THE BASKET WOMAN

From photograph by A. A. Forbes

THE BASKET WOMAN

A BOOK OF INDIAN TALES FOR CHILDREN

BY

MARY AUSTIN

SCHOOL EDITION

BOSTON, NEW YORK, AND CHICAGO
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY MARY AUSTIN
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PREFACE

In preparing this volume of western myths for school use the object has been not so much to provide authentic Indian Folk-tales, as to present certain aspects of nature as they appear in the myth-making mood, that is to say, in the form of strongest appeal to the child mind. Indian myths as they exist among Indians are too frequently sustained by coarse and cruel incidents comparable to the belly-ripping joke in Jack the Giant Killer, or the blinding of Gloucester in King Lear, and when presented in story form, too often fall under the misapprehension of the myth as something invented and added to the imaginative life. It is, in fact, the root and branch of man's normal intimacy with nature.

So slowly does the mind awaken to the realization of consciousness and personality as by-products of animal life only, that few escape carrying over into adult life some obsession of its persistence in inanimate things, say of malevolence in opals or luckiness in a rabbit's foot, or the capacity of moral discrimination against their victims residing in hurricanes and earthquakes. The chief preoccupation of the child in his earlier years is the business of abstracting the items of his environment from this pervading sense, and ascribing to them their proper degrees of awareness. He arrives in a general way at knowing that it hurts the cat's tail to be stepped on because the cat cries, and that it does not hurt the stick. But if the stick were provided with a squeaking apparatus he would be much longer in the process, and if the stick becomes a steed or a doll it is quite possible for him to weep with sympathetic pain at the abuse of it.

He sees the tree and it is alive and sentient to him; you cut a stick horse from its boughs, and that is separately alive; cut the stick again into two horses, and they will prance whole and satisfying. Later when the game is played out, the stick may burn and furnish live flame to dance, live smoke to ascend, live ash to be treated with contumely; all of which arises not so much in the mere trick of invention as in the natural difficulty in thinking of objects freed from consciousness, almost as great as the philosopher's in conceiving empty space. There is a period in the life of every child when almost the only road to the understanding is the one blazed out by the myth-making spirit, kept open to the larger significance of things long after he is apprised that the thunder did not originate in the smithy of the gods nor the Walrus talk to the Carpenter. Any attempt, however, to hasten the proper distinctions of causes and powers by the suppression of myth making is likely to prove as disastrous as helping young puppies through their nine days' blindness by forcibly opening their eyes. You might get a few days' purchase of vision for some of them, but you would also have a good many cases of total blindness. What can be done by way of turning the myth-making period to advantage, this little book is partly to show.

Of the three sorts of myths included, about a third are direct transcriptions from Indian myths current in the campodies of the West, but it must not be assumed that myths like The Crooked Fir and The White Barked Pine are in any sense "made up," or to be laid to the author's credit. Since the myth originates in an attitude of mind, it must be understood that, to the primitive mind, nearly the whole process of nature presents itself in mythical terms. It is not that the Indian imagines the tree having sentience—he simply isn't able to imagine its not having it. All his songs, his ceremonies, his daily speech, are full of the aspect of nature in terms of human endeavor. The story of The Crooked Fir was suggested to me in the humorous comment of my Indian guide on one of the forks of Kings River, the first time my attention was caught by the uniform curve of the trunks, and he explained it to me. The myth of The Stream That Ran Away might arise as simply as in the question of a child who has not lived long enough to understand the seasonal recession of waters, wishing to know why a stream that ran full some weeks ago is now dry. And if his mother has had trouble with his straying too far from the camp she might say to him that it had run away and the White people had caught it and set it to work in an irrigating ditch, "and that is what will happen to you if you don't watch out" ... or she might draw a moral on the neglect of duty if the occasion demanded it ... or if she were gifted with fancy, tell him that that was it which fell on us as rain in Big Meadow, and it would return to its banks when it had watered the high places. But whatever she would tell him would have an acute observation of nature behind it and would be stated in personal terms. It is so that the child begins to understand the continuity of natural forces and their relativity to the life of man.

There is a third sort of story included with these, which aside from being of the stuff from which hero myths are made,—Mahala Joe is in point,—has a value which must be gone into more particularly.

What is important for the teacher to understand is that the myth, itself a living issue, will not bear too much handling; in the process of making it a part of the child's experience, the meaning of it must not be pulled up too often to learn if it has taken root. Unless it elucidates itself in the course of time,—and one must recall how long a period elapsed between the first reading of the Ugly Duckling, say, and its final revelation of itself,—unless its content is broadly human and personal, it has practically no educative value. It is not absolutely indispensable that the whole unfolding of it should be within the limited period of school life that affords it; some of the noblest human myths reveal as it were successive layers of insight and purport, taking change and color from the passing experience; but it remains true that the best time to insinuate the myth in the child's mind is when he is normally at the myth-making period.

To make it, then, part of the child's possession it should be read to or by him at convenient intervals, until he can give back a fairly succinct version of it. Along with this must go the business of deepening and extending the background; and whether this is to be done at the time of the reading or intermediately, must depend largely on the local background. Children in schools on the Pacific slope should find themselves already tolerably furnished; any hill region in fact should yield suggestive material, without overlaying the content of the myth with trifling exactitudes of natural history.

It is very difficult to say in a word all that is implied in the extension of the background. One has only to consider the amount of time spent in teaching the so-called Classic Myths, tremendous in their power of vitalizing and coloring their own and related times, and reflect on their failure to effect anything beyond their mere story interest in modern life, to realize that the value of a myth is directly in proportion as its background is common and accessible. What would happen in a locality calculated to suggest and with a teacher properly equipped to interpret the background of Greek and Roman mythology, is not proven, but in practical school work the author has found it best to defer the teaching of it until by general reading a point of contact is established, which enables the child to read backward into its meaning, and for the actively myth-making period to use forms sprung naturally from the child's own environment. The better he can visualize and locate the objects mythically treated, the better they serve their purpose of rendering personal the influences of nature and sustaining him in that happy sense of the community of life and interest in the Wild.

It is for this purpose of extending the background that the introductory sketches and some others are included in this collection. The Golden Fortune could be read with The White Barked Pine, and The Christmas Tree with The Crooked Fir. Any hill country or wooded district should furnish additional color, but let it be cautioned here, that though all the nature references in these tales are entirely dependable, the child is not to be made unhappy thereby. Whatever branch of school work it is found necessary to correlate with the myths, it should be in general recreative rather than instructive; for what is comprehended in the term Nature is after all not a miscellany of objects, but a state of mind set up by their happiest coincidences. The least that can be said to achieve a proper notion of a tree or a glacier is so much better than the most; a casual application to a known and neighboring circumstance goes further than any amount of explanation.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE BASKET WOMAN

FIRST STORY

THE BASKET WOMAN

The homesteader's cabin stood in a moon-shaped hollow between the hills and the high mesa; and the land before it stretched away golden and dusky green, and was lost in a blue haze about where the river settlements began. The hills had a flowing outline and melted softly into each other and higher hills behind, until the range broke in a ragged crest of thin peaks white with snow. A clean, wide sky bent over that country, and the air that moved in it was warm and sweet.

The homesteader's son had run out on the trail that led toward the spring, with half a mind to go to it, but ran back again when he saw the Basket Woman coming. He was afraid of her, and ashamed because he was afraid, so he did not tell his mother that he had changed his mind.

