The Flute of the Gods Part 34

"You are strong to fight without Tahn-te," whispered the girl who made herself as a vine in her clinging clasp of him.

"But not to fight against Tahn-te and his secret powers of the sky,"

answered Ka-yemo. "The old men know he is strong in visions. When the time comes that he fall low in their sight, there will be many days that their hearts will be sick. We must not make these days come when we have enemies to fight."

"Do you fear?" demanded the temptress petulantly. It irked her that his first thought was of caution--while hers was of annihilation for the man who loomed so large that no other man could be seen in the land.

"If you think I fear would you find me here in this witch place with you?" he asked. "It has been forbidden that any one comes here--yet have I come!"

Plainly he felt brave that he had defied the Po-Ahtun-ho in so much as he had walked to the forbidden sacred places, and Yahn felt a storm of rage sweep over her at the knowledge. But it had been a storm of rage like that by which he had once been driven away from her! And she smothered all the words she would have spoken, and clung to him, and whispered of his greatness,--and the pride he could bring to the clan when Tahn-te, the lover of witches, no longer made laws in the land.

In her own heart she was making prayers that the alarm of the Navahu warriors prove a false thing, and the vision of Tahn-te be laughed at by the clans. To hear him laughed at would help much!

But that was not to be, for ere the dawn broke, came shouts from Shufinne--and signal fires, and the Te-hua men of Pu-ye ran swiftly to guide their Castilian brothers in arms, and the savages who had hoped to steal women in the darkness, found that thunder and lightning and death fought for the Te-hua people--and the men of iron rode them down with the charmed animals and strange battle cries.

When the daylight came there were dead Navahu on the field south of Shufinne--the flower of the s.h.i.+elds had bloom! Two dead Te-hua men were also there, and a wounded Navahu had been taken captive by Juan Gonzalvo. Ka-yemo carried two fresh scalps, and Don Ruy lay huddled in a little arroyo, where a lance thrust had struck him reeling from the saddle, and Tahn-te had leaped forward to grapple with the Navahu who, hidden on the edge of the steep bank, waited the coming of the horseman and lunged at him as head and shoulders came above the level.

Where the breastplate ends at the throat he struck, and the blade of volcanic gla.s.s cut through the flesh. At the savage yell of triumph the horse swerved--stumbled, and with a clatter of metals rolled down the embankment.

As the Navahu rushed downward with lifted axe and eager scalping knife, an arrow from the bow of Tahn-te pierced the temple of the savage, and with a grunt he whirled and fell dead beside the Castilian.

The horse had quickly regained his feet, but the rider lay still, the blood pulsing from his throat and staining the yellow sand. With dextrous fingers Tahn-te removed the helmet and breastplate that the position of the body might be eased. With sinew of deer from his pouch, and a bone awl of needle-like sharpness, he drew together the edges of the wound, then turning to where the Navahu lay p.r.o.ne on his face in the sand, he deftly cut a strip of the brown skin a finger's width across, and in length from shoulder to girdle; this he took from the yet warm body as he would take the bark from a willow tree, and bound it about the throat with the flesh side to the wound.

"Take my horse and follow," whispered Don Ruy, who had recovered breath and speech,--"I am not yet so dead that I need the grave digger--you can ride--take my horse and follow."

Tahn-te had leaped to the saddle, when a cry at the edge of the arroyo caused him to halt, it was so pitiful a cry, and tumbling down through the sand and gravel came Master Chico with staring eyes of fear, and lips that were pale and quivering. The flayed back of the savage had he caught sight of, and the white face of Don Ruy who looked dead enough for ma.s.ses despite his own a.s.sertion to the contrary, and the lad flung himself on his excellency with a wail that was far from that of a warrior, and then slipped silently into unconsciousness.

With the thought that a death wound had struck the lad who had come to die with his master, Tahn-te turned the face back until the head rested on the arm of the Castilian, lightly he ran his hands over the body, and then halted, his eyes on the face of Don Ruy, who gazed strangely at the white face on his arm. The cap was gone, the eyes were closed, and the open lips showed the white teeth. In every way the face was more childish than it had ever appeared to him--childish and something more--something--

Then Tahn-te, who held the wrist of Chico, laid it gently on the hand of Don Ruy.

