Part 14 (2/2)
”Sometimes I met hunting-parties or women gathering berries, and bought corn and beans from them, but for the most part I lived on seeds and roots and wild apples.
”By the time I had been a month or two without killing, the smell of meat left me. Rabbits ran into my hands, and the mink, stealing along the edge of the marsh to look for frogs, did not start from me. Deer came at night to feed on the lily buds on the lake borders. They would come stealing among the alders and swim far out to soak their coats.
When they had made themselves mosquito-proof, they would come back to the lily beds and I would swim among them stilly, steering by the red reflection of my camp-fire in their eyes. When my thought that was not the thought of killing touched them, they would snort a little and return to the munching of lilies, and the trout would rise in bubbly rings under my arms as I floated. But though I was a brother to all the Earth, the Holder of the Heavens would not speak to me.
”Sometimes, when I had floated half the night between the hollow sky of stars and its hollow reflection, the Vision seemed to gather on the surface of the water. It would take shape and turn to the flash of a loon's wet wing in the dawning, Or I would sit still in the woods until my thought was as a tree, and the squirrels would take me for a tree and run over me. Then there would come a strange stir, and the creeping of my flesh along my spine until the Forest seemed about to speak ... and suddenly a twig would snap or a jay squawk, and I would be I again, and the tree a tree....
”It was the first quarter of the Moon of Falling Leaves,” said the Onondaga filling his pipe again and taking a fresh start on his story.
”There was a feel in the air that comes before the snow, but I was very happy in my camp by a singing creek far up on the Adirondacks, and kept putting off moving the camp from day to day. And one evening when I came in from gathering acorns, I discovered that I had had a visitor. Mush of acorn meal which I had left in my pot had been eaten. That is right, of course, if the visitor is hungry; but this one had wiped out his tracks with a leafy bough, which looked like trickery.
”It came into my mind that it might have been one of the Gahonga, the spirits that dwell in rocks and rivers and make the season fruitful.”
”Oh!” cried Dorcas, ”Indian fairies! Did you have those?”
”There are spirits in all things,” said the Onondaga gravely. ”There are Odowas, who live in the underworld and keep back the evil airs that bring sickness. You can see the bare places under the pines where they have their dancing-places. And there are the Gandaiyah who loose wild things from the traps and bring dew on the strawberry blossoms. But all these are friendly to man. So I cooked another pot of food and lay down in my blanket. I sleep as light as a wild thing myself. In the middle of the night I was wakened by the sound of eating. Presently I heard something sc.r.a.pe the bottom of the pot, and though I was afraid, I could not bear to have man or spirit go from my camp hungry. So I spoke to the sound.
”'There is food hanging in the tree,' I said. I had hung it up to keep the ants from it. But as soon as I finished speaking I heard the Thing creeping away. In the morning I found it had left the track of one small torn moccasin and a strange misshapen lump. It came up from and disappeared into the creek, so I was sure it must have been a Gahonga.
But that evening as I sat by my fire I was aware of it behind me. No, I heard nothing; I felt the thought of that creature touching my thought.
Without looking round I said, 'What is mine is yours, brother.' Then I laid dry wood on the fire, and getting up I walked away without looking back. But when I was out of the circle of light I looked and I saw the Thing come out of the brush and warm its hands.
”Then I knew that it was human, so I dropped my blanket over it from behind and it lay without moving. I thought I had killed it, but when I lifted the blanket I saw that it was a girl, and she was all but dead with fright. She lay looking at me like a deer that I had shot, waiting for me to plunge in the knife. It is a shame to any man to have a girl look at him as that one looked at me. I made the sign of friends.h.i.+p and set food before her, and water in a cup of bark. Then I saw what had made the clumsy track; it was her foot which she had cut on the rocks and bound up with strips of bark. Also she was sick with fright and starvation.
”For two days she lay on my bed and ate what I gave her and looked at me as a trapped thing looks at the owner of the trap. I tried her with all the dialects I knew, and even with a few words I had picked up from a summer camp of Wabaniki. I had met them a week or two before at Owenunga, at the foot of the mountains.
”She put her hand over her mouth and looked sideways to find a way out of the trap.
”I was sorry for her, but she was a great nuisance. I was so busy getting food for her that I had no time to listen for the Holder of the Heavens, and besides, there was a thickening of the air, what we call the Breath of the Great Moose, which comes before a storm. If we did not wish to be snowed in, we had to get down out of the mountain, and on account of her injured foot we had to go slowly.
”I had it in mind to take her to the camp of the Wabaniki at Owenunga, but when she found out where we were going she tried to run away. After that I carried her, for the cut in her foot opened and bled.
”She lay in my arms like a hurt fawn, but what could I do? There was a tent of cloud all across the Adirondack, and besides, it is not proper for a young girl to be alone in the woods with a strange man,” said the Onondaga, but he smiled to himself as he said it.
”It was supper-time when we came to Crooked Water. There was a smell of cooking, and the people gathering between the huts.
”There was peace between the Five Nations and the Wabaniki, so I walked boldly into the circle of summer huts and put the girl down, while I made the stranger's sign for food and lodging. But while my hand was still in the air, there was a shout and a murmur and the women began s.n.a.t.c.hing their children back. I could see them huddling together like buffalo cows when their calves are tender, and the men pus.h.i.+ng to the front with caught-up weapons in their hands.
”I held up my own to show that they were weaponless.
”'I want nothing but food and shelter for this poor girl,' I said. I had let her go in order to make the sign language, for I had but a few words of their tongue. She crouched at my feet covering her face with her long hair. The people stood off without answering, and somebody raised a cry for Waba-mooin. It was tossed about from mouth to mouth until it reached the princ.i.p.al hut, and presently a man came swaggering out in the dress of a Medicine Man. He was older than I, but he was also fat, and for all his Shaman's dress I was not frightened. I knew by the way the girl stopped crying that she both knew and feared him.
”The moment Waba-mooin saw her he turned black as a thunderhead. He scattered words as a man scatters seeds with his hand. I was too far to hear him, but the people broke out with a shower of sticks and stones.
At that the girl sprang up and spread her arms between me and the people, crying something in her own tongue, but a stone struck her on the point of the shoulder. She would have dropped, but I caught her, I held her in my arms and looked across at the angry villagers and Waba-mooin. Suddenly power came upon me....
”It is something all Indian,” said the Onon-daga,--”something White Men do not understand. It is Magic Medicine, the power of the Shaman, the power of my thought meeting the evil thought of the Wabaniki and turning it back as a buffalo s.h.i.+eld turns arrows. I gathered up the girl and walked away from that place slowly as becomes a Shaman. No more stones struck me; the arrow of Waba-mooin went past me and stuck in an oak. My power was upon me.
”I must have walked half the night, hearing the drums at Crooked Water scaring away evil influences. I would feel the girl warm and soft in my arms as a fawn, and then after a time she would seem to be a part of me.
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