The Runaway Papoose/Chapter 13

Loki and Moyo had quickly found that the hogan in which they were prisoners was very strong and tight, and there was no place in which they could make even the smallest hole, and there was no way they could make a sound loud enough to attract the attention of anyone outside. So they made themselves as comfortable as possible about the little fire built on the fire stone right under the smoke hole in the middle of the hogan. There were wood for the fire and blankets for them to sleep on, and piki bread and a jar of water, but that was all, and Loki said as they sat down:

“We will have to wait here for a little. I do not ​know the reason why, but I think no harm will come, and waiting is not so very bad.”

“Always I have waited,” said Nah-tee wistfully, “and maybe—oh, but that would be very bad—if we do not see that dance.”

Loki did not answer, he was frowning into the fire. This was a thing he could not understand at all. Why should Su-hú-bi fight the father of Nah-tee, and why should he put them now in this place, and what would come next? He did not say these things aloud, for already the look on the face of Nah-tee was a thing that made a sad feeling in him, but they were in his mind, and they were man thoughts, and he was only a boy.

“This gives me a thought of a time my father tells about,” he said suddenly, and Moyo jumped, for he, too, had been gazing into the fire with worry looks on his face.

“What is that?” he asked. “Maybe if you tell us about that time it will help us for now. Was it a thing like this?” And Nah-tee looked up eagerly.

“I do not know about the help part,” said Loki slowly, “but if we must wait here long maybe it would be good to have other thoughts to think about,” and Moyo nodded.

​“It was not a great while ago,” said Loki, “for it was my father who told me, but it was in the days when the Indians and the white people were not so friendly together as they are now, and many times there were fights between them. My father was a friend to everybody. The white people had not done any harm to him, and so he did not wish to do them any evil, but there were those of his own people who did not like this. They said the white man had taken everything away from the Indian and that never could they be friends. At that time my father lived alone, far to the south of here, in a hogan he had built for himself, and he raised sheep and lived at peace with everyone. But one time there was war between the white man and the Indian, and his people told my father he must come and fight with them or they would say he was no more their friend, but he refused to fight, and for a while they let him live as he had lived before, but not for long. They had killed many white people and the white men brought soldiers from a fort and shot down the Indians like rabbits in a field. And then one day some Indians came to the hogan of my father, and their faces were like faces of stone. ‘For long,’ they said to my father, ‘you will not fight. Maybe you are a friend to the ​white man, and a spy for him, telling him what we will do. Maybe you do that, and maybe not. But one more chance we will give you—just one. Say you will come and fight with us, or we will come in there and kill you’ (for my father was inside his hogan with the door shut). ‘If you do not come out we will come in, but we will give you a little time to think.’ And they did not talk any more. And my father sat in the hogan, and it was dark, like this. The more he thought about it the more he knew he could not go out and fight the white men, who had done many kind things for him and had been his friends always; and every moment that he waited he felt that those men would come in and kill him. My father was a very brave man, but after a long time he felt that he could wait no longer. Every little sound, every little crack of the fire, he thought—was the men who came to kill him. But they did not come—not after a very long time did they come—and more and mere he felt that he could not wait, until finally he went to the door and pushed it open and walked out into the open air—and there was no one there! Not anywhere was there a man or a horse or anything living in sight, except his own sheep and horse that were in corral, and they had not been ​touched. For a long time he waited, and they did not come back—and it was not until many days after that he saw one of the men who told him what had happened. Far across the desert, the man said, they had seen a smoke signal of their own people calling them back to a place of meeting, and they had ridden silently away thinking they would return and kill my father; but at that meeting they learned that no longer was there war between the white men and the Indians, and never did they go back; and afterward they were ashamed that they had thought to kill my father, and some of the men became his very best friends who were in that party.”

“Maybe this place is open and free for us,” said Moyo, “and maybe Su-hú-bi will not come back again!” and he jumped up and pushed against the door, but it did not open, and the kicks he gave it made no impression at all; and, after a while, they went to sleep, all three of them, around the little fire, and they slept all the night and until very late the next morning. Nah-tee was awakened by a big yellow eye looking at her straight down through the smoke hole in the top of the hogan, and it was the sun.

“It is day again!” she cried, and the two boys rubbed their eyes and jumped to their feet, startled, and ​just then they heard a sound from outside. It was someone who talked under the voice as if he were in trouble, and then came something that knocked against the side of the hogan as if a rock had been thrown at it—and a voice cried:

“Who is in this place?”

“Oh,” cried Nah-tee in great excitement, “it is the voice of that fat woman—the one who was good to us,” and she answered the woman in a voice as loud as she could make it: “It is Nah-tee—and Loki—and Moyo. Can you let us out of here?”

“Thanks!” cried the woman in a voice that was big in relief. “Thanks that you are there! Everywhere I have looked—almost all the night—and I could not find you. I saw those men that they came back alone, and I had worry for the thing that had happened to you. Is it that you are safe?”

“We are safe,” answered Loki this time, “but we are fastened in. Can you take the things away from the door and let us out?”

“Oh,” cried Nah-tee, and she was dancing now in her excitement, “always it is like that. Always something good comes when we think that only bad is here.”

“Wait,” said the woman, and she made great ​sounds of pulling and pushing, and her breath came hard like a dog’s after running. “Ai-ee, how these things are heavy—and how they are tight!”