"There is the mahala coming for the wash," said his mother; "now you will have company at the spring." But Alan only held tighter to a fold of her dress. This was the third time the Indian woman had come to wash for the homesteader's wife; and, though she was slow and quiet and had a pleasant smile, Alan was still afraid of her. All that he had heard of Indians before coming to this country was very frightful, and he did not understand yet that it was not so. Beyond a certain point of hills on clear days he could see smoke rising from the campoodie, and though he knew nothing but his dreams of what went on there, he would not so much as play in that direction.

The Basket Woman was the only Indian that he had seen. She would come walking across the mesa with a great cone-shaped carrier basket heaped with brushwood on her shoulders, stooping under it and easing the weight by a buckskin band about her forehead. Sometimes it would be a smaller basket carried in the same fashion, and she would be filling it with bulbs of wild hyacinth or taboose; often she carried a bottle-necked water basket to and from the spring, and always wore a bowl-shaped basket on her head for a hat. Her long hair hung down from under it, and her black eyes glittered beadily below the rim. Alan had a fancy that any moment she might pick him up with a quick toss as if he had been a bit of brushwood, and drop him over her shoulder into the great carrier, and walk away across the mesa with him. So when he saw her that morning coming down the trail from the spring, he hung close by his mother's skirts.

"You must not be afraid of her, Alan," said his mother; "she is very kind, and no doubt has had a boy of her own."

The Basket Woman showed them her white, even teeth in a smile. "This one very pretty boy," she said; but Alan had made up his mind not to trust her. He was thinking of what the teamster had said when he had driven them up from the railroad station with their belongings the day they came to their new home and found the Basket Woman spying curiously in at the cabin windows.

"You wanter watch out how you behaves yourself, sonny," said the teamster, wagging a solemn jaw, "she's likely to pack you away in that basket o' her'n one of these days." And Alan had watched out very carefully indeed.

It was not a great while after they came to the foothill claim that the homesteader went over to the campoodie to get an Indian to help at fence building, and Alan went with him, holding fast by his father's hand. They found the Indians living in low, foul huts; their clothes were also dirty, and they sat about on the ground, fat and good-natured. The dogs and children lay sleeping in the sun. It was all very disappointing.

"Will they not hurt us, father?" Alan had said at starting.

"Oh, no, my boy; you must not get any such notion as that," said the homesteader; "Indians are not at all now what they were once."

Alan thought of this as he looked at the campoodie, and pulled at his father's hand.

"I do not like Indians the way they are now," he said; and immediately saw that he had made a mistake, for he was standing directly in front of the Basket Woman's hut, and as she suddenly put her head out of the door he thought by the look of her mysterious, bright eyes that she had understood. He did not venture to say anything more, and all the way home kept looking back toward the campoodie to see if anything came of it.

"Why do you not eat your supper?" said his mother. "I am afraid the long walk in the hot sun was too much for you." Alan dared not say anything to her of what troubled him, though perhaps it would have been better if he had, for that night the Basket Woman came for him.

She did not pick him up and toss him over her shoulder as he expected; but let down the basket, and he stepped into it of his own accord. Alan was surprised to find that he was not so much afraid of her after all.

"What will you do with me?" he said.

"I will show you Indians as they used to be," said she.

Alan could feel the play of her strong shoulders as they went out across the lower mesa and began to climb the hills.

"Where do you go?" said the boy.

"To Pahrump, the valley of Corn Water. It was there my people were happiest in old days."

They went on between the oaks, and smelled the musky sweet smell of the wild grapevines along the water borders. The sagebrush began to fail from the slopes, and buckthorn to grow up tall and thicker; the wind brought them a long sigh from the lowest pines. They came up with the silver firs and passed them, passed the drooping spruces, the wet meadows, and the wood of thimble-cone pines. The air under them had an earthy smell. Presently they came out upon a cleared space very high up where the rocks were sharp and steep.

"Why are there no trees here?" asked Alan.

"I will tell you about that," said the Basket Woman. "In the old flood time, and that is longer ago than is worth counting, the water came up and covered the land, all but the high tops of mountains. Here then the Indians fled and lived, and with them the animals that escaped from the flood. There were trees growing then over all the high places, but because the waters were long on the earth the Indians were obliged to cut them down for firewood. Also they killed all the large animals for food, but the small ones hid in the rocks. After that the waters went down; trees and grass began to grow over all the earth, but never any more on the tops of high mountains. They had all been burned off. You can see that it is so."

From the top of the mountain Alan could see all the hills on the other side shouldering and peering down toward the happy valley of Corn Water.

"Here," said the Basket Woman, "my people came of old time in the growing season of the year; they planted corn, and the streams came down from the hills and watered it. Now we, too, will go down."

They went by a winding trail, steep and stony. The pines stood up around and locked them closely in.

"I see smoke arising," said Alan, "blue smoke above the pines."

"It is the smoke of their hearth fires," said the Basket Woman, and they went down and down.

"I hear a sound of singing," said the boy.

"It is the women singing and grinding at the quern," she said, and her feet went faster.

"I hear laughter," he said again, "it mixes with the running of the water."

"It is the maidens washing their knee-long hair. They kneel by the water and stoop down, they dip in the running water and shake out bright drops in the sun."

"There is a pleasant smell," said Alan.

"It is pine nuts roasting in the cones," said the Basket Woman; "so it was of old time."

They came out of the cleft of the hills in a pleasant place by singing water. "There you will see the rows of wickiups," said the Basket Woman, "with the doors all opening eastward to the sun. Let us sit here and see what we shall see."

The women sat by the wickiups weaving baskets of willow and stems of fern. They made patterns of bright feathers and strung wampum about the rims. Some sewed with sinew and needles of cactus thorn on deerskin white and fine; others winnowed the corn. They stood up tossing it in baskets like grains of gold, and the wind carried away the chaff. All this time the young girls were laughing as they dried their hair in the sun. They bound it with flowers and gay strings of beads, and made their cheeks bright with red earth. The children romped and shouted about the camp, and ran bare-legged in the stream.

"Do they do nothing but play?" said Alan.

"You shall see," said the Basket Woman.

Away up the mountain sounded a faint halloo. In a moment all the camp was bustle and delight. The children clapped their hands; they left off playing and began to drag up brushwood for the fires. The women put away their weaving and brought out the cooking pots; they heard the men returning from the hunt. The young men brought deer upon their shoulders; one had grouse and one held up a great basket of trout. The women made the meat ready for cooking. Some of them took meal and made cakes for baking in the ashes. The men rested in the glow of the fires, feathering arrows and restringing their bows.

"That is well," said the Basket Woman, "to make ready for to-morrow's meat before to-day's is eaten."

"How happy they are!" said the boy.

"They will be happier when they have eaten," said she.

After supper the Indians gathered together for singing and dancing. The old men told tales one after the other, and the children thought each one was the best. Between the tales the Indians all sang together, or one sang a new song that he had made. There was one of them who did better than all. He had streaked his body with colored earth and had a band of eagle feathers in his hair. In his hand was a rattle of wild sheep's horn and small stones; he kept time with it as he leapt and sang in the light of the fire. He sang of old wars, sang of the deer that was killed, sang of the dove and the young grass that grew on the mountain; and the people were well pleased, for when the heart is in the singing it does not matter much what the song is about. The men beat their hands together to keep time to his dancing, and the earth under his feet was stamped to a fine dust.

"He is one that has found the wolf's song," said the Basket Woman.

"What is that?" asked Alan.

"It is an old tale of my people," said she. "Once there was a man who could not make any songs, so he got no praise from the tribe, and it troubled him much. Then, as he was gathering taboose by the river, a wolf went by, and the wolf said to him, 'What will you have me to give you for your taboose?' Then said the man, 'I will have you to give me a song.'

