Chapter IX

The Bear Skin is Stolen

WHEN Hannah and I returned to the cabin that evening, we found everything as we had left it, and thought that the deserter had made up his mind to make no more raids upon our little stock of provisions. After I had started a fire in the stove, we went out and admired our great bear skin, now almost dry – so thoroughly had it been fleshed and stretched. I struck it with my hand and it boomed like a drum.

“Sister, our friend can’t be right: it is n’t possible that any one will pay four hundred dollars for that hide, big though it is!” I exclaimed.

“I guess that we have very little idea of what rich people are willing to give for things that they want. It seems to me that people who think nothing of paying a hotel twenty-five dollars a day for meals and a place to sleep, will not mind four hundred for the hide. And with the reward that we are to have, that will be six hundred in all, two hundred dollars for each of us. Oh, I never dreamed of having that much money of my very own! “ she said.

We went back into the cabin and cooked supper, sure pleased over our good luck. Our Hopi friend came down just before sunset, and we all sat up to the table and ate and talked, and were just plumb happy. Our friend told us more about Grand Canyon and the rich people who visited it. A few of them, he said, seemed to appreciate what a wonderful place it was, but many just said: “Some cut, is n’t it! Well, I’ve seen it, anyhow!” And then they would hurry from the rim back to the hotel to talk and eat and smoke and dance. Dancing – silly dancing – was more to them than looking down at that most wonderful sight in all the world. Some of those dancing women wore dresses that cost all of a thousand dollars each; and diamond necklaces and rings worth all the way up to fifty

thousand dollars.

And at that Hannah cried out, “Oh, it does n’t seem possible that there are women so rich as that ! “

“But it is so,” our friend answered. “And more than that, there is a woman in Philadelphia – I have seen her–she once came to our Carlisle school – who owns over a million dollars worth of diamonds and pearls!”

“I guess that we may get four hundred for our bear hide,” I said.

“Five hundred, maybe,” said our friend. And we saw that he meant it.

Hannah and I were very happy that night, planning what we should do with all the money that we were soon to have.

Again our Hopi friend and I divided the night watch. Nothing happened. We had an early breakfast, cooked by Hannah, and then, after washing the dishes and packing a pail of lunch, we hurried up the trail, the Hopi to his old men and Hannah and I to the lookout. There had been no wind during the night, so we had hoped to find that the fires were, anyhow partly, under control. Not only were they burning as fiercely as ever; we saw at a glance that two more had been started during the night, both of them between the sawmill and the edge of the desert, and about a mile apart. Our hearts were sure heavy as we looked off at that wicked burning of our forest, and when I reported, at nine o’clock,

the Supervisor’s voice had a weary, hopeless sound as he answered: “Yes, George, I know just where the new fires are, you need n’t chart’em. Boy, if we don’t soon get rain we shall lose all this end of the forest!”

“No use asking if the firebugs have been found?” I said.

“No. Don’t ask!” he grimly answered, and rang off.

Shortly before ten o’clock our friend came up on to the crest of the summit, advancing toward us and waving his hands, and we soon met him.

“My old men have taken a liking to you two,” he said. “Only my archeologist friend, of all the whites, has seen this Rain God ceremony, but just now, just as I was about to ask that you might see it, White Deer told me to come for you. Are n’t you glad!”

“ Dear, kind old men, my heart goes out to them, to all the Hopi people,” Hannah answered for us.

“Would that all the whites were of the same heart as you!” he said.

We walked on along the crest of the mountain, passed the cave hole, thirty or forty yards down the west slope, and came to a stand. Our friend said that we should there be quite close to the old men when they came up on top from the kiva. We seated ourselves upon some slabs of rock and waited for their coming. Our friend called our attention to Escodilla Mountain, thirty or forty miles to the east at the edge of New Mexico, its long high crest ending abruptly almost at the desert’s edge, and said that the Zuñi Indians went to its summit to pray for rain. Their pueblo in the desert was not more than a hundred miles north and west of the mountain. Hundreds of years back they had lived in the valley of the Little Colorado, and by means of their irrigating ditches had raised fine harvests of corn and other things. And then they, like the Hopi people, had been driven out into the desert by the Apaches and Navajos.

A slight disturbance of the rock caused us to turn suddenly and look the other way, and Hannah and I almost cried out at what we saw: the four old men coming up on to the summit from the cave hole, but apparently old men no more. They came stepping lightly up like so many boys, and, except for their moccasins, and broad-aproned breech clout – blue-black, with red, zigzag stripes, symbol of the lightning – were perfectly naked. Their bodies were painted a dull red.

