The Runaway Papoose/Chapter 1

p over the edge of the desert peeped the big yellow moon, and Nah-tee shivered and drew her little dress close about her shoulders. Nah-tee was sitting high in a pinyon tree, as high as she could go, with her little feet drawn up under her and her heart going “Boom—boom—boom” like a tiny drum in her breast, keeping time to her thoughts. For Nah-tee was ​frightened—never in all the few years of her life had she been so frightened—and she trembled so, all over, that even the pinyon tree trembled, too, and made its little cones to shake in time to the beating of her heart. And she had very good reason to be frightened—even a big one would have trembled, too, and Nah-tee was very, very small.

She had no eyes at all for the beautiful desert that lay like a great bowl of silver in the moonlight below and around her, or for the powdery gray sage—or the strange-shaped rocks with the black shadow pools under them. Nah-tee was Indian, and all the things of the desert she knew and loved well, but it was a daytime desert that she knew, and never before had she been alone at night in this great strange world. But it was not the night she was afraid of, or the hoot owl that called from a mesquite tree, or the shadows that crept from bush to bush—no, each one of these things alone would have made her to laugh at the thought of fear—it was not a thing that she could see or hear that made the trembly feeling to come, it was something she could not see or hear—not now.

Only this morning—but now it seemed a great, great while ago—only this very morning she had been ​safe with her father and mother in the shelter place they had built in the desert—with all the friends and loved ones close about them—and last night when the darkness had come the big camp fire of mesquite boughs had sent up snapping bright lames and driven the night dark far back into the desert, where it belonged, and the warm shadows had danced up and down on the tree bark of their shelter home and the big supper pot had bubbled and boiled and sent forth odors so delicious that the very memory of them made Nah-tee weak and squirmy with hunger.

And now, to think of it, it seemed a very strange thing that all of her people had left the shelter of their far-away, cosy pueblo, with the little fields about them, to come out into the desert as they had done. Why had they done that? And the wonder of it made Nah-tee to open her eyes very wide even in the middle of her fear thoughts. For many days they had traveled over this desert, stopping at times and building little shelters of pinyon and mesquite boughs that they might rest awhile and hunt for food to eat—and then they would go on again. It had been very comfortable in that far-away home place near to the hills where little streams ran in the season of rains, and there were deer and plenty of small animals, and ​many birds, and trees with yellow peaches hanging on them, and the winds made queer noises as they came singing down the cañons. But it was nice in the desert, too—there were rabbit hunts and exciting games that could be played in the sandy washes—and strange people riding by, and always that big wonder of where they could be going—yes, in the desert it had been nice, too—until this day—and a little fresh shiver came to Nah-tee at the thought—this day it had not been nice—this day had been a very terrible day, and not yet was the bad part past.

This morning her father had talked with happy words and had said that now they were not far from the end of their journey and that a new home place was very near, and there were smiling looks on all the faces, and they got ready the packs on the horses and burros to begin again the travel that they knew so well—and then—men had come, riding fast over the desert—men they had never seen before, who began to talk in loud voices and then to fight!

Very quickly there was great confusion in the little camp. The women ran with frightened cries to the shelter of the twig houses they had not taken down, and Nah-tee ran, too, only there was a strange man who stood between her and the shelter houses, so ​she could not run that way, but ran to a little wash that was near and slid down the steep, sandy bank and ran on—and on—and on—and not until she was altogether out of breath did she stop—and when she stopped she hid in a big clump of sagebrush and listened—and listened! It seemed as though the very world had turned upside down, and for a little even the thoughts in her head stood still and waited for what would happen next. What had happened? Nah-tee did not know. Why would anyone want to fight her father, who was kind always and never said angry words, and the others of her people who had harmed no one? And what would happen now? She listened as carefully as she possibly could, but there was no sound from anywhere, except just the quiet sounds that people do not make—the wind in the dry leaves, and the whisper of small life under the sage. But Nah-tee did not come out from her hiding place in the sagebrush, not for a long, long time; she stood and waited and listened and wondered what she should do—that was the big thought in her mind now—what should she do? If she waited and waited a very great while, surely those men would be gone and she could creep back to the home place to the warm comfort of her mother’s arms and the cheery ​blaze of the camp fire. She must have come very far from the camp—she could not guess how far. She crept out now from her bush and looked down the wash—she did not know that the little wash, which had been made by many seasons of rain, branched away in many different directions. She had not noticed that as she ran—she had not noticed anything at all—but as she began to go back cautiously, when the shadows of evening lay long and purple across the desert, then she noticed that there were many little washes all running into one and then running out again in a most confusing way. And when she followed one wash for a very long way she found it was not the right one; and another one did not lead back to the camp; and another one was strangest of all; and it was then that the trembly feeling began to come, for Nah-tee was lost, and now she did not know which way to go at all.

