IV
Once again the timid prevailed; they said: “See this terrible white man, his weapons are most murderous. He can sit where he is, in safety, and send his missiles against our unprotected babes. He is too great. Let us make our peace with him.”
So at last, for a third time, the elders went down to talk with the conquerors, and said, “What can we do to make our peace with you?”
Then the tall, old man said, “If you will give us two of your brightest sons to go away into the East we will ask no more, but your other children must return to the Iron House each day as before.”
The elders withdrew, and the news flew about the pueblo, and every mother looked at her handsomest son in sudden terror, and the men assembled in furious debate. The war party cried out with great bitterness of clamor, “Let us fight and die! We are tired of being chased like wolves.” But at last up rose old Hozro, and said, “I have a son—you know him. He is a good son, and he has quick feet and a ready tongue. He is not a brawler. He is beloved of his teachers. Now, in order that we may be left in peace, I will give my son.”
His short and passionate speech was received with expressions of astonishment as well as approval, for the boy Lelo was a model youth—and Hozro a proud father. “What will the mother say?” thought all the men who sat in the council.
Then gray old Supela, chief priest and sage, rose slowly, and said, “I have no son—but my son’s son I have. Him I will dedicate, though he is a part of my heart. I will cut him away because I love peace and hate war. Because if the white man rages against us he will slaughter everybody.”
While yet they were in discussion some listening boys crept away and scattered the word among the women and children. “Lelo and Sakoni are to be bound and cast among the white men.”
There was wailing in the houses as though a plague had smitten them again—and the mothers of the lads made passionate protestations against the sacrifice of their sons—all to no purpose. The war chief came to tell them to make ready. “In the morning we must take the lads to their captors.”
But when morning came they could not be found in their accustomed places, they had fled upon the desert to the West. Then, while the best trailers searched for their footprints, the fathers of the tribe went down and told the white chief. He said:
“I do not believe it, you are deceiving me.”
“Come and see,” said Hozro, and led the way round the mesa to the point where the trailers were slowly tracing the course of the fugitives.
“They are running,” said young Klee. “They are badly scared.”
“Perhaps they go to Oraibi,” said one of the priests.
“We have sent runners to all the villages. No, they are heading for the great desert.”
They followed them out beyond all hope of water—out into the desolate sand—where the sun flamed like a flood of fire and only the sparse skunk-weed grew—and at last sharp eyes detected two dark flecks on the side of a dune of yellow sand.
“There they are!” cried Klee, the trailer.
The stern old white man spurred his horse—the soldier chief did the same—but Klee outran them all. He topped the sand dune at a swift trot, but there halted and stood immovably gazing downward.
At last he came slowly down the slope and, meeting the white man, the agent, and the soldier, he said, with a sullen, accusing face, and with bitter scorn:
“There they are; go get them; my work is done!”
With wonder in their looks the pursuers rode to the top of the hill and stood for a moment looking; then the lean hand of old Hozro lifted and pointed to a little hollow. “There they lie—exhausted!”
But Klee turned and said, “They are not sleeping—they are dead! I feel it.”
With a sudden hoarse cry the father plunged down the hill and fell above the body of his son.
When the white men came to him they perceived that the bodies of the boys lay in the dark stain of their own blood as in a blanket. They were dead, slain by their own hands.
Then old Hozro rose and said, “White man, this is your work. Go back to your home. Is not your thirst slaked? Drink up the blood of my son and go back to the white wolves who sent you. Leave us with our dead!”
In silence, with faces ashamed and heads hanging, the war chief and stern old white man rode back to their camp, leaving the heroic father and grandsire alone in the desert.
That night the great mesa was a hill of song, a place of lamentation. Hozro and Supela were like men stunned by a sudden blow. The old grandsire wept till his cry became a moan, but Hozro, as the greatness of his loss came to him, grew violent.
Mounting his horse, he rode fiercely up and down the streets. “Now, will you fight, cowards, prairie dogs? Send word to all the villages—assemble our warriors—no more talk now; let us battle!”
But when the morning came, behold the tents of the white soldiers were taken down, and when the elders went forth to parley, the soldier chief said:
“You need not send your children away. If they come down here to the Iron House that is enough. I am a just man; I will not fight you to take your children away. I go to see the Great Father and to plead against this man and his ways.”
“And so our sons died not in vain,” said Supela to Hozro, as they met on the mesa top.
“Aye, but they are dead!” said Hozro, fiercely. “The going of the white man will not bring them back.”
And the stricken mothers sat with haggard faces and unseeing eyes; they took no comfort in the knowledge that the implacable white man had fled with the blue-coated warriors.
THE NEW MEDICINE HOUSE