"'That will I gladly,' said the wolf. So the wolf taught him, and that night he sang the wolf's song in the presence of all the people, and it made their hearts to burn within them. Then the man fell down as if he were dead, for the pure joy of singing, and when deep sleep was upon him the wolf came in the night and stole his song away. Neither the man nor any one who had heard it remembered it any more. So we say when a man sings as no other sang before him, 'He has the wolf's song.' It is a good saying. Now we must go, for the children are all asleep by their mothers, and the day comes soon," said the Basket Woman.

"Shall we come again?" said Alan. "And will it all be as it is now?"

"My people come often to the valley of Corn Water," said she, "but it is never as it is now except in dreams. Now we must go quickly." Far up the trail they saw a grayness in the eastern sky where the day was about to come in.

"Hark," said the Basket Woman, "they will sing together the coyote song. It is so that they sing it when the coyote goes home from his hunting, and the morning is near.

"The coyote cries ...
He cries at daybreak ...
He cries ...
The coyote cries" ...

sang the Basket Woman, but all the spaces in between the words were filled with long howls,—weird, wicked noises that seemed to hunt and double in a half-human throat. It made the hair on Alan's neck stand up, and cold shivers creep along his back. He began to shake, for the wild howls drew near and louder, and he felt the bed under him tremble with his trembling.

"Mother, mother," he cried, "what is that?"

"It is only the coyotes," said she; "they always howl about this time of night. It is nothing; go to sleep again."

"But I am afraid."

"They cannot hurt you," said his mother; "it is only the little gray beasts that you see trotting about the mesa of afternoons; hear them now."

"I am afraid," said Alan.

"Then you must come in my bed," said she; and in a few minutes he was fast asleep again.

THE BASKET WOMAN

SECOND STORY

THE BASKET WOMAN

The next time Alan saw the Basket Woman he was not nearly so much afraid of her, though he did not venture to speak of their journey to Pahrump. He said to his mother, "Do you not wish the Indians could have stayed the way they were?" and his mother laughed.

"Why, no, child," she said, "I do not think that I do. I think they are much better off as they are now." Alan, however, was not to be convinced. The next time he saw the Basket Woman he was even troubled about it.

The homesteader had taken his family to the town for a day, and the first thing Alan saw when he got down from the wagon was the Basket Woman. She was sitting in a corner of the sidewalk with a group of other mahalas, with her blanket drawn over her shoulders, looking out upon the town, and her eyes were dull and strange.

A stream of people went by them in the street, and minded them no more than the dogs they stepped over, sprawling at the doors of the stores. Some of the Indian women had children with them, but they neither shouted nor ran as they had done in the camp of Corn Water; they sat quietly by their mothers, and Alan noticed how worn and poor were the clothes of all of them, and how wishful all the eyes. He could not get his mind off them because he could not get them out of his sight for very long at a time. It was a very small town, and as he went with his mother in and about the stores he would be coming face to face with the mahalas every little while, and the Basket Woman's eyes were always sad.

His mother, when she had finished her shopping, gave him a silver dime and told him that he might spend it as he wished. As soon as Alan had turned the corner on that errand there was the Basket Woman with her chin upon her knees and her blanket drawn over her shoulders. Alan stopped a moment in front of her; he would have liked to say something comforting, but found himself still afraid.

Her eyes looked on beyond him, blurred and dim; he supposed she must be thinking of the happy valley, and grew so very sorry for her that, as he could not get the courage to speak, he threw his dime into her lap and ran as fast as he could away. It seemed to him as he ran that she called to him, but he could not be sure.

That night, almost as soon as he had touched the pillow, she came and stood beside him without motion or sound, and let down the basket from her back.

"Do we go to Corn Water?" asked Alan as he stepped into it.

"To my people of old time," said the Basket Woman, "so that you need not be so much sorry."

Then they went out by the mesa trail, where the sage showed duskily under a thin rim of moon. It seemed to Alan that they went slowly, almost heavily. When they came to the parting of the ways, she let down the basket to rest. A rabbit popped, startled, out of the brush, and scurried into the dark; its white tail, like a signal, showed the way it went.

"What was that?" asked Alan.

"Only little Tavwots, whom we scared out of his nest. Lean forward," she said, "and I will tell you a tale about him." So the boy leaned his head against the Basket Woman's long black hair, and heard the story of Little Tavwots and How He Caught the Sun in a Snare.

"It was long ago," said the Basket Woman. "Tavwots was the largest of all four-footed things, and a mighty hunter. He would get up as soon as it was day and go to his hunting, but always before him was the track of a great foot on the trail; and this troubled him, for his pride was as big as his body and greater than his fame.

"'Who is this?' cried Tavwots, 'that goes with so great a stride before me to the hunting? Does he think to put me to shame?'

"'T'-sst!' said his mother, 'there is none greater than thee.'

"'Nevertheless,' said Tavwots, 'there are the footprints in the trail.' The next morning he got up earlier, but there were always the great footprints and the long stride before him.

"'Now I will set me a trap for this impudent fellow,' said Tavwots, for he was very cunning. So he made a snare of his bowstring and set it in the trail overnight, and in the morning when he went to look, behold, he had caught the sun in his snare. All that quarter of the earth was beginning to smoke with the heat of it.

"'Is it you?' cried Tavwots, 'who made the tracks in my trail?'

"'It is I,' said the sun. 'Come now and set me free before the whole earth is afire.' Then Tavwots saw what he had to do, so he drew his knife and ran to cut the bowstring. But the heat was so great that he ran back before he had done it, and was melted down to one half his size. Then the smoke of the burning earth began to curl up against the sky.

"'Come again, Tavwots,' cried the sun. So he ran again and ran back, and the third time he ran he cut the bowstring, and the sun was set free from the snare. But by that time Tavwots was melted down to as small as he is now, and so he remains. Still you may see by the print of his feet as he leaps in the trail how great his stride was when he caught the sun in his snare.

"So it is always," said the Basket Woman, "that which is large grows less, and my people, which were great, have dwindled away."

After that she became quiet, and they went on over the mountain. Because he was beginning to be acquainted with it, the way seemed shorter to Alan than before. They passed over the high barren ridges, and he began to look for the camp at Corn Water.

"I see no smoke," said Alan.

"It would bring down their enemies like buzzards on carrion," said the Basket Woman.

"There is no sound of singing nor of laughter," said the boy.

"Who laughs in the time of war?" said she.

"Is there war?" asked Alan.

"Long and bitter," said the Basket Woman. "Let us go softly and come upon them unawares."

So they went, light of foot, among the pines until they saw the wickiups opening eastward to the sun, but many of them stood ruined and awry. There were only the very old and the children in the camp, and these did not run and play. They stole about like mice in the meadow sod, and if so much as a twig snapped in the forest, they huddled motionless as young quail. The women worked in the growing corn; they dug roots on the hill slope and caught grasshoppers for food. One made a noose of her long black hair plucked out, and snared the bright lizards that ran among the rocks. It seemed to Alan that the Indians looked wishful and thinner than they should; but such food as they found was all put by.

"Why do they do this?" asked the boy.

"That the men who go to war may not go fasting," said the Basket Woman. "Look, now we shall have news of them."

A young man came noiselessly out of the wood, and it was he who had sung the new song on the night of feasting and dancing. He had eagle feathers in his hair, but they were draggled; there was beadwork on his leggings, but it was torn with thorns; there was paint on his face and his body, but it was smeared over red, and as he came into the camp he broke his bow across his knee.

"It is a token of defeat," said the Basket Woman; "the others will come soon." But some came feebly because of wounds, and it seemed the women looked for some who might never come. They cast up their arms and cried with a terrible wailing sound that rose and shuddered among the pines.

"Be still," said the young man; "would you bring our enemies down upon us with your screeching?" Then the women threw themselves quietly in the dust, and rocked to and fro with sobbing; their stillness was more bitter than their crying.