"Only into the twilight land has she gone, Senor," he said softly--"even now the heart beats on the trail to come back--to you!"

Don Ruy stared incredulously into the eyes of the Indian, and a flush crept over his own pale face as he remembered many things.

"Dona Bradamante!" he murmured, and nodded to Tahn-te, who leaped on the horse and rode where the yells of the victors sounded in the pinons towards the hills. Beyond all the other hors.e.m.e.n he rode, and saw far above in the scrubby growth, the enemy seeking footholds where the four-footed animals could not follow. Then, when Ka-yemo had called the names of the trailers who were to follow the enemy beyond the summit, Tahn-te the Po-Athun-ho turned back and chanted the prayer of a prophet to whom the G.o.d had sent true dreams.

The Castilians watched him as he came; so proudly did he carry himself that the men swore an army of such hors.e.m.e.n would win half the battle by merely showing themselves, and the old men of Te-hua knew as they looked on him, and as they counted the slain and wounded, that Tahn-te had indeed been given the gift of the G.o.d-sight to save the women of the valley.

Juan Gonzalvo swore ugly oaths at sight of the horse of Don Ruy. Since the pagan had taken it as his own, it was plain to be seen that some woeful thing had chanced to his excellency.

But to their many questions Tahn-te led them to the arroyo where Don Ruy was indeed wounded, and where a pale secretary was carrying water in his hat to bathe his excellency's head, and his excellency let it be done, and exchanged a long look of silence with Tahn-te, who understood.

The ankle of Don Ruy had a twist making it of no use to stand upon.

The Po-Ahtun-ho made a gesture to Chico to hold the horse while he, with a soldier to help, put it straight with a dextrous wrench, and the secretary several paces away, turned white at the pain of it.

Then was his excellency helped again to his saddle, and the men from Mexico marvelled at the surgery of the pagan priest who killed and flayed one man to mend another with.

CHAPTER XIX

THE APACHE DEATH TRAP

When the runners carried the word to the river that the vision of Tahn-te had been a true vision, the padre and Don Diego stared at each other incredulous. It was a thing not to be believed by a Christian.

Yet the runners said that many Navahu scalps and two dead Te-hua men witnessed the truth of it, and the men of iron had proven indeed brothers in the time of battle. The governor made thanks to Don Ruy, who was wounded, and his Excellency had sent the secretary back to camp with Ysobel since there was not anything new to record. The Te-hua men would dance the scalp dance when they came to the village, and two clans mourned for men left dead on the mesa meadows.

The padre regretted that he had not gone with the troop. Since they had won honor and thanks, it was the good time to work for the one favor of the gold in return.

And Don Diego regretted the Te-hua men who had died without absolution.

The secretary stated that the clans of the dead men were clamoring for the Navahu captive taken by Gonzalvo, and there was much talk about it. Also that the Navahu said it was one maid they came searching for--a Navahu maid who wore bluebird wings--they had not thought to harm Te-hua women! Of course the Te-hua men thought that was a lie, for the Navahu always wanted more women.

But the old men of the village to whom it was told looked at each other with meaning.

It was a strange thing that the men of Te-gat-ha to the north, and the men of Navahu from the west, took the trail to search for that one maid of mystery. The ground over which she pa.s.sed had reached far, and the evil wrought by her had been great. The wise men of Te-gat-ha knew that the tornado followed her trail, and the Navahu men who searched for her, had found death and defeat. Prayers must be made against the evil of her if her feet should cross the land of the Te-hua people.

And all through the long beautiful twilight the tombe sounded from the terraces, and the mourners for the dead on the high mesas knew that prayers were being made against new evil--and that the medicine men would in an early day demand penance and sacrifice of many if the cloud of dread was not lifted from their hearts.

Four days of purification must be observed by the warriors ere entering again their home village after a battle to the death. And Yahn could not by any means approach Ka-yemo during that time, which did not prevent her speech with other men. To Juan Gonzalvo she talked, and Gonzalvo chafed under the restrictions of Don Ruy.

