Shotaye arose, shook her wet garments, and stepped into the outer room. There she turned around once more, and repeated in a low but impressive voice,—
"Sa tao, trust in me, and believe also that Okoya is good, and Mitsha better yet. Be kind to both and be silent."
She stepped into the court-yard, and Say Koitza remained standing in the doorway.
The rain had ceased; the sky was clear again, all ablaze with the richest golden hues over the crest of the big houses. It was near sunset. Say watched her friend as she went to the entrance; and as Shotaye's form vanished in the dark passage Okoya emerged from it, coming toward his mother, slowly, shyly, but with a smile on his countenance. That was surely a good omen, and she anticipated the timid "guatzena" with which he was about to greet her by a warm and pleasant "raua opona."
CHAPTER IX.
The interview between Okoya and Hayoue, which took place at almost the same time that Shotaye fell in with the Tehua Indian on the mesa, had completely changed the mind of Say Koitza's eldest son, and turned his thoughts into another channel. He saw clearly now to what extent he had been led astray by mere imagination,—to what sinister depths his reasoning had carried him. Since Hayoue's talk, Okoya felt like another man. The world of his thoughts, limited as it was still, appeared now in rosy hues, hope-inspiring and encouraging in spite of all obstacles. These obstacles he saw in their true light, and the last warning of Hayoue had made a deep impression. But obstacles clearly understood are half surmounted already, and "threatened people live long."
It is not good for man to be alone. Okoya had felt the truth of it bitterly. Now that he knew that he was not forsaken, he was filled with strength and vigour. On the whole, an Indian is much less exposed to isolation than a white man, for his clan and, in a wider range, his tribe, stand by him against outside danger; but when that danger arises within the narrow circle of constant surroundings there is imminent peril. Okoya had fancied that such peril threatened his own existence, and that he stood alone and unsupported. Now he saw that in any event he would be neither abandoned nor forsaken, and this imparted to his spirit a degree of buoyancy which he had never experienced before.
When he issued from the cave where both his uncle and he had found shelter, the storm was over, and nature had assumed a different aspect. A heavy shower in the mountains of New Mexico is often followed by illuminations of peculiar beauty. So it happened then. The west, where the sun had already descended behind the mountains, was crossed by a series of arches displaying successively from below upward the most resplendent gold, bright orange, green, and finally deep blue colours. In the eastern skies the storm-king hovered still in a mass of inky clouds above the horizon, but these clouds had receded beyond the graceful cone of the Tetilla, which stood out in front of the dark mass of the storm sharply defined, with a rosy hue cast over every detail of its slopes. The air was of wonderful transparency, and every tint of the brilliant heavens above and in the west seemed to reproduce itself with increased intensity, on the dark, cloudy bank in the east, in the dazzling arch of a magnificent rainbow. The rays of the setting sun no longer penetrated the depths of the vale, they only grazed the moisture-dripping tops of the tallest pines, changing them into pyramids of sparkling light.
Okoya looked at the scenery before him, but its beauty was not what caused him to gaze and to smile. The Indian is quite indifferent to the sights of nature, except from the standpoint of strictest and plainest utilitarianism. The rainbow fascinated the boy, not through its brilliancy and the perfection of the arch, but because the rainbow was in his conception Shiuana, and a messenger from Those Above.[10] Where the ends of the luminous arch appear to rest, a message from heaven is said to be deposited. No more favourable token could have greeted him, for although the message was not for him, since the brilliant bow seemed to stand far off from the Rito, still the Shiuana, the spirits, graced the sky with their presence. They appeared clad in the brightest hues, and what is bright and handsome is to the Indian a harbinger of good.