Suddenly out of the wood came a storm of arrows, a rush of strange, painted braves, and the din of fighting.

"Shut your eyes," said the Basket Woman, "it is not good for you to see." Alan hid his face in the Basket Woman's dress, and heard the noise of fighting rage and die away. When he ventured to look again on the ruined huts and the trampled harvest, there were few left in the camp of Corn Water, and they had enough to do to find food for their poor bodies. They winnowed the creek with basket-work weirs for every finger-long troutling that came down in it, and tore the bark off the pine trees to get at the grubs underneath.

"Why do they not go out and kill deer as before?" asked Alan.

"Their enemies lurk in the wood and drive away the game," said the Basket Woman.

"Why do they not go to another place?"

"Where shall they go, when their foes watch every pass?" said she.

It seemed to Alan that many days and nights passed while they watched by the camp; and the days were all sorrowful, and always, as before, the best meat was set aside for the strongest.

"Why is this so?" asked the boy.

"Because," said the Basket Woman, "those who are strong must stay so to care for the rest. It is the way of my people. You see that the others do not complain." And it was so that the feeble ones tottered silently about the camp or sat still a long time in one place with their heads upon their knees.

"How will it end?" asked Alan.

"They must go away at last," said she, "though the cords of their hearts are fastened here. But there is no seed corn, and the winter is close at hand."

Then there began to be a tang of frost in the air, and the people gathered up their household goods, and, though there was not much of them, they staggered and bent under the burden as they went up out of the once happy valley to another home. The women let down their long hair and smeared ashes upon it; they threw up their lean arms and wailed long and mournfully as they passed among the pines. Alan began to tremble with crying, and felt the Basket Woman patting him on the shoulder. Her voice sounded to him like the voice of his mother telling him to go to sleep again, for there was nothing for him to be troubled about. After he grew quieter, the Indian woman lifted him up. "We must be going," she said, "it is not good for us to be here."

Alan wished as they went up over the mountain that she would help him with talk toward forgetting what he had seen, but the long hair fell over her face and she would not talk. He shivered in the basket, and the night felt colder and full of fearsome noises.

"What is that?" he whispered, as a falling star trailed all across the dark.

"It is the coyote people that brought the fire to my people," said the Basket Woman. Alan hoped she would tell him a tale about it, but she would not. They went on down the mountain until they came to the borders of the long-leaved pines. Alan heard the sough of the wind in the needles, and it seemed as if it called.

"What is that?" he whispered.

"It is Hí-no-no, the wind, mourning for his brother, the pine tree," but she would not tell him that tale, either. She went faster and faster, and Alan felt the stir of her shoulders under him. He listened to the wind, and it grew fierce and louder until he heard the house beams creak, for he was awake in his own bed. A strong wind drove gustily across the mesa and laid hold of the corners of the roof.

The next morning the homesteader said that he must go to the campoodie and Alan might go with him. Alan was quite pleased, and said to his mother while she was getting him ready, "Do you know, I think Indians are a great deal better off as they are now."

"Why, yes," said his mother, smiling, "I think so, too."

A “CAMPOODIE,” OR INDIAN VILLAGE

From photograph by A. A. Forbes

THE STREAM THAT RAN AWAY

THE STREAM THAT RAN AWAY

In a short and shallow cañon on the front of Oppapago running eastward toward the sun, one may find a clear brown stream called the creek of Piñon Pines. That is not because it is unusual to find piñon trees on Oppapago, but because there are so few of them in the cañon of the stream. There are all sorts higher up on the slopes,—long-leaved yellow pines, thimble cones, tamarack, silver fir and Douglas spruce; but here there is only a group of the low-heading, gray nut pines which the earliest inhabitants of that country called piñons.

The cañon of Piñon Pines has a pleasant outlook and lies open to the sun, but there is not much other cause for the forest rangers to remember it. At the upper end there is no more room by the stream border than will serve for a cattle trail; willows grow in it, choking the path of the water; there are brown birches here and ropes of white clematis tangled over thickets of brier rose. Low down the ravine broadens out to inclose a meadow the width of a lark's flight, blossomy and wet and good. Here the stream ran once in a maze of soddy banks and watered all the ground, and afterward ran out at the cañon's mouth across the mesa in a wash of bone-white boulders as far as it could. That was not very far, for it was a slender stream. It had its source really on the high crests and hollows of Oppapago, in the snow banks that melted and seeped downward through the rocks; but the stream did not know any more of that than you know of what happened to you before you were born, and could give no account of itself except that it crept out from under a great heap of rubble far up in the cañon of the Piñon Pines. And because it had no pools in it deep enough for trout, and no trees on its borders but gray nut pines; because, try as it might, it could never get across the mesa to the town, the stream had fully made up its mind to run away.

"Pray what good will that do you?" said the pines. "If you get to the town, they will turn you into an irrigating ditch and set you to watering crops."

"As to that," said the stream, "if I once get started I will not stop at the town." Then it would fret between its banks until the spangled frills of the mimulus were all tattered with its spray. Often at the end of the summer it was worn quite thin and small with running, and not able to do more than reach the meadow.

"But some day," it whispered to the stones, "I shall run quite away."

If the stream had been inclined for it, there was no lack of good company on its own borders. Birds nested in the willows, rabbits came to drink; one summer a bobcat made its lair up the bank opposite the brown birches, and often deer fed in the meadow. Then there was a promise of better things. In the spring of one year two old men came up into the canon of Piñon Pines. They had been miners and partners together for many years, they had grown rich and grown poor, and had seen many hard places and strange times. It was a day when the creek ran clear and the south wind smelled of the earth. Wild bees began to whine among the willows, and the meadow bloomed over with poppy-breasted larks. Then said one of the old men, "Here is good meadow and water enough; let us build a house and grow trees. We are too old to dig in the mines."

"Let us set about it," said the other; for that is the way with two who have been a long time together: what one thinks of, the other is for doing. So they brought their possessions and made a beginning that day, for they felt the spring come on warmly in their blood; they wished to dig in the earth and handle it.

These two men who, in the mining camps where they were known, were called "Shorty" and "Long Tom," and had almost forgotten that they had other names, built a house by the water border and planted trees. Shorty was all for an orchard, but Long Tom preferred vegetables. So they did each what he liked, and were never so happy as when walking in the garden in the cool of the day, touching the growing things as they walked and praising each other's work.

"This will make a good home for our old age," said Long Tom, "and when we die we can be buried here."

"Under the piñon pines," said Shorty. "I have marked out a place."

So they were very happy for three years. By this time the stream had become so interested it had almost forgotten about running away. But every year it noted that a larger bit of the meadow was turned under and planted, and more and more the men made dams and ditches to govern its running.

"In fact," said the stream, "I am being made into an irrigating ditch before I have had my fling in the world. I really must make a start."

That very winter by the help of a great storm it went roaring down the meadow over the mesa, and so clean away, with only a track of muddy sand to show the way it had gone. All the winter, however, Shorty and Long Tom brought water for drinking from a spring, and looked for the stream to come back. In the spring they hoped still, for that was the season they looked for the orchard to bear. But no fruit set on the trees, and the seeds Long Tom planted shriveled in the earth. So by the end of summer, when they understood that the water would not come back at all, they went sadly away.

Now what happened to the creek of Piñon Pines is not very well known to any one, for the stream is not very clear on that point, except that it did not have a happy time. It went out in the world on the wings of the storm and was very much tossed about and mixed up with other waters, lost and bewildered. Everywhere it saw water at work, turning mills, watering fields, carrying trade, falling as hail, rain, and snow, and at the last, after many journeys, found itself creeping out from under the rocks of Oppapago in the canon of Piñon Pines. Immediately the little stream knew itself and recalled clearly all that had happened to it before.