All in line they came up on to the summit, not fifty yards from us, came to a sudden stop and raised their hands to the sky, and White Deer made a short prayer – to the sky gods, our friend whispered. They then looked down and prayed to the gods of the Under World, and in turn faced the east, the west, the north, and the south, saying a short prayer in each direction. That done, they began to sing, and, oh, what a strange, low, sad song it was. I can’t begin to say how it affected Hannah and me. I saw tears in her eyes, and I think that there were some in mine. Our friend was holding a hand to his eyes, and his lips were moving – in prayer, I thought.

The song ended, and the old men danced to the east to an accompaniment of lighter song, and then to the three other points of the compass, at last sitting down to rest.

“Soon begin their heavy prayers! You shall see! Oh, they are going to pray hard to Rain God,” said our friend.

“Can’t you tell us a little of what they will say?” Hannah asked.

“Yes, a little of it. They will cry to him: ‘O powerful god, have pity upon us, your Hopi people! Look down upon our paintings: see how the short sprouts of corn fade and the leaves of the squash vines droop! O powerful Rain God, spread your cloud-blanket above them, make it leak plentifully down upon them! Soak the earth plentifully with your water, O powerful one, so that our plants shall have full growth! Do this for us soon, powerful one, else our little ones, our women, we ourselves die upon our desert cliffs from want of food!’ There! that is some of the first prayer they will say.”

The old men arose, stead facing the east, and White Deer began the prayer, the others at times joining in it. They then sang for a rime, danced, said more prayers, and when almost out of breath, sat down for another rest, and kept looking up in all directions at the sky. All the morning Rocks of small, fleecy white clouds had been drifting slowly southwestward, and now they had merged, most of them, into several clouds of great extent, white-edged, dark in the center, and turning darker and drifting ever so slowly around the summit of our mountain, and Mount Ord, close to the west. And presently a Rash of lightning leaped from the cloud close above us and just south of the lookout, and then came a loud rumble of thunder. The old men leaped to their feet, raised their hands toward the cloud, and all four went wild with excitement, shouting, singing, praying, dancing, repeatedly raising their hands and then dropping them, fingers down extending, a most suggestive sign for falling rain.

Our friend became as excited as they were. He, too, stared up at the big cloud coming nearer, at other clouds slowly drifting toward it from the east and north, prayed in a voice that became more and more tense, occasionally turning to us and whispering hoarsely:

“Rain God is coming!”

“He has heard our prayers! He accepts our offerings!”

“Oh, my friends ! Rain God is good! He is going to water our poor gardens!” This last after another dash of lightning and a peal of thunder almost over our heads.

And at that those old men just about went crazy: they trembled as they cried out their appeals and waved their hands to the cloud. And, yes, I’ve just got to say it: Hannah and I became tremendously excited too. Of course, we did n’t believe that those poor old men were bringing the rain, if rain were really coming, but we could no more help sharing in their hopes and fears than we could help breathing. And we wanted rain as badly as they did, driving downpours of rain to put out the forest fires; to give life to our planted fields and the grass of our cattle range; and to put an end to the awful work of the fire-setters! A sudden shock of cold rain in our faces brought us to out senses, but increased the old men’s wild appeals to the sky, and our friend said to us: “ Go ! Run to your little place over there. I will join you as soon as my old men go back into the kiva.”

We ran, circling past the old men and on along the crest up to the lookout, thunder and lightning booming and flashing all around us, and the rain becoming more and more heavy. We were quite wet when we got into the shelter of the station. I turned straight to the telephone, and when I reported the storm, the Supervisor shouted: “Good! Good! I hope it will rain a week!”

We built a fire in the little stove and waited for our Hopi friend to come to us. The thunder and lightning ceased;∑a great cloud rested upon the mountain and darkened the day; the rain came steadily down: it was killing the forest fires. We were very happy.

“Oh! Our bear skin: the rain will spoil it! “ Hannah suddenly exclaimed.

“No, it is so well stretched that it will not be hurt –not if we keep the sun from it while it dries,” I told her. And, anyhow, I planned to cover it with what canvas we had.

The telephone was now every few minutes ringing the office, and we listened in. Green’s Peak, Nutrioso, Escodilla, Alpine, and the far-south stations of the Blue Range, were all reporting heavy rain. The storm was general, not local. It would surely last long enough to put out the fires. We waited impatiently for our Hopi friend to come, so that we could tell him the good news.

