of the mountain and looked off at the forest and the great desert beyond. The black burnings were dead; not a wisp of smoke was rising from them. Away to the north the Hopi buttes were hidden in a great cloud bank, and nearer cloud masses were dropping rain. The old men clapped their hands and pointed off to it, talking excitedly, and our friend told us that they were saying that Rain God was very good to them; that he was continuing to soak their gardens.

      Pointing then to a little lake to the northwest, and almost at the edge of the timber. White Deer asked me if it was not the head of the creek of the great cave? I answered that it was.

      “And just a little way from the lake the creek drops down a very steep and rocky slope, then runs through a narrow slope of timber, and then over the three ledges and out into the desert. Am I not right?’’

      “It runs just as you say it does,” I told him.

      “You see how we of the kivas keep knowledge of places: none of us have ever been to that creek, nor our fathers nor grandfathers, yet we know it as well as though we had been along it many times!” he said.

      He pointed to a large, shining lake midway between us and Conaro Lake. “But I do not understand about that water,” he went on. “Our description of this Rain God garden makes no mention of it. It can’t be that it is the gathering of last night’s rain.”

      “It isn’t,” I told him. “White men who live away down the river built a dam there, and so made the lake. When they need water for their plantings they let the water run down into the river, and from it into their ditches.”

      “Ah! That explains it!” he exclaimed, clapping hands together with a loud smack. And then, sadly:

      “Our people once had ditches; water in plenty for their large gardens!”

      We planned our route to Conaro Lake: Down the long ridge running from the mountain almost to the big prairie in which is the reservoir; past its south side and again into the timber and straight on to our destination. Our young friend said that I must kill a duck for him at the reservoir, so that he could have some feathering for his arrows.

      The end of the mountain was so abrupt that we did not dare try to go down it; we turned down the west slope almost to the timber, and then went on around to the ridge. It was bare for nearly a half-mile, and the soft ground was all cut up with deer tracks, nearly washed out by the rain. As soon as we entered the timber we had hard going; windfalls that were breast-high tangles of logs and branches, one after another for all of two miles, down to the lower edge of the spruce belt. We then had fine footing down through the open pine and fir timber to the prairie, which we struck at noon. We went straight out across it to the reservoir, and found it covered with ducks of all kinds, old and young. I shot a drake mallard, and our young friend waded out for it, and, stripping some of the larger wing feathers, began work on his arrows. The old men opened their sacks, produced some roasted meat, and we had lunch. Our young friend finished feathering his arrows, and, gathering and tightly binding a wad of grass about a foot in diameter, set it on top of a bush and fired three arrows at it from a distance of about thirty yards: all three of them plunked into it. We thought that wonderful shooting, and said so.

      “If we find those bear-hide stealers, watch what I do to them!” he grimly answered.

      We were about to go on when we saw five riders come into the north edge of the prairie, pause for a moment, and then start ’loping straight toward us; and even at that distance, by the way they sat their horses, and quirted them, we knew them for what they were, Apaches.

      ‘‘We must not show that we are afraid of them. We will not fear them!” our young friend exclaimed, and turned about to sit facing their approach, as did Hannah and I, she taking her automatic from its holster and concealing and holding it in a fold of her dress. Our young friend re-strung his bow, and held it and several arrows across his lap, as I did my rifle. As the riders neared us we made out that four of them wore the blue uniform of the reservation police, the other, khaki trousers and a red calico shirt, and that they were armed with Government carbines and revolvers. They rode close up in front of us, brought their horses to a quick stand and stared down at us, and we returned their stare, and outstared them. Even in the excitement of the moment I noticed how different they were from our kindly and intelligent featured friends. Their faces were coarse and cruel; their bodies short and heavy upon spindly bow legs; and what mean, shifty little eyes they had, sunk deep in the edge of low, retreating foreheads!

      Said one of them in broken English, when, as it seemed, he could no longer endure our steady stare: ‘‘What you doin’?”

      “You see what we are doing: resting,” I answered.

      “Where you come from?”

      “From our place.”

      “Where you goin’?”

      “Wherever we choose to go,” I answered.

      “White boy, you think you smart! What you doin’ with old Hopi men — old prairie dogs?”

      “Here, you, don’t you call us that again!” our young friend cried, springing up and facing him menacingly.

      The other did not answer. He looked shiftily at me, at Hannah, and talked with his companions. And how their language grated in our ears; how different it was from the soft, pleasant-sounding Hopi tongue. It was natural, I thought, that cruel, bloodthirsty people should have a harsh, cruel-sounding language.

      Presently the Indian again turned to me: “We huntin’ hims set fires in timber. I guess you hims. You come ’long!

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