"After all, home is best," said the stream, and ran about in its choked channels looking for old friends. The willows were there, but grown shabby and dying at the top; the birches were quite dead, but stood still in their places; and there was only rubbish where the white clematis had been. Even the rabbits had gone away. The little stream ran whimpering in the meadow, fumbling at the ruined ditches to comfort the fruit-trees which were not quite dead. It was very dull in those days living in the canon of Piñon Pines.

"But it is really my own fault," said the stream. So it went on repairing the borders with the best heart it could contrive.

About the time the white clematis had come back to hide the ruin of the brown birches, a young man came and camped with his wife and child in the meadow. They were looking for a place to make a home. They looked long at the meadow, for Shorty and Long Tom had taken away their house and it did not appear to belong to any one.

"What a charming place!" said the young wife, "just the right distance from town, and a stream all to ourselves. And look, there are fruit-trees already planted. Do let us decide to stay."

Then she took off the child's shoes and stockings to let it play in the stream. The water curled all about the bare feet and gurgled delightedly.

"Ah, do stay," begged the happy water, "I can be such a help to you, for I know how a garden should be irrigated in the best manner."

The child laughed and stamped the water up to his bare knees. The young wife watched anxiously while her husband walked up and down the stream border and examined the fruit-trees.

"It is a delightful place," he said, "and the soil is rich, but I am afraid the water cannot be depended upon. There are signs of a great drought within the last two or three years. Look, there is a clump of birches in the very path of the stream, but all dead; and the largest limbs of the fruit-trees have died. In this country one must be able to make sure of the water supply. I suppose the people who planted them must have abandoned the place when the stream went dry. We must go on farther." So they took their goods and the child and went on farther.

"Ah, well," said the stream, "that is what is to be expected when one has a reputation for neglecting one's duty. But I wish they had stayed. That baby and I understood each other."

He had quite made up his mind not to run away again, though he could not be expected to be quite cheerful after all that had happened; in fact, if you go yourself to the cañon of the Piñon Pines you will notice that the stream, where it goes brokenly about the meadow, has quite a mournful sound.

THE COYOTE-SPIRIT AND THE
WEAVING WOMAN

THE COYOTE-SPIRIT AND THE WEAVING WOMAN

The Weaving Woman lived under the bank of the stony wash that cut through the country of the mesquite dunes. The Coyote-Spirit, which, you understand, is an Indian whose form has been changed to fit with his evil behavior, ranged from the Black Rock where the wash began to the white sands beyond Pahranagat; and the Goat-Girl kept her flock among the mesquites, or along the windy stretch of sage below the campoodie; but as the Coyote-Spirit never came near the wickiups by day, and the Goat-Girl went home the moment the sun dropped behind Pahranagat, they never met. These three are all that have to do with the story.

The Weaving Woman, whose work was the making of fine baskets of split willow and roots of yucca and brown grass, lived alone, because there was nobody found who wished to live with her, and because it was whispered among the wickiups that she was different from other people. It was reported that she had an infirmity of the eyes which caused her to see everything with rainbow fringes, bigger and brighter and better than it was. All her days were fruitful, a handful of pine nuts as much to make merry over as a feast; every lad who went by a-hunting with his bow at his back looked to be a painted brave, and every old woman digging roots as fine as a medicine man in all his feathers. All the faces at the campoodie, dark as the mingled sand and lava of the Black Rock country, deep lined with work and weather, shone for this singular old woman with the glory of the late evening light on Pahranagat. The door of her wickiup opened toward the campoodie with the smoke going up from cheerful hearths, and from the shadow of the bank where she sat to make baskets she looked down the stony wash where all the trails converged that led every way among the dunes, and saw an enchanted mesa covered with misty bloom and gentle creatures moving on trails that seemed to lead to the places where one had always wished to be.

Since all this was so, it was not surprising that her baskets turned out to be such wonderful affairs, and the tribesmen, though they winked and wagged their heads, were very glad to buy them for a haunch of venison or a bagful of mesquite meal. Sometimes, as they stroked the perfect curves of the bowls or traced out the patterns, they were heard to sigh, thinking how fine life would be if it were so rich and bright as she made it seem, instead of the dull occasion they had found it. There were some who even said it was a pity, since she was so clever at the craft, that the weaver was not more like other people, and no one thought to suggest that in that case her weaving would be no better than theirs. For all this the basket-maker did not care, sitting always happily at her weaving or wandering far into the desert in search of withes and barks and dyes, where the wild things showed her many a wonder hid from those who have not rainbow fringes to their eyes; and because she was not afraid of anything, she went farther and farther into the silent places until in the course of time she met the Coyote-Spirit.

Now a Coyote-Spirit, from having been a man, is continually thinking about men and wishing to be with them, and, being a coyote and of the wolf's breed, no sooner does he have his wish than he thinks of devouring. So as soon as this one had met the Weaving Woman he desired to eat her up, or to work her some evil according to the evil of his nature. He did not see any opportunity to begin at the first meeting, for on account of the infirmity of her eyes the woman did not see him as a coyote, but as a man, and let down her wicker water bottle for him to drink, so kindly that he was quite abashed. She did not seem in the least afraid of him, which is disconcerting even to a real coyote; though if he had been, she need not have been afraid of him in any case. Whatever pestiferous beast the Indian may think the dog of the wilderness, he has no reason to fear him except when by certain signs, as having a larger and leaner body, a sharper muzzle, and more evilly pointed ears, he knows him the soul of a bad-hearted man going about in that guise. There are enough of these coyote-spirits ranging in Mesquite Valley and over towards Funeral Mountains and about Pahranagat to give certain learned folk surmise as to whether there may not be a strange breed of wolves in that region; but the Indians know better.

When the coyote-spirit who had met the basket woman thought about it afterward, he said to himself that she deserved all the mischance that might come upon her for that meeting. "She knows," he said, "that this is my range, and whoever walks in a coyote-spirit's range must expect to take the consequences. She is not at all like the Goat-Girl."

The Coyote-Spirit had often watched the Goat-Girl from the top of Pahranagat, but because she was always in the open where no lurking-places were, and never far from the corn lands where the old men might be working, he had made himself believe he would not like that kind of a girl. Every morning he saw her come out of her leafy hut, loose the goats from the corral, which was all of cactus stems and broad leaves of prickly-pear, and lead them out among the wind-blown hillocks of sand under which the trunks of the mesquite flourished for a hundred years, and out of the tops of which the green twigs bore leaves and fruit; or along the mesa to browse on bitterbrush and the tops of scrubby sage. Sometimes she plaited willows for the coarser kinds of basket-work, or, in hot noonings while the flock dozed, worked herself collars and necklaces of white and red and turquoise-colored beads, and other times sat dreaming on the sand. But whatever she did, she kept far enough from the place of the Coyote-Spirit, who, now that he had met the Weaving Woman, could not keep his mind off her. Her hut was far enough from the campoodie so that every morning he went around by the Black Rock to see if she was still there, and there she sat weaving patterns in her baskets of all that she saw or thought. Now it would be the winding wash and the wattled huts beside it, now the mottled skin of the rattlesnake or the curled plumes of the quail.

At last the Coyote-Spirit grew so bold that when there was no one passing on the trail he would go and walk up and down in front of the wickiup. Then the Weaving Woman would look up from her work and give him the news of the season and the tribesmen in so friendly a fashion that he grew less and less troubled in his mind about working her mischief. He said in his evil heart that since the ways of such as he were known to the Indians,—as indeed they were, with many a charm and spell to keep them safe,—it could be no fault of his if they came to harm through too much familiarity. As for the Weaving Woman, he said, "She sees me as I am, and ought to know better," for he had not heard about the infirmity of her eyes.