Nah-tee was very small, and her dress was long, and in the dim light she looked like a queer little woman, for her mother dressed her just as she was dressed—in a brown velvet waist with silver buttons and a dark, full skirt that came almost to the ground. Her hair was brushed back, black and glossy, from her face, and was tied in a little bobby knot at the ​back of her neck, and there were bright bits of blue turquoise in her ears, and silver beads about her neck and silver bracelets on her little wrists, and on her feet she wore the brown buckskin shoes of the Navajos, a little higher than moccasins and fastened with a silver button; but the fading light did not show that her cheeks were like little apples browned by the sun, and her big black eyes had laugh twinkles in them when the fear thoughts were not there. But now they did not have laugh twinkles, and Nah-tee did not feel like a woman at all, even a very small one—she felt like the littlest thing in all the world, and very alone and very hungry, for all day she had had nothing to eat except a few pinyon nuts that she had found on the ground.

But the really trembly time came with the dark, before the moon came up. The whole world seemed to change with that dark—the daytime noises stopped and strange night ones began. The coyotes barked—more coyotes than Nah-tee had ever heard before—and there were strange, prowly noises in the sage, and things that crept with scratchy sounds over the rocks. Anyone would grow trembly with sounds like that, and after a short while of listening Nah-tee ran like a little squirrel for the most branchy ​tree she could find and scrambled up into it and drew her feet up and sat and trembled—and listened! But she did not cry, somehow she did think about that, and after a time she did not tremble so much, and let down her feet just a little way. The noises did not come any nearer, and not yet had anything hurt her. And now she must think what to do. Thinking was a thing Nah-tee had never been told how to do. When her mother had taught her to do things they had always been things for her hands to do, and her mother had shown her how, and she had done them very carefully and well; and for the rest of the time she ran in the sunshine with the other children and hunted in the little cañons for arrowheads in the rocks, and found queer bits of stone and flowers in the desert, and ate berries and nuts when she came across them, and learned the ways of the animals she knew, and listened to the song of the wind in the trees, and all that did not take thinking at all; but now was a time when she must think!

“Au—ouooow!” said the big empty place inside of Nah-tee where supper had always been on other nights. “Au—ouoow, how I am hungry!” And “Whoo—o-ooo!” cried the little hoot owl in the mesquite tree, and “Yow-wow-wowooo!” cried the ​coyotes off in the desert, and how could any little girl think with all that noise around her? But just as she thought that, a new sound came through the night, and Nah-tee gave a little jump in her tree place, and her heart began to beat even faster than before. It was a very different noise than the others that she had been hearing, and at first she did not know whether to tremble more or to stop trembling altogether, for it was a voice that she heard, and the voice spoke words in Navajo—words that she understood very well, for Navajo was much like the language spoken by her own home people. It was such a strange thing that a voice should speak in this lonely night place that almost Nah-tee could not believe that her ears had told her a true thing, and she did not breathe for a little to listen for the voice to come again. But it did not come. Far away had sounded that voice, but very clear on the air, and the words brought a smile feeling to the lips of Nah-tee; and fear thoughts cannot stay very long when smile feelings come.

“Ai-ee, but the world is big when the moon shines down,” had said that voice, “and if you could talk to me, Chingo, it would not be so lonely in the night”; and the sharp bark of a dog had answered ​to the voice, and Nah-tee knew, just as well as if she could see them with her eyes, that a Navajo boy and his dog were watching sheep in the desert. It was strange that she had not heard the sheep, for always you can hear sheep in the desert, but she knew that they were there even though she stretched her neck and looked and looked and could see nothing at all but the moonlight on mesquite, sage, and cactus, and the black shadows that lay still when she looked straight at them but seemed to move if she turned away her head. And then, quietly, like a little mouse, Nah-tee began to move in her tree and to slip her feet down a little farther and a little farther, hugging tight to the rough bark until she was standing on the ground again with her heart beating so fast she could not have heard even a loud noise if it had come. She was going to find out where that voice came from—and very quickly. She must find out, for she could not stay any longer in this strange, big place all alone and with the hungry feeling inside growing bigger and bigger every minute. She stood uncertainly by the tree for a moment and tried very hard to hear a sound that would tell her in which direction to go; but, except for those far-away coyotes, everything was very

​still—and then—Nah-tee turned her head suddenly, and her little nose went up into the air and sniffed—hard! It was a food smell—a very delicious food smell—and almost without her knowing it her feet began to lead her in the direction from which it came.