He came, a half-hour later, and smilingly stood and looked in at us through the open door: “Come in! Come in out of the wet!” I called to him.

“But I want to be wet!” he answered. “I want the rain to soak into me, for then I just feel that it is soaking into our gardens out there in the desert. Oh, are n’t my old priests powerful! They brought this rain: Rain God could not refuse their prayers and prayer offerings!”

“We have been listening to the telephone reports: rain is falling all over this great forest,” sister told him.

“Yes! Of course it is! Did you think that my priests prayed for just one little place! They asked for plenty for the whole country. They prayed and prayed Rain God to put out the forest fires as well as to give new life to our plantings!”

“And what are they doing now!” I asked.

“Feasting, there in the kiva. Smoking sacred cigarettes. Singing their song of thanks to Rain God!” he answered.

“Well, let us go down to the cabin and feast, too,” Hannah proposed.

“But we have a lunch here,” I said.

“Oh, who wants to eat that dry bacon and bread I We shall have a real feast. I shall bake a

cake: a chocolate cake!” she exclaimed.

So, out we went into the rain, carefully closing the door behind us, and down the trail we ran, splashing through little streamlets of water everywhere cascading down the steep mountain-side, our Hopi friend pausing to dance a few steps in the larger ones, and singing the while a quaint and lively little air that was very pleasant in our ears. And then, coming to the clearing, we raced across it, and at the cabin porch came to a sudden stand and stared at the open door – that we had carefully locked that morning – and at a litter of odds and ends upon the floor.

Hannah ran to the corner of the cabin: “The bear hide is gone!” she shrieked.

We joined her and stared at the empty frame; at the cut rope lacings strewing the ground.

“Henry King has been here again! He is the one who has our bear hide, the mean deserter! Coward!” Hannah cried.

I was so angry that I could n’t speak. I turned and led into the cabin, and we stared at the wreck of it: not a sack of our flour, corn meal, beans, rice, and other things remained in the open food chest. The bacon and ham sacks were gone; the table had been swept clean of the eatables we had left upon it. All of Hannah’s blankets had been taken, and her canvas bed cover. Her comb and brush and little mirror, too, and my box of 30-30 cartridges. I ran outside to my bunk and found that it had been stripped!

“One man could n’t have packed off all our stuff; no, nor two: those I.W.W. firebugs have done this and Henry King brought them here,” I said when I went back inside.

“One man could have loaded it all upon a horse,” said our Hopi friend.

“Yes. But that deserter, those firebugs, are not using horses. Horses leave tracks; they can easily be trailed,” I said.

“That is so. Those men would not use them. Well, what are you going to do”

“We have no food but the lunch that we put up: what can we do but go home?” cried Hannah.

“That is the only thing for us to do. The rain has already washed our all tracks of the thieves, we can’t follow them, and we can’t stay here and starve,”I said.

“What Go home! Let those bad men get away with our bear hide? Oh, no! no! We must have it back from them. You have no food, you say Why, there is plenty of food up here: my old men have quite a lot of corn meal and pinole, and there are plenty of deer: every evening I see them grazing at the edge of the timber under the north end of the mountain,” our Hopi friend exclaimed, and, oh, how his eyes were flashing!

“But if we have the food, what then! how can we get back the bear hide!” I asked.

“Wait ! Let my old men talk to you about that,” he answered. “They said something the other day – only a few words – they were busy with their prayers, but I’II bring them here. You shall hear them! “ And with that he was out of the door and splashing up the little clearing.

Hannah proposed that we telephone the Supervisor what had happened to us, but I decided that we should not do so before hearing what the old Hopi men had to say. We had brought our lunch back with us from the lookout, and now each took a third of it, leaving the remainder for our friend. Soon after we finished eating – and the dry bread and bacon now sure tasted good – we heard the little party slopping their way to us across the clearing. Our friend led the old men up on to the tiny porch – where they dropped their various belongings, and then, old White Deer leading, they came inside, and one by one gravely shook hands with us.

And then the leader said to us, our friend interpreting, of course: “We are glad to shake hands with you, you two of good heart. We are glad to come into your house, now that we have brought the rain and are free to do as we please.”

“We are very glad to have you here. But you must be wet through. Hang up your blankets along the wall to dry, and sit here before the stove,” I answered.

“Yes. We will sit with you for a time,” the old man said; “but as to our blankets, we ourselves, we men weave them, and so tight that water does not go through them. We are dry enough.”