Finally he made up his mind to ask her to go with him to dig for roots around the foot of Pahranagat, and if she consented,—and of course she did, for she was a friendly soul,—he knew in his heart what he would do. They went out by the mesa trail, and it was a soft and blossomy day of spring. Long wands of the creosote with shining fretted foliage were hung with creamy bells of bloom, and doves called softly from the Dripping Spring. They passed rows of owlets sitting by their burrows and saw young rabbits playing in their shallow forms. The Weaving Woman talked gayly as they went, as Indian women talk, with soft mellow voices and laughter breaking in between the words like smooth water flowing over stones. She talked of how the deer had shifted their feeding grounds and of whether the quail had mated early that year as a sign of a good season, matters of which the Coyote-Spirit knew more than she, only he was not thinking of those things just then. Whenever her back was turned he licked his cruel jaws and whetted his appetite. They passed the level mesa, passed the tumbled fragments of the Black Rock and came to the sharp wall-sided cañons that showed the stars at noon from their deep wells of sombre shade, where no wild creature made its home and no birds ever sang. Then the Weaving Woman grew still at last because of the great stillness, and the Coyote-Spirit said in a hungry, whining voice,—

"Do you know why I brought you here?"

"To show me how still and beautiful the world is here," said the Weaving Woman, and even then she did not seem afraid.

"To eat you up," said the Coyote. With that he looked to see her fall quaking at his feet, and he had it in mind to tell her it was no fault but her own for coming so far astray with one of his kind, but the woman only looked at him and laughed. The sound of her laughter was like water in a bubbling spring.

"Why do you laugh?" said the Coyote, and he was so astonished that his jaws remained open when he had done speaking.

"How could you eat me?" said she. "Only wild beasts could do that."

"What am I, then?"

"Oh, you are only a man."

"I am a coyote," said he.

"Do you think I have no eyes?" said the woman. "Come!" For she did not understand that her eyes were different from other people's, what she really thought was that other people's were different from hers, which is quite another matter, so she pulled the Coyote-Spirit over to a rain-fed pool. In that country the rains collect in basins of the solid rock that grow polished with a thousand years of storm and give back from their shining side a reflection like a mirror. One such lay in the bottom of the black cañon, and the Weaving Woman stood beside it.

Now it is true of coyote-spirits that they are so only because of their behavior; not only have they power to turn themselves to men if they wish—but they do not wish, or they would not have become coyotes in the first place—but other people in their company, according as they think man-thoughts or beast-thoughts, can throw over them such a change that they have only to choose which they will be. So the basket-weaver contrived to throw the veil of her mind over the Coyote-Spirit, so that when he looked at himself in the pool he could not tell for the life of him whether he was most coyote or most man, which so frightened him that he ran away and left the Weaving Woman to hunt for roots alone. He ran for three days and nights, being afraid of himself, which is the worst possible fear, and then ran back to see if the basket-maker had not changed her mind. He put his head in at the door of her wickiup.

"Tell me, now, am I a coyote or a man?"

"Oh, a man," said she, and he went off to Pahranagat to think it over. In a day or two he came back.

"And what now?" he said.

"Oh, a man, and I think you grow handsomer every day."

That was really true, for what with her insisting upon it and his thinking about it, the beast began to go out of him and the man to come back. That night he went down to the campoodie to try and steal a kid from the corral, but it occurred to him just in time that a man would not do that, so he went back to Pahranagat and ate roots and berries instead, which was a true sign that he had grown into a man again. Then there came a day when the Weaving Woman asked him to stop at her hearth and eat. There was a savory smell going up from the cooking-pots, cakes of mesquite meal baking in the ashes, and sugary white buds of the yucca palm roasting on the coals. The man who had been a coyote lay on a blanket of rabbit skin and heard the cheerful snapping of the fire. It was all so comfortable and bright that somehow it made him think of the Goat-Girl.

"That is the right sort of a girl," he said to himself. "She has always stayed in the safe open places and gone home early. She should be able to tell me what I am," for he was not quite sure, and since he had begun to walk with men a little, he had heard about the Weaving Woman's eyes.

Next day he went out where the flock fed, not far from the corn lands, and the Goat-Girl did not seem in the least afraid of him. So he went again, and the third day he said,—

"Tell me what I seem to you."

"A very handsome man," said she.

"Then will you marry me?" said he; and when the Goat-Girl had taken time to think about it she said yes, she thought she would.

Now, when the man who had been a coyote lay on the blanket of the Weaving Woman's wickiup, he had taken notice how it was made of willows driven into the ground around a pit dug in the earth, and the poles drawn together at the top, and thatched with brush, and he had tried at the foot of Pahranagat until he had built another like it; so when he had married the Goat-Girl, after the fashion of her tribe, he took her there to live. He was not now afraid of anything except that his wife might get to know that he had once been a coyote. It was during the first month of their marriage that he said to her, "Do you know the basket-maker who lives under the bank of the stony wash? They call her the Weaving Woman."

"I have heard something of her and I have bought her baskets. Why do you ask?"

"It is nothing," said the man, "but I hear strange stories of her, that she associates with coyote-spirits and such creatures," for he wanted to see what his wife would say to that.

"If that is the case," said she, "the less we see of her the better. One cannot be too careful in such matters."

After that, when the man who had been a coyote and his wife visited the campoodie, they turned out of the stony wash before they reached the wickiup, and came in to the camp by another trail. But I have not heard whether the Weaving Woman noticed it.

THE CHEERFUL GLACIER

THE CHEERFUL GLACIER

Very many years ago, at the foot of a nameless peak between Mount Ritter and Togobah, after three successive years of deep snow there was a glacier born. It crept out fanwise from a furrow on the mountain-side, very high up, above the limit of the white-barked pines, and its upper end was lost under the drift of loose snow that trailed down the slope. For three successive winters the gray veil of storms hung month-long about the crest of the Sierras, while the snow came falling, falling, and the wind kept heaping, heaping, until the drifts sagged and slipped of their own weight down the long groove of the mountain; and since it lay on the sunless northern slope, and as it happened the summers that came between fell cool and rainy, there, when the spring thaw had cleared the loose snow, spread out on a little stony flat lay the rim of the glacier. Yet it was a very little one, a rod or two of clear shining ice that ran into deep blue and gray sludge under a drift of coarse, whitish granules, and very high up, fine dry particles of snow like powdered glass. So it lay at the time of year when the mountain sheep began to come back to their summer feeding-grounds.

When the thaw had cleared the heather and warmed the lichened rocks, they loosed their hold of the ice, and the great weight of it began to crawl down the mountain. At the first slow thrill of motion the little glacier creaked with delight.

"Ah," it said, "it is evident that I am not a mere snow bank, for in that case I should remain in one place. Now I know myself truly a glacier." For up to that time it had been in some doubt.

By the end of the summer it had advanced more than a span in the shadow of the peak. Then the snows began, deep and heavy, but the glacier did not complain; it hugged the floor of the rift where it lay, and thought of the time when it should start on its travels again. So, because of thinking about it so much, or because the snows were deeper and the summers not so warm, the glacier increased and went forward until it had quite crossed the stony flat, and began to believe it might make its mark in the world. There were any number of reasons for thinking so. To begin with, all that neighborhood was deeply scarred and scoured by the trail of old glaciers, and the high peaks glittered with the keen polish of ice floes. All down the slope shone glassy bosses of clear granite succeeding to beds of cassiope and blue heather, polished slips of granite, pentstemon and more heather, smooth granite that the feet could take no hold upon, then saxifrage and meadowsweet, and so down to the stream border, where the water quarreled with the stones. And by the time the little glacier had settled that it would leave such a mark on the mountain-side, shining and softened by small blossomy things, it had come quite to the farthest border of the flat, and looked over the edge of a sharp descent. It was much too far to bend over, for though the glacier was all of brittle ice, it could bend a little.