Her soft little shoes made no sound at all on the hard ground, and so there was not even the bark of a dog to tell of her coming. Large rocks were in this place and in the direction in which she was walking the ground sloped very sharply down after a little rise, and that was why, even from her tree, she could not see very far. And now she could hear the sheep, too, making soft little bleatings as they tried to find comfortable places for the night—and suddenly she saw a little fire behind a big rock, and she stopped when she realized how very close she was now to the boy. She could see that it was a boy and his dog, as she had thought; and there was a pot, too, steaming over the fire. It was the little trail of good smell from that pot that had brought Nah-tee very surely to this place. The dog turned suddenly toward her now and gave a low growl with all his hair sticking up, and the boy looked up, too, and saw the little form so close to them in the rocks, and his eyes opened ​very wide with surprise, and he called quickly to the dog:

“Down, Chingo—can you not see?—this is not a wolf. Are you a real one?” he called to Nah-tee, “or a shadow thing of the night?”

Nah-tee drew a very deep breath.

“Oh, how that smell is good!” she said, and the boy threw back his head and laughed.

“A shadow thing would not say that,” he cried, and then a little frown came to his face. “But it cannot be that you are alone in a place like this—you are only a papoose. Where are the ones who have come with you?”

“No one is with me,” answered Nah-tee. “Not anyone at all. Maybe I am not big—maybe I am only papoose—but I have run away—I am lost,” and a little tremble came into her voice, “and very much I am hungry.”

The boy looked at her with such great surprise that his mouth opened wide before he spoke again.

“You are lost,” he said then, repeating the words that she had said. “Why did you run away to get lost?” But he did not wait for an answer, for a look came into the face of Nah-tee that made the boy ​jump up quickly and put a blanket on the ground by the fire.

“Sit down here,” he said in a very kind voice. “I will give you of that supper in the pot, and afterward we will talk.”

And very glad was Nah-tee to sit down and to warm her hands by the fire and to give the dog a little friendly pat on the head when he came near to her and sniffed. And, oh, how good was the taste of that supper in the pot! It was a stew of goat’s meat, and the boy took a little pottery cup and filled it with the stew, and Nah-tee almost burned her lips with it in her eagerness to eat it before it was cool. And the piki bread was good, too, and the goat’s milk and the dried apricots. Never had any feast tasted better than that supper, and the boy smiled at Nah-tee when three times he had filled her cup with the stew and she had emptied it.

“I think the inside of you is bigger than the outside,” he laughed when she had finished. “You must be very careful that a cactus needle does not stick you this night.”

“Why should I be careful of that?” asked Nah-tee, with her eyes very big in surprise.

​“Because I think you would pop right open like a little puffball,” said the boy, and he grinned so that his teeth flashed in the firelight. And Nah-tee gave a little giggle at his words—for she could laugh now. She felt very warm and comfortable on the outside and on the inside, too, and this was a nice boy—she liked the way his eyes squeezed up when he smiled, and his voice was pleasant, and he had kind ways.

“Why are you up here?” she asked him then, as she watched the little flames of the fire dance high into the air. “Why are you up here when your sheep are down there?” and she pointed to the little draw below them where she could just see the sheep huddled together in a shadowy mass, with two or three goats standing near, and the watching dogs moving restlessly around them.

“I do not like the cold wind,” he answered. “It is good for the sheep down there, for there is grass and they can lie close together and be warm; but here it is best for my fire in the rocks, and there is no wind—I do not like the wind.”

“It would be a nice thing,” said Nah-tee, with a look in her eyes that did not see things that were there, “if there would be big birds so big they ​could spread their wings like a hogan wall and keep the wind away.”

The boy stared at her.

“Why do you say that?”” he asked. “Did anyone ever see birds like that?”

“Oh, no,” answered Nah-tee quickly, “but always I think things.” She looked at him and smiled. “It is nice to think things,” she said; “not the outside things—I do not think about them very much—but the inside things, they are nice,” and the look in the boy’s eyes made her smile again. But then a look of trouble came into her face. “When it is light I must go,”she said. “Will you help me, boy, to find the place where my people are?”

“Yes,” he nodded, “when it is light we will go,” for Nah-tee had told him of the camp place in the desert where her people were waiting, and of the fight and of the way she had come, and he had said that surely there would be no fight now, and her father would be waiting with anxious thoughts, but they could not find the way while it was dark, and, besides, he could not leave his sheep when there was no one to stay with them.

“When it is light I will go and find a friend,” he said. “I have a friend who will stay with my sheep, ​and then we will go and find your people.” And after that Nah-tee could not ever remember one thing more that happened that night. She felt very comfortable, and the fire made crackly, sleepy sounds that seemed to say words to her, but she could not tell what the words were. And then—very suddenly —the boy was smiling into her face, and bright sunlight was shining on the red band about his head. Nah-tee blinked at the brightness of it and put her hand to her eyes, and then, when she looked at the desert, she saw that the moonlight had all gone and everything was sparkly fresh in a new day, and the sheep were bobbing in and out among the rocks to find bits of green to eat, and the dogs running around and around them, barking joyously and glad to be alive. And for a little Nah-tee forgot that she was in a strange place and jumped up to run with the sheep—and then she remembered and the shiny look went from her eyes. The boy was holding a piece of meat on a stick over the fire, and he nodded at her in a friendly way.

