Pablo’s Deer Hunt.
A PUEBLO FAIRY TALE TOLD OVER.
The yellow cottonwoods above the Rio Grande shivered in the fresh October morning as the sun peeped over the Eagle Feather mountain into the valley of his people. Above the flat, gray pueblo of Shee-eh-huíb-bak the bluish breath of five hundred slender chimneys melted skyward in tall spirals. Upon here and there a level housetop a blanket-swathed figure stared solemnly at the great, round, blinding house of T’hoor-íd-deh, the Sun Father.
Then a burro, heavy eared and slow of pace, rattled the gravel on the high bluff, gazed mournfully on the muddy eddies, and broke out in stentorian brays. Apparently Flojo[32] felt downcast. Across these treacherous quicksands the grass was still tall in the vega—why did not Pablo take him over too? And mustering up his ears, he trotted almost briskly down the slope to the water’s edge, where a swart young Apollo was just stepping into the swift current. Tall, sinewy, lithe as Keem-eé-deh, the mountain lion that lent its tawny hide for the bow-case in his hand; his six feet of glowing bronze broken only by a modest clout of white at the supple waist, his dense black hair falling straight upon broad, bare shoulders, and his dark eyes watchful of the swirling waters, the young Pueblo strode sturdily in, paying no heed to the forlorn watcher upon the shore. In a moment he was in the channel swimming easily, one hand holding the bow-case above the red bundle upon his jet crown. Sush-sh! sush-sh! splosh! splash! splash! and Flojo heaved a great sigh as his master went spattering across the farther shoals, and at last climbed the sandy eastern bank.
Pablo unrolled the bundle from his head, wriggled, wet-skinned, into the red print shirt and snowy calzoncillos, wrapped their flapping folds about his calf with the buckskin leggings of rich maroon; belted these at either knee with a wee, gay sash from the looms of Moqui, fastened the moccasins with their silver buttons, and, with the tawny sheath of bow and arrows slung across his back, started at a swift walk. Once only he stopped, after a scramble up the gravel hills that scalloped the plateau, to look back a moment. The long ribbon of the valley, now faded from its summer green, banded the bare brown world from north to south, threaded with the errant silver of the river, whose farthest shimmer flashed back from under the purple mass of the Mountain of the Thieves. Midway lay the pueblo, dozing amid its orchards below the black cone of the Kú-mai, and Pablo shook his head sadly, as he turned again and strode across the broad, high llano.
“It is not well in the village,” he muttered, “for it is full of them that have the evil road. The Cum-pah-huít-lah-wen have told me that the half of those of Shee-eh-huíb-bak are witches; but not all can be punished. But it is in ill times for us. Tio Lorenzo is twisted by the Bads so that he cannot walk; and many die; and did not Ámparo and José Diego marry the prettiest maidens of the Tee-wahn, only to find them witches? How shall one take a wife when so many are accursed? It is better to hunt and forget the women, as do the warriors; for we know not who are True Believers, and who have to do with the ghosts.”
Across the wide, sandy plateau the young Indian walked with undiminished pace; and as the house of the Sun Father stood in the middle of the sky, he entered a rocky cañon of the Eagle Feather mountain and began to climb a spur of the great peak. The huddled dry leaves under a live oak caught his eye, and he turned them with deft foot. “Here Pee-íd-deh, the deer, slept last night,” he exclaimed, “for the fresh earth clings to their under side. And here is a hair, and here the footmark. If only Keem-eé-deh will help me.”
Kneeling by the tree, he broke off a twig and stuck it in the earth in front of the footprint, the fork pointing backward, that Pee-íd-deh might trip and fall as it ran. Then, drawing the Left-Hand Pouch from his side, he opened it and reverently took out a tiny parcel in buckskin, whose folds soon disclosed a little image of the Mountain Lion, chief of hunters, carved from adamantine quartz. Its eyes were of the sacred turquoise; and in the center of the belly was inlaid a turquoise heart over the hollow which held a pinch of the holy corn meal. On the right side was lashed a tiny arrow-head of moss agate—one of the precious “thunder knives” which the Horned Toad had made and had left for Pablo on the plains of the Hollow Peak of Winds. Putting the fetich to his mouth and inhaling from the stone lips, the hunter prayed aloud to Keem-eé-deh to give him true eyes and ears, and swift feet to overtake; and rising, gave a low, far roar to terrify the heart and loosen the knees of his prey. Then, restoring the image to its pouch, with bow in hand and three arrows held ready, he pushed rapidly up hill, with keen eyes to the dim trail. Here a trampled grass blade, there a cut leaf or overturned pebble, and again a faint scratch on the rocks, led him on. At last, just where the flat top of the mountain had been wrought to a vast arrow-point by the Giant of the Caves, he saw a sleek doe standing under a shabby aspen. Down on his belly went Pablo, and with a new breath-taking from the stone lips of the prey-god, crawled snake-like forward. The deer moved not, and within fifty yards Pablo tugged an arrow to its agate head and drove it whirring through Pee-íd-deh’s heart. The doe turned her great, soft eyes toward him, sniffed the air and went bounding up the rocky ledges as if unhurt. Yet on the left side the grey feathers of the shaft touched the skin; and once on the right Pablo caught the sparkle of the gem tip.
There was a curious ashen tint in the bronze of his cheeks, as the hunter sprang to his feet and began running in pursuit. “Truly, that was to the life,” he whispered to himself. “And why does she not fall? Will it be that they of the evil road have given me the eye?” And stopping short, he fished out a bit of corn husk and a pinch of the sweet pee-én-hleh and rolled a cigarette, lighting it from his flint and steel. The first puff he blew slowly to the east, and then one to the north, and one to the west, and one south, one overhead, and one downward, all about, that the evil spirits of the Six Ways might be blinded and not see his tracks. When the sacred weer was smoked, he rose and took up the trail again. It was easy to be followed, now, in the soft wood soil of the mountain top; and in the very edge of the farther grove of aspens he saw the doe again, grazing in unconcern. Worming from tree to tree, Pablo came close, and again sent a stone-tipped shaft. It struck by the very side of the first, and drank as deep; but the doe, pricking up her ears as if she had but heard the whizz of the arrow, trotted easily away and disappeared over the eastern brow of the mountain, amid the somber pines.
Pablo was very pale now, but not yet daunted. He smoked again to the Six Ways and prayed to all the Trues to help him, and with another arrow on the string, pushed forward.