"But it is really nothing," said the glacier. "I have only to grind down the cliff until it is the proper height;" and it took a firmer hold on the sharp fragments of stones it had gathered on its way down the ravine. The pressure of the sodden snow above kept on, however, and before the glacier had fairly begun its grinding the ice rim was pushed out beyond the bluff, broke off, and lay at the foot in a shining heap.

"So much the better," said the cheerful glacier. "What with grinding above and filling with broken ice below, the work will be accomplished in half the time."

But that never really happened, for this was the last season the ice reached to the far edge of the flat. The next year there was less snow and more sun. The long slope of bare rocks gathered up the heat and held it so that the ice began to melt underneath, and a stream ran from it and fell over the cliff in a fine silvery veil.

"How very fortunate," said the glacier, "to become the head of a river so early in my career. Besides, this is a much easier way of getting over the falls."

Then the water began to purr in sheer content where it went among the stones; it increased and went down the cañon toward the white torrent of the creek that flowed from Togobah, and the next summer a water ousel found it. She came whirling up the course of the stream like a thrown pebble, plump and slaty blue, scattering a spray of sound as clear and round as the trickle of ice water that went over the falls. The ousel sat on the edge of the ice rim to finish her song, and it timed with the running of the stream.

"You should understand," said the glacier, "that I started in life with the intention of cutting my way down the mountain. But now I am become a river I am quite as well pleased."

"Everything is the best," said the ousel; "that has been the motto of my family for a long time, and I am sure I have proved it." And if one listened close as she flew in and out of the falls and sought in the white torrent for her food, one understood that it was the burden of her song. "Everything is the best," she sang, and kept on singing it when the glacier had grown so small by running that it was quite hollowed out under the roof of granulated snow, and the light came through it softly and wonderfully blue. Then the ousel would go far up into this ice cave until the sound of her singing came out wild and sweet, mixed with the water and the tinkle of the ice. As for the words of her song, the glacier never disagreed with her, though by now it had retreated clear across its stony flat. But the wind brought in the seeds of dwarf willow that sprouted and took root, and bright little buttercups began to come up and shiver in the flood of ice water.

"It seems I am to have a meadow of my own," said the glacier, by the time there was stone-crop and purple pentstemon blowing in the damp crevices about its border. "I do not believe there is a prettier ice garden on this side of the mountain. And to think that all I once wished was to leave a track of bare and shining stones! The ousel is right, everything is for the best."

The ousel always went downstream at the beginning of the winter, when the running waters were shut under snow bridges and the pools were puddles of gray sludge, down and down to the foothill borders, and at the turn of the year followed up again in the wake of the thaw. So it was not often that the ousel and the glacier saw each other between October and June.

"But of course," said the glacier, "the longer you are away, the more we have to say to each other when you come."

"And anyway it cannot be helped," said the ousel. For though she did not mind the storms and cold weather, one cannot really exist without eating.

After one of these winter trips, the ousel noticed that the stream that came over the fall had quite failed, ran only a slender trickle that dripped among the shivering fern and was lost in the rock crevices, and though she was such a cheerful little body, she did not like to be the first to speak of it. It seemed as if the glacier could not last much longer at that rate. So she flitted about in the lace-work caverns of the ice, and sang airily and sweet, and the words of her song were what they had always been.

"That is quite true," said the glacier. "You see how it is with me; once I was very proud to run over the fall with a splashing sound, but now I find it better to keep all the water for my meadow."

In fact, there was quite a border of sod all about where the ice had been, and a great mat of white-belled cassiope in the middle. It grew greener and more blossomy every year. The ousel grew so used to finding it there, and so pleased with the society of the glacier, which was quite after her own heart, that it was a great grief to her as she came whirling up the stream in the flood tide of the year to find that they had both, the meadow and the ice, wholly disappeared.

That had been a winter of long, thunderous storms, and a great splinter of granite had fallen away from the mountain peaks and slid down in a heap of rubble over the place where the glacier had been. There was now no trace of it under sharp, broken stones.

But because they had been friends, the ousel could not keep quite away from the place, but came again and again and flew chirruping around the foot of the hill. One of those days when the sun was strong and the heather white on the wild headlands, she saw a slender rill of water creeping out at the bottom of the rubbish heap, and knew at once by the cheerful sound of it that it must be her friend the glacier, or what was left of it.

"Yes, indeed," bubbled the spring, "it is really surprising what good luck I have. As a glacier, I suppose I should have quite melted away in a few summers; but with all this protection of loose stones, I shouldn't wonder if I became a perennial spring."

And in fact that is exactly what occurred, for with the snow that sifted down between the broken boulders, and the snow water that collected in the hollow where the meadow had been, the spring has never gone quite dry. Every summer, when the heather and pentstemon and saxifrage on the glacier slip are at their best, the cheerful water comes out of the foot of the nameless peak and the ousel comes up from the white torrent and sits upon the stones. Then they sing together, and their voices blend perfectly; but if you listen carefully, you will observe that the words of their song are always the same.

THE MERRY-GO-ROUND

THE MERRY-GO-ROUND

The Basket Woman was washing for the homesteader's wife at the spring, and Alan, by this time very good friends with her, was pulling up sagebrush for the fire, when the coyote came by. It was a clear, wide morning, warm and sweet, with gusty flaws of cooler air moving down from Pine Mountain. There was a lake of purple lupins in the swale, and the last faint flush of wild almonds burning on the slope. The grapevines at the spring were full of bloom and tender leaf. Eastward, above the high tilted mesa under the open sky, the buzzards were making a merry-go-round. That was the way Alan always thought of their performance when he saw them circling slantwise under the sun. Round and round they went, now so low that he could see how the shabby wing feathers frayed out at the edges, now so high that they became mere specks against the sky.

"What makes them go round and round?" asked Alan of the mahala.

"They go about to wait for their dinner, but the table is not yet spread," said she. The Basket Woman did not use quite such good English; but though Alan understood her broken talk, you probably would not. The little boy could not imagine, though he tried, what a buzzard's dinner might be like. The high mesa, with the water of mirage rolling over it, was a kind of enchanted land to him where almost anything might happen. He would lie contentedly for hours with his head pillowed on the hillocks of blown sand about the roots of the sage, and look up at the merry-go-round. He noticed that, although others joined them from the invisible upper sky, none ever seemed to go away, but hung and circled and faded into the thin blue deeps of air. Often he saw them settle flockwise below the rim of the mesa and beyond his sight, wondering greatly what they might be about.

The morning at the spring he watched them in the intervals of tending the sagebrush fire, and then it was that the coyote came by, going in that direction. His head was cocked to one side, and he seemed to watch the merry-go-round out of the corner of his eye as he went.

Alan thought the little gray beast had not seen them at the spring, but in that he was mistaken. A quarter of an hour before, as he came up out of the gully that hid his lair, the coyote had sighted the boy and the Basket Woman and made sure in his own mind that they had no gun. So, as it lay in his way, he came quite close to them; opposite the spring he paused a moment with one foot lifted, and eyed them with a wise and secret look. He went on toward the mesa, stopped again, looked back and then up at the whirling buzzards, and went on again.

"Where does that one go?" asked Alan.

"Eh," said the Basket Woman, "he goes also to the dinner. It is good eating they have out there on the mesa together."