“My friend will come,” he said. “He has told me he will care for my sheep, and you and I will go and find your camp place. Look, there is my pony—there,” and he nodded to where the pony was nib​bling grass in the rocks. Nah-tee had not seen him before, and he looked to be a very nice pony. He had a look in his eyes when he lifted his head that seemed to say:

“When you are ready, I am ready, to go anywhere!” and Nah-tee wished suddenly that she could ride on a pony like that. Always she had ridden in a wagon or on a fat little burro that jogged along on very stiff legs. It would be wonderful to go flying along on a pony that looked as if he could go like the wind. And while she ate her breakfast she thought of nothing but that pony and listened for the funny little nicker sound he made when he raised his head to look at them. Almost she forgot to think about what she might find when she rode to the camp place in the desert. But the boy did not forget, and there was a worry look on his face that Nah-tee did not see.

“I am called Moyo,” he said when they had eaten, “and if you will tell me what to call you we will go now. See, here is my friend.”

The other boy had come so quietly that Nah-tee jumped when she saw him standing close by the fire beside Moyo, but she did not fear him at all, for he was a very little boy, almost as small as she was, ​and always he was smiling, and he spoke almost not at all.

“Come, then, Nah-tee,” cried Moyo, when she had told him her name, and he lifted her high onto the bare back of the pony and jumped up in front of her almost before she knew what was happening; and he told her to put her hands about his waist and to hold very tight—and away they went—flying just as Nah-tee had thought the pony would go, like the wings of the wind. She had never dreamed of herself going like this—so high from the ground! A little she was frightened, but Moyo told her to hold tight and called little words to his pony. And sage and rocks and trees went past like shadows in a dream.

“Ooo-ooh!” cried Nah-tee, and she made the word long like a song of the wind. “How quickly we will be there now, Moyo.” And down into the little washes they rode—the washes that she remembered so well; but how different they looked in the sunlight—and up again through the sage and through country where there were small trees growing—jack oaks and greasewood—and past high, pointed rocks that looked like the tepees of some giant race—and on—and on; but they did not come to any camp place that was like the camp place of her people.

​“We will go the other way,” said Moyo, with a little frown between his eyes. “Maybe we have come the wrong way.” And he turned the pony around, and they rode back very much the way they had come, and then on in the other direction through desert where there were no trees at all, only the tall cactus and sagebrush, and wide stretches of sand and rocks where they could see great distances in every direction; and they looked carefully, both of them, with their hands to their eyes to keep out the bright light of the sun, but still there was no sign of camp fire or shelter anywhere in all that place—not any that they could see.

“There are very many big rocks,” said Moyo. “Maybe if we go in a high place we can see better”; and they rode until they found a hill that was higher than the other hills, and from there they looked to the north and south and to the east and west, but they could see nothing at all but desert, and a queer feeling began to grow in the heart of Nah-tee, and a deeper frown place to come on the face of Moyo.

“It cannot be a great way that you came,” he said at last. “You could not come very far without a horse. But see how there is no camp anywhere in this desert.”

​The lip of Nah-tee trembled a very little bit, but she bit it hard with her teeth—she would not let a boy see that she was frightened—not ever would she do a thing like that; and besides, it was only that they had not looked in the right place—somewhere in the desert was that home camp.

“I think,” she said slowly, in a voice she could not keep from being a little trembly, “I think we have not looked in that place,” and she pointed with a very shaky little finger to a sort of valley that ran between two low hills, and there were more trees there than in other directions. Moyo looked at her quickly, and she did not understand the half smile that came to his face and went away again.

“Well,” he said slowly, and he turned his face away so that she could not see his eyes, “we will go there, then.” And the pony seemed to go faster even than before when they turned toward the little valley, but Nah-tee did not feel now that they were flying, and she opened her eyes very wide so that the wind would dry the wet feeling that was in them. It could not be a true thing that that camp had gone like a cloud shadow on the sage—things like that did not happen; it must be here in this little valley place. And then she closed her eyes so that ​she could open them again when they were near. But when she looked she could not help giving a little jump of surprise. Now she could understand why Moyo had looked at her so queerly—they were back in the very same place they had started from. There were the sheep and the dogs and the little fire in the rocks still burning, and now the shiny drops came to the eyes of Nah-tee and rolled splashing down her cheeks—she could not help it.

But she would not have cried—not one single drop —if she had known the things that were to happen! For, if she had not run away, and if the camp had not been lost——— But you shall see those things that are to happen, and you shall see how she should not have cried!