Part 6 (2/2)

”At first the girl did not know what to make of being dressed so handsomely and fed upon the best of everything, but when they painted her with the sign of the Sun she knew. Over her heart they painted it.

Then they put about her neck the Eye of the Sun, and the same day the woman who had been her mistress and was fond of her, slipped her a seed which she said should be eaten as she went up the Hill of the Sun, so she would feel nothing. Given-to-the-Sun hid it in her bosom.

”There was a custom that, in the last days, those who were to go up the Hill of the Sun could have anything they asked for. So the girl asked to walk by the river and hear the birds sing. When they had walked out of sight of the Stone Houses, she gave her watchers the seed in their food and floated down the river on a piece of bark until she came ash.o.r.e in the thick woods and escaped. She came north, avoiding the trails, and after a year Shungakela found her. Between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s there was the sign of the Sun.”

The Corn Woman stooped and traced in the dust the ancient sign of the intertwined four corners of the Earth with the Sun in the middle.

”Around her neck in a buckskin bag was the charm that is known as the Eye of the Sun. She never showed it to any of us, but when she was in trouble or doubt, she would put her hand over it. It was her Medicine.”

”It was good Medicine, too,” spoke up the oldest of the dancing women.

”We had need of it,” agreed the Corn Woman. ”In those days the Earth was too full of people. The tribes swarmed, new chiefs arose, kin hunted against kin. Many hunters made the game shy, and it removed to new pastures. Strong people drove out weaker and took away their hunting-grounds. We had our share of both fighting and starving, but our tribe fared better than most because of the Medicine of Waits-by-the-Fire, the Medicine of the Sun. She was a wise woman. She was made Shaman. When she spoke, even the chiefs listened. But what could the chiefs do except hunt farther and fight harder? So Waits-by-the-Fire talked to the women. She talked of corn, how it was planted and harvested, with what rites and festivals.

”There was a G.o.d of the Seed, a woman G.o.d who was served by women. When the women of our tribe heard that, they took heart. The men had been afraid that the G.o.d of the Corn would not be friendly to us. I think, too, they did not like the idea of leaving off the long season of hunting and roving, for corn is a town-maker. For the tending and harvesting there must be one place, and for the guarding of the winter stores there must be a safe place. So said Waits-by-the-Fire to the women digging roots or boiling old bones in the long winter. She was a wise woman.

”It was the fight we had with the Tenasas that decided us. That was a year of great scarcity and the Tenasas took to sending their young men, two or three at a time, creeping into our hunting-grounds to start the game, and turn it in the direction of their own country. When our young men were sure of this, they went in force and killed inside the borders of the Tenasas. They had surprised a herd of buffaloes at Two Kettle Licks and were cutting up the meat when the Tenasas fell upon them.

Waits-by-the-Fire lost her last son by that battle. One she had lost in the fight at Red b.u.t.tes and one in a year of Hunger while he was little.

This one was swift of foot and was called Last Arrow, for Shungakela had said, 'Once I had a quiver full.' Waits-by-the-Fire brought him back on her shoulders from the place where the fight was. She walked with him into the Council.

”'The quiver is empty,' she said; 'the food bags, also; will you wait for us to fill one again before you fill the other?'

”Mad Wolf, who was chief at the time, threw up his hand as a man does when he is down and craves a mercy he is too proud to ask for. 'We have fought the Tenasas,' he said; 'shall we fight our women also?'

”Waits-by-the-Fire did not wait after that for long speeches in the Council. She gathered her company quickly, seven women well seasoned and not comely,--'The G.o.d of the Corn is a woman G.o.d,' she said, sharp smiling,--and seven men, keen and hard runners. The rest she appointed to meet her at Painted Rock ten moons from their going.”

”So long as that!” said Dorcas Jane. ”Was it so far from where you lived to Mex--to the Country of Stone Houses?”

”Not so far, but they had to stay from planting to harvest. Of what use was the seed without knowledge. Traveling hard they crossed the River of the White Rocks and reached, by the end of that moon, the mountain overlooking the Country of Stone Houses. Here the men stayed.

Waits-by-the-Fire arranged everything. She thought the people of the towns might hesitate to admit so many men strangers. Also she had the women put on worn moccasins with holes, and old food from the year before in their food bags.”

”I should think,” began Dorcas Jane, ”they would have wanted to put on the best they had to make a good impression.”

”She was a wise woman,” said the Corn Woman; ”she said that if they came from near, the people of the towns might take them for spies, but they would not fear travelers from so far off that their moccasins had holes in them.”

The Corn Woman had forgotten that she was telling a story older than the oaks they sat under. When she came to the exciting parts she said ”we”

and ”us” as though it were something that had happened to them all yesterday.

”It was a high white range that looked on the Country of Stone Houses,”

she said, ”with peaks that glittered, dropping down ridge by ridge to where the trees left off at the edge of a wide, basket-colored valley.

It hollowed like a meal basket and had a green pattern woven through it by a river. Shungakela went with the women to the foot of the mountain, and then, all at once, he would not let them go until Waits-by-the-Fire promised to come back to the foot of the mountain once in every moon to tell him how things went with us. We thought it very childish of him, but afterward we were glad we had not made any objection.

”It was mid-morning when the Seven walked between the fields, with little food in their bags and none whatever in their stomachs, all in rags except Waits-by-the-Fire, who had put on her Shaman's dress, and around her neck, tied in a bag with feathers, the Medicine of the Sun.

People stood up in the fields to stare, and we would have stared back again, but we were afraid. Behind the stone house we saw the Hill of the Sun and the priests moving up and down as Waits-by-the-Fire had described it.

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