Steadily in his mind had grown that thought of the parentage of Tahn-te. He was unwilling to think that the native mind could have the keenness and the logic of this barbarian whose eyes were the color of the darkest blue violets, and whose diabolic power made even the Castilians awe-struck, and sent them to prayers more swiftly than did the sermons of the padre. If he only dared hint it to the padre--if by some G.o.d-given power he, the insolent Cacique, could be delivered into their hands--if as the son of Teo the Greek, he could come within the law of the Inquisition for his devilish heresies--the all too lenient Inquisition demanded white blood in its victims--what a triumph it would be for the Faith to add the sorcerer to the list! For such a triumph would Gonzalvo have been willing to tread with bared feet all the sands of the trail to Mexico.

With such pious intent did he question much of Yahn, who knew little--and was indeed afraid when the medicine G.o.d woman was asked of. She had seen that which had come to the outcast of Na-im-be who would have told tribal things, and she had no wish to grow dumb, or blind, or a trembling wreck in the time of one sun across the sky.

But she did go with him to the place of the well in the sand at Shufinne at the time when the Twilight Woman went for water. He waited there and drew for her the water, and watched closely her face as he spoke a Castilian word of greeting. If he had hope that she had ever before heard such words his hopes were fruitless. She was so indifferent to his presence that not even once did she lift her eyes from the water jar or look in his face, and the fragile figure turned from him and walked away as if Castilian warriors were seen daily on the path to that well.

Yahn knew that all the other women wished greatly to be let go down to the village that they might see and be spoken to by the great strangers, and she hid in the brush to watch the medicine G.o.d woman and even won courage to ask of her who had filled the water jar so quickly.

"Was it not then the stranger who is your lover, Yahn Tsyn-deh?" asked the other, not as one who cares, but as one who states a fact--"the man whom you give love to in these new days."

"Who says I give love?" demanded Yahn. "Sah-pah the liar, or Koh-pe, who knows not anything!"

"You walk together alone as lovers walk. The other women do not think they lie."

"They are fools--the other women!" stated Yahn--"also they are liars.

They are glad if a man of the beard looks the way they are,--they would make a trail to follow if the men of iron whistled them,--they would be proud to make their own men ashamed--they!"

For the first time the older woman looked in the face of the girl with intentness, as though suddenly aroused to interest in the human drama about her, and the actors in it.

"Then you would not follow, Yahn Tsyn-deh?" she asked. "The others say you laugh at the men of the tribe and give love to the strangers--they say you pa.s.s Ka-yemo on the trail and your eyes never see him any more because of the men of iron who give you gifts!"

"A jealous woman says that!" stormed Yahn Tsyn-deh,--"a woman who maybe lies to him when he will listen! You see this:"--and she picked up a black water worn pebble with a vein of white through the heart of it--"Sometime when the Earth Mother was beginning with the work, these two were maybe not together like this. They were apart--maybe it was before the ice went from around our world and the mountains sent fire to split the rocks. Look you now--you are wise, but maybe you do not know how this is, for you go into shadow lands, and men and women, and the stones over which your feet walk, are all the same to you--also the love of a man and a woman are not anything to your thoughts!"

The other looked at her, and beyond her, and said nothing. The words of Yahn were words of angry insistence on the thought she had never yet been able to express--and to say it to even the G.o.d medicine woman who sheltered a witch, was to speak it aloud, and have it forgotten!

"You are wise in medicine craft but do you know how this grew?"--she demanded--"I know--I feel that _I know_!--the mountain fire or the sky fire broke it that the white stone of fire could be shot like an arrow into the heart of it. To keep some count it was made like that by the Most Mysterious;--and in the hand of the Mystery it was held--and the hand was closed over it while the mountains came down to the rivers, and the rivers made trails through rock walls. When the hand was opened and the sun looked on it, it was grown into one;--can you with all high medicine put them apart?--can you break the black and leave the white not broke? Can you make two colors of the powder you would grind from it between grinding stones?--Yet the two colors are there!

Like the two colors are Ka-yemo and Yahn Tsyn-deh. One they were made by some magic of the Great Mystery, and no woman and no man, and no lies of women, can break them apart! When you hear them lie another time, you can look at this stone, and know that I said it!"