They took seats then, two upon the food chest and the others upon boxes, and Hannah and I perched ourselves upon the bunk. No one spoke for some time. The rain continued to beat upon the iron roof. At last, quite to our surprise, White Deer arose and again shook sister’s hand and mine. He then stood off a little way, threw back his blanket, and said to us – a sentence or two at a time as the interpreter nodded to him to proceed:

“Generous youth and girl: From day to day our young helper has told us of your troubles, but, busy with that we have come so far to do, we had no time for more than a few words together, now and then, about what we learned. It was with sad hearts that we looked out upon the great fires below, set by bad white men with intent to destroy this great forest, Rain God’s garden. Yes. These mountain slopes are his garden, these great trees his plantings, their fine growth the result of his plentiful waterings. When our long-ago fathers came here every spring to pray and sacrifice to Rain God, they would no more have destroyed one of these trees than they would have destroyed themselves. And so we feel about it, and have prayed that the bad fire-setters be themselves destroyed.

“When our young helper told us that he was to have a share in the selling of the hide of the great bear that you killed, he made us very happy. We said to one another that the money he would get from that would be clean money, and enough, perhaps, for him to pay his way when he goes to ask the great white chiefs to free us, to ask that we be no longer slaves. And now that valuable bear hide is gone, gone with your food and your blankets, taken by these same destroyers of Rain God’s beautiful garden!

“Can the hide, and your different things be recovered? Perhaps they can. When our young helper told us that white seizer-men, and Apache seizers, were hunting day after day for the fire-setters, and could not find them, we did not say much, but we kept that in mind. Morning after morning when we came up out of the kiva and saw fresh fires, and still more fires burning, we said that the fire-setters, were in hiding somewhere near them, and in a place where the blaze of their own fires, their cooking fires, could not be seen, nor they themselves be caught while they slept, as sleep they must, at times.

“In our kivas out there in the desert, the old priests are ever instructing the new ones, not only in religion, but in the whole history of our people. So it is that we knew just how to come to this sacred mountain, knew the trail as well as though we had traveled it many times. And we know, just as well as though we had seen them, many places along this range of mountains that our people visited in the long ago. One of those places is a great cave; a cave so large, running so far into the mountain slope that, without a light, one could easily become lost in it and never find his way out. That cave is down there where those fires are burning. We believe that it is about halfway between the farthest east fire and the one farthest west. Now, perhaps you two know that cave?

“Let me question you,” he went on. “North from here, and not far from the edge of the desert, is a long, double butte, bare on top; and west of it, and also near the desert, is a higher butte with a very sharp top. Is that not so?”

“Yes. The one farthest west is Green’s Peak, the other is Poll Knell.”

“Good. We have our own names for them, but that does not matter now. I ask you: About half way between those buttes is there not a small creek running out from the forest and ever being swallowed by the thirsty desert!”

“There is. We call it Conaro Creek.”

“And just after it runs out of the forest does it not go down over three broken ledges of rock quite a ways apart, the middle ledge much the highest of the three?”

And when that had been interpreted to us, Hannah and I sure stared at one another, and at him: he had described the place exactly. We both cried out: “Three ledges are there!” -”The center ledge is the highest!”

The old men all smiled, nodded to one another, and White Deer concluded: “At the foot of the center ledge, a short distance – a hundred steps – west of the creek, is the entrance to the cave.”

“But we have been there many times! There is no cave hole in the ledge. There can’t be, or we should have seen it!” I said.

“No, you would not have seen it unless you were carefully hunting for it. The entrance is small, only one man can pass in at a time, and it is well hidden: willows grow thickly all around it.”

“But if we have never found it – we nor our people who have always lived here – it is n’t likely that the fire-setters have found it,” I said.

“They are just the kind of men that would find it,” the old man answered. “The growth of willows near the water, the bare rocks all around to hold not the least trace of their goings and comings, why, they would have run to it as soon as they saw it, and, once into the willows, of course they found the cave! Do not laugh, do not doubt: We just know that those bad men have their hiding-place in that cave!”

“And if that is so, what then?”

“Trap them ! Roll two or three big rocks into the entrance and trap them!” he answered.

And just then Hannah gave a little cry and pointed to the shelf on the wall above the table: “Look! Our lamp is gone, and our candles!” she said.

I sprang from the bunk and looked behind the food chest: “Yes, and our can of coal oil too!” I cried. “The thieves are living in the cave: in the open, a fire would give all the light they want ! “ I turned to our young friend: “We are a weak outfit – shall we try to trap them! “ I asked.

“Let us find out if they surely are in the cave,” he answered.

“That’s a go! We’ll do it!” I told him.