Others said: “Let us send our children—what will it matter? We can watch over them, they will be near us, and we can see that they do not forget our teachings. Our religion will not vanish out of their minds.”
So the old men went again to the war chief, and, with bowed heads and trembling voices, said: “We yield. You are mighty in necromancy and we are poor and weak. Our children shall go to the Iron Khiva.”
Then the war chief gave them his hand and smiled, and said: “I do not make war with pleasure. I am glad you have submitted to the commands of my great chief. Live in peace!”
III
For two years the children went almost daily to the Iron Khiva, and they came to love one of those who taught them—a white woman with a gentle face—but the man in the black coat who told the children that the religion of their fathers was wicked and foolish—him they hated and bitterly despised. He was sour-faced and fearful of voice. He shouted so loud the children were scared—they had no breath to make reply when he addressed them.
But to even this creature they became accustomed, and the life of the village was not greatly disturbed. True, the children began to speak in a strange tongue and fell into foolish songs which did little harm—they were, in fact, amusing, and, besides, when the cattlemen came by and wished to buy baskets and blankets, these skilled children could speak their barbarous tongue—and once young Kopeli took his son who had mastered this hissing language, and went afar to trade, and brought back many things of value. He had been to the home of the Little Father, and the fort.
In short the Pueblans were getting reconciled to the Iron Khiva and the white people, and several years went by so peacefully, with so little change in their life and thought, that only the most far-seeing expressed fear of coming trouble—but one night the children came home in a panic—breathless and storming with excitement.
A stranger had arrived at the Iron House, accompanied by a tall old man who claimed authority over them—the man who lived in the big white man’s town—and they had said to the teacher, “we want six children to take away with us into the East.”
This was incredible to the people of the cliff, and they answered: “You were mistaken, you did not understand. They would not come to tear our children from our arms.”