He blew on a bone battle-whistle which dangled along his thigh like a quirt. At the signal two warriors appeared.
“Take him to the medicine lodge! Bind!” ordered Honanta. He turned his back on Hano and covered his face. A suppressed, hurt sound, like some dumb animal mortally wounded, came from the girl and Sid felt his throat choking. Hano turned once more as they led him away.
“Farewell, Nahla!” his voice rang. “Bring my little son to the stake, that he may see how a warrior can die.”
For a long time there was a dead silence in the lodge. Sid glanced from time to time at the stoical, impassive face of the chief; then at the young wife, who sat huddled in the rounded end of the lodge, her newborn child in her arms and silent tears coursing down her cheeks.
Grief had stricken this lodge—and all because of him. Indian justice was stern, inexorable; on the same exalted plane as its religious conceptions, its four cornerstones of Indian morality—Truth, Honor, Courage, Chastity. For sparing him Hano was to be punished. Was he, too, doomed to take some awful part in to-morrow’s Sun Dance?
Sid knew vaguely of the Sun Dance. In present days it has degenerated among the Plains tribes into a brutal material thing, a degrading exhibition of suffering and endurance of no spiritual meaning whatever. But in the olden times it had been a thank-offering to the Great Mystery, vowed to Him in memory of some special deliverance from peril or certain death. But for the beneficent intervention of the Great Mystery the man had lost his life; therefore all the original symbolism of the Sun Dance was of a potential death and a resurrection by the grace of the Great Mystery. But why should Honanta give this Sun Dance at this late date, forty years after the massacre at Apache Cave? Because some evidence of Honanta’s physical deliverer had come to light, Sid reasoned. That, too, was necessary for the full ceremony to be performed. If Honanta knew that that humane white officer’s name was Colvin, his own part in the ceremony was obvious. What then of Hano? Could he be destined for some heartrending sacrifice on Honanta’s part? It was possible! Sid decided to rescue him, to get him out of Red Mesa and send him to Big John for help, if he would go. He planned, now, to find out where the medicine lodge was and then act when the time was ripe.
Its location was shown him in the most unexpected manner.
“She was a wonderful woman—my mother!” exclaimed Honanta suddenly, breaking his reverie and apparently continuing his narrative as if no interruption had occurred. “She escaped with me from that ambulance by night, for she had no wish to be brought a captive to the reservation that was then being allotted to my people. In the mountains we lived, together. She built a hut of sweet grass. She recovered from her wounds, healing them with plants taught my people by the Great Mystery. She fished and hunted like a man, carrying me always with her on her back. She taught me to love and respect the birds, who live very close to the Great Mystery. As I grew up, she taught me to know the animals, our brothers; to sing chants for their souls when I had to kill them for our needs. She taught me to reverence the bears, who are our mother clan by the First Man. Silence, love, reverence—these were my first lessons in life. Through her I learned to know the Great Mystery. To pray daily to Him after the morning bath, silently, with arms outstretched facing the sun, which is the most sublime of His creations. To seek Him on the high places, alone. To see Him at night, through the glory of the stars.”
Sid listened, waiting respectfully while the chief paused again, sunk in reverie. As an ethnologist he was learning the true inwardness of the Indian’s soul from a red man’s own lips. For some reason Honanta seemed to have laid hold upon his sympathy and he now poured it all out as to the first white man who really comprehended the fundamentals of that marvelous Indian creed now lost to mankind forever.
“As I grew up, our broken-hearted people turned to Christianity. It seemed to us the only thing the white man had which promised mercy and hope,” went on the chief. “I went to a mission school. I learned of Jesus—a man after our own heart! I read the Bible, which, please remember, was written by men of my race, by men of the East—by no one of your blue-eyed, conquering people who now dominate the earth. I saw the white men preaching the Bible with their lips, but their lust for money and power, their eternal buying and selling was always there. I saw that their lives flouted the Bible at every step. I became disgusted. I knew that the teachings of Jesus and our own ancient religion were essentially the same. We used to live those teachings, too, long before the white man came. So I determined to return to our ancient faiths and customs. When I became a man I wandered in all desolate regions, seeking a spot where the white man was not. And I found it. Here, in this forgotten and inaccessible stronghold, which I named ‘The Arms of the Great Mystery,’ for they protect us forever. Here I brought my mother, and as many of her clan as I could find. One by one, they escaped from the reservation and joined me here. These are all that are left of the great Yellow Bear clan of the Apache.”