“What is it?” cried Loki. “What have they put there?”

“They are big logs,” said the woman, and she did not stop in her working. “They are trees, and they have planted them so deeply that it seems that they are growing here.”

“Can you move them?” cried Moyo then. “We will push from the inside and see if they will move then.”

“I think always they go tighter in,” said the woman finally. “When you push it is worse—I cannot move them. But, wait—I will go and get someone, and then we will quickly open the door,” and they heard her feet go hurriedly away.

“She will be back,” said Nah-tee, and now there were only happy sounds in her voice. “She will be back quickly, and then we will go up on the mesa. If we go up there Su-hú-bi cannot come—he will not come when many people are about.”

“Listen to that,” cried Loki then, and far away they could clearly hear the sound of drums. But, nearer at hand, as they listened, came another ​sound—someone was taking away the logs at the door, and Nah-tee cried out loudly:

“How quickly you have come—and how we are glad!” And the door opened slowly, and in the bright light of the noonday sun that all but blinded them they saw standing—Su-hú-bi and two men!

“Oh!” said Nah-tee, and then she did not say any more, and Su-hú-bi stepped into the hogan leaving the other two men at the door. His eyes flashed around the room, and a very strange smile was on his face.

“It was not Su-hú-bi you expected to see?” he asked. “Who, then, has been here?” But the three children would not answer. “If it was a friend who came, why did he leave you here?” he asked again, and Loki looked down at the floor and dug his toe into the dust. A great feeling of anger was in his heart, anger for this man who smiled but looked through the eyes of a snake.

“Always you tell only lies,” he said then, in a very low voice, to Su-hú-bi. “Why do you fight the father of this girl and then tell lies to her?” The smile went away from the face of Su-hú-bi, and a black frown took its place, and he leaned down and looked sharply into the face of Loki.

​“For those words you shall pay,” he said, and his voice was like rocks that grated together. “I do not know with whose eyes you see—but you have seen too much. I came here with the thought to let you and this other boy go where you wish—the girl shall go back to the place from which she came—but now you go, too—both of you. Maybe sometime you will have a care what you see with those eyes and what you talk with that mouth.”

Moyo was watching carefully through the door to see if the fat woman came back with others. If only she would come then they might get away, but with three men to hold them here they could do nothing. Su-hú-bi too, thought of others who might come, and he called to the two men at the door.

“Watch the trail from the mesa and tell me if anyone comes. Watch, too, the way to the back of the hogan.” And then he looked at the children again and frowned. It was plain that he was puzzled what to do. It made a different matter that someone knew that they were in this place, and the words that Loki had said made a difference, too. They could not stay here, but where could he take them? And if he waited, who would come?

“Hi!” called one of the men at the door suddenly. ​“Here is one who comes!” and Nah-tee and Loki and Moyo looked up quickly with bright eyes, but Su-hú-bi in one step was at the door, and he saw the one who came, and a sound of great satisfaction came from him.

“That is well,” he cried. “Tell him to come. Tell him to come quickly. I, Su-hú-bi, say it!” and one of the men ran quickly out to meet someone and spoke to him in a high voice.

“It is a trader,” whispered Moyo to Loki, for he stood closer to the door than either of the other two and a little to one side and could see what they could not. “I can see how it is a trader, and he has a wagon with one horse.”

The man got down from his wagon and Su-hú-bi stepped out of the door to talk to him. He tried to make his words low so that the children could not hear, but every word came plainly to them.

“There are children here,” he said to the man. “They are very bad children and have run away from their home place to see this dance. They are from Zunani, the place near where you come from, and I want you to take them back.”

“But I take skins in my wagon, I do not want to take children,” said the man.

​“I will pay you well,” answered Su-hú-bi, “and you must be quick.”

“Why must I be quick?” asked the man, and there was suspicion in his voice. Loki cried out when he heard that:

“We are not from Zunani, and we have not run away—we do not want to go there. Su-hú-bi is evil, and his plan is evil!” Su-hú-bi did not turn around to look at him. Very clearly he felt that his time was short.

“The boy speaks lies so that he can stay,” he said. “And besides, I am Su-hú-bi—my word is strong here. You do the thing that I say or evil will come to you. Here! I will pay you much money.”

“It is not enough,” said the man, but he took the money that Su-hú-bi gave him. He was crafty and saw that Su-hú-bi must do the thing that he said. “It is not enough.” And Su-hú-bi gave him all the money that he had, and the silver chain about his neck, and the ring with a big blue stone that was on his hand, and the man grumbled at last that he would do the thing. Su-hú-bi came back into the hogan, and he and the two men bound thongs about Loki and Moyo and about Nah-tee, and lifted them and put them into the wagon of the trader, and ​covered them with skins that had an odor very unpleasant to smell. And so quickly had they worked that no one came, and in a very little while the man got up on the seat of his wagon and spoke to his horse.

“What do I do with them when I have come to Zunani?” he cried suddenly to Su-hú-bi.

“That I do not care,” answered Su-hú-bi. “I think they will not walk back from that place, and maybe no one will believe what they say—it does not matter.” And the evil smile came back to his face.

The trader gave a shrug to his shoulders and took up the reins of his horse, and as they started out over the desert he sang, under his breath, a queer old song, and Nah-tee and Loki and Moyo felt almost that they lived a thing that was a dream—only the smell of the skins was not pleasant, as most dreams are!