Alan looked after him, and the coyote paused and looked back over his shoulder as one who expects to be followed, and quite suddenly it came into the boy's mind to go up on the mesa and see what it was all about. The Basket Woman was bent above her tubs and did not see him go; when she missed him she supposed he had gone back to the house. Alan trotted on after the coyote until he lost him in a sunken place full of boulders and black sage; but he had been headed still toward that spot above which the black wings beat dizzily, and that way Alan went, climbing by the help of stout shrubs to the mesa, which here fell off steeply to the valley, and then on until he saw his coyote or another one, going steadily toward the merry-go-round.

The mesa was very warm, and swam in misty blueness although the day was clear. Dim shapes of mountains stood up on the far edge, and near by a procession of lonely, low hills rounded like the backs of dolphins appearing out of the sea. Stubby shrubs as tall as Alan's shoulder covered the mesa sparingly, and in wide spaces there were beds of yellow-flowered prickly-pear; singly and far stood up tall stems of white-belled yucca, called in that country Candles of Our Lord. Alan could not follow the coyote close among the scrub, but dropped presently into a cattle trail that ran toward the place where he supposed the coyote's dinner must be, and so trudged on in it while the sun wheeled high in the heavens and the whole air of the mesa quivered with the heat.

It is certain that in his wanderings Alan must have traveled that day and the next as much as twenty miles from the spring, though he might easily have been lost in less time, for his head hardly came above the tops of the scrub, and there were no landmarks to guide by, other than the low hills which seemed to alter nothing whichever way one looked at them. As for the buzzards, they rose higher and higher into the dim, quivering air. Alan began to be thirsty, next tired, and then hungry. He tried to turn toward home, but got no nearer, and finally understood that he might be lost, so he ran about wildly for a time, which made matters no better. He began to cry and to run eagerly at the same time until, blind and breathless, he would fall and lie sobbing, and wish that he might see his mother or the Basket Woman come walking across the mesa with her basket on her back. By this time it was hot and close and he had come where the scant-leaved shrubs were far between, and with heat and running the tears were dried out of him. He sobbed in his breath and his lips were cracked and dry. It fell cooler as night drew on, but he grew sick with hunger, and shuddered with the fear of darkness. Far off across the mesa the coyotes began to howl.

Down in the homesteader's cabin nobody slept that night. When they first missed Alan, which was at noon, no one had the least idea where he was. His mother had supposed him at the spring, and the Basket Woman thought he had gone to his mother. It was all open ground about the cabin from the mesa and the foot of the hills, and below it toward the valley bare stretches of moon-white sands.

The homesteader thought that the boy might have gone to the campoodie; but there they found he had not been, and none of the Indians had seen him; but by three of the clock they were all out beating about the spring to pick up the light trail of his feet, and there they were when the quick dark came on and stopped them.

By the earliest light of the next morning the Basket Woman, who was really very fond of him, had come out of her hut to ask for news, but when she had looked up to the sky for a token of what the day was to be, she saw the buzzards come slantwise out of space and begin the merry-go-round. All at once she remembered Alan's question of the day before, and though she could not reasonably expect any one to take any notice of it, an idea came into her head and a gleam into her beady eyes. She caught her pony from the corral, riding him astride as Indian women ride, with the wicker water bottle slung across her shoulder and a parcel of food hid in her bosom. She went up the mesa rim toward the spot where the buzzards swung circling in the sky.

When Alan awoke that morning under the creosote bush, he thought he must have come nearly to the place he had meant to find the day before. There was the coyote skulking out in the cactus scrub, and the buzzards wheeling low and large. It was a hot, smoky morning, the soil was all of coarse gravel, loose and white. Over to the right of him lay a still blue pool, and a broad river flowed into it in soft billows without sound. The coyote went toward it, looking back over his shoulder, and Allan followed, for his tongue was swollen in his mouth with thirst. The little boy was quite clear in his mind; he knew that he was lost, that he was very hungry, and that it was necessary to find his father and mother very soon. As he had come toward the mountains the day before, he thought that he should start directly away from them. He thought he could not be far from the campoodie, for it came to him dimly that he had heard the Indians singing the coyote song in the night, but he meant to have a drink in the soft still billows of the stream. A little ahead of him the coyote seemed to have gone into it, his head just cleared the surface, and the water heaved to the movements of his shoulders. But somehow Alan got no nearer to it. The stream seemed to loop and curve away from him, and presently he saw the lake behind him and could not think how that could be, for he did not understand that it was a lake and river of mirage. He saw the trees stand up on its borders, and fancied that the air which came from it was moist and cool. Always the coyote went before and showed him the way, and at last he lifted up his long thin muzzle and made a doleful cry. Mostly it seemed to Alan that the coyotes howled like dogs, but a little crazily; now it appeared that this one spoke in words that he could understand. When he told his mother of it afterwards, she said it was only the fever of his thirst and fatigue, but the Basket Woman believed him.

"Ho, ho!" cried the coyote, "come, come, my brothers, to the hunting! Come!"

A great black shadow of wings fell over them and a voice cried huskily, "What of the quarry?"

"The quarry is close at hand," said the coyote, and Alan wondered dizzily what they might be talking about. He could not look up, for his eyes were nearly blinded by the light that beat up from the sand, but he saw wing shadows thickening on the ground.

"Where do you go now?" cried the voice in the upper air.

"Round and about to the false water until he is very weary," said the coyote; and it seemed to Alan that he must follow where the gray dog went in a maze of moving shadows. He trembled and fell from weakness a great many times and lay with his face in the shelter of the prickle bushes, but always he got up and went on again.

"Have a care," cried the voice in the air, "here comes one of his own kind."

"What and where?" said the coyote.

"It is a brown one riding on a horse; she comes up from the gully of big rocks."

"Does she follow a trail?" panted the coyote.

"She follows no trail, but rides fast in this direction," croaked the voice, but Alan took no interest in it. He did not know that it was the Basket Woman coming to rescue him. He thought of the merry-go-round, for he saw that he had come back to the creosote bush where he had spent the night, and he thought the earth had come round with him, for it rocked and reeled as he went. His tongue hung out of his mouth and his lips cracked and bled, his feet were blistered and aching from the sharp rocks, the hot sands, and cactus thorns. Round and round with him went scrub and sand, on one side the shadow of black wings, and on the other the smooth flow of mirage water which he might never reach. Through it all he could hear the soft biff, biff of the broad wings and the long, hungry, whining howl that seemed to detach itself from any throat and come upon him from all quarters of the quivering air. Dizzily went the merry-go-round, and now it seemed that the false water swung nearer, that it went around with him, that it bore him up, for he no longer felt the earth under him, that it buoyed and floated him far out from the place where he had been, that it grew deliciously cool at last, that it laved his face and flowed in his parched throat; and at last he opened his eyes and found the Basket Woman trickling water in his mouth from her wicker water bottle. It was noon of his second day from home when she found him on Cactus Flat, by going straight to the point where she saw the black wings hanging in the air. She laid him on the horse before her and dripped water in his mouth and coaxed and called to him, but never left off riding nor halted until she came up with others of the search party who had followed up by the place where Alan had climbed to the mesa, and followed slowly by a faint trail. But to Alan it was all as if he had dreamed that the Basket Woman had brought him as before from the valley of Corn Water. The first that he realized was that his father had him, and that his mother was crying and kissing the Basket Woman. It was several days before he was able to be about again, and then only under promise that he would go no farther than the spring. The first thing he saw when he looked up was the buzzards high up over the mesa making a merry-go-round in the clear blue, and it was then he remembered that he had not yet found out what it was all about.

THE CHRISTMAS TREE