The Runaway Papoose/Chapter 8

Before the very first peep of old Father Sun, Nah-tee jumped to her feet in the stone house on the cliff and with shining eyes began to shake the blanket on which she had slept. Already the old man had gone from the room, and Moyo sat rubbing his eyes before the little fire which was snapping away happily as if it, too, knew that things were to happen this day.

“It is day,” cried Nah-tee. “See, how it is day—and the very day when we will go to that big mesa!”

“Do you think we can walk to that place?” asked Moyo. “It is a far place—even yet it is far.”

“Maybe the old man has a horse,” said Nah-tee. “Surely sometimes he must go somewhere, and I ​think he cannot walk very far. Maybe he has a friend who has a horse that we can take, and when you come back this way you could bring him.”

“No,” said a voice in the doorway just then, and the old man walked into the room, “I have no horse, and the friends who bring me things do not live near, so I cannot get a horse from them, but I have a little goat—maybe you could ride the little goat,” and his eyes had such a twinkle in them that even Moyo could not help smiling.

“Maybe on the trail we shall see one who has a burro or a horse that Nah-tee can ride,” he said. “I do not need to ride—I can walk to far places.” But the old man still smiled at him.

“We shall see,” he said. “That little goat of mine is very strong, maybe you will say different things when you see him. But now we must eat, and you must go quickly before the sun makes the day too hot.”

And very soon all three of them were climbing down the side of the cliff, putting careful hands and feet in the hole places made there so long ago by the little people of the stone houses; and Moyo had blankets on his back that the old man had given him, and all the food that he could carry; and even ​Nah-tee carried a water bottle of water with a soft thong that came across her forehead. And it was good, when they reached the bottom of the rocky wall, to stand down on the sand once more and to feel that it was firm and solid. When they were all down the old man said:

“Wait here,” and disappeared behind a big rock, but he came back almost immediately, and he was leading a horse by a piece of thong. Moyo gave a shout of joy when he saw that horse, and he felt like jumping up and down as Nah-tee did.

“It is Niki!” he cried, and the pony threw up his head and gave a glad little sound of welcome as he heard his voice. “Oh, where did you find him?” he cried to the old man, and threw his arms about the neck of the little pony. Nah-tee, too, was greatly excited and danced about them both, and the old man watched them with shining eyes.

“He came to me,” he said in answer to Moyo. “I did not find him—he came around the corner of the cañon to the little corral where I keep my goat, and when I came with food for the goat there was that one, too, waiting for food. I think maybe my little goat told him that I do not beat animals, and he waited to see.” And the twinkle in the old man’s ​eyes was brighter than ever. “Maybe you will not walk now,” he said to Moyo, and Moyo answered him by tying the blankets to the back of the pony. and then jumping up on top of them, and when he called to Nah-tee to come, only the little tremble in his voice showed how happy he was. But Nah-tee had, with the happy feeling, a sorry one to leave this good old man.

“Maybe you will come, sometime, to that mesa,” she said a little wistfully, and the old man nodded brightly.

“I will come—sometime,” he said. “And now, look at this.” He gave a soft buckskin bag with a long loop of thong about its neck into her hand. “This is a thing to give into the hands of Lampayo, who is chief on the mesa—not to anyone else must you give it—and tell him the things you have told to me—all of them—and he will know what to do. And tell him that all is well in this place—Naybi gives you that message—tell him all of it.”

“I will tell him,” said Nah-tee, and she slipped the loop of thong about her neck and dropped the little bag down into the top of her dress where it would be safe. And then the old man gave them very careful directions as to how they were to go to reach ​the mesa, and he waved his hand to them as Niki turned with a clatter of his little hoofs and flew down the cañon, very glad to be free again. And Nah-tee looked back for a long time until a turn in the cañon hid the old man from her sight, and she blinked hard to keep back the little hot drops from her eyes.

“I like that old man,” she said to Moyo. “He is good, and I wish very much that he would come to the mesa.”

“Yes, he is good,” answered Moyo, “but, oh, how it is fine to feel this pony under me again—and look how we are coming out of the canon. Nah-tee, look how we are getting near to the desert!”

And never had anything looked so beautiful to either one of them as that desert looked! The red buttes, and the little stunted trees, and the great sweeps of open country, and the rolling hills and sandy washes, and the sage everywhere—and the tang of it in the air—and the big sky with the puffy little clouds rolling over it. Nah-tee was almost bursting with the joy of it.

“I think never was the sky so big!” she cried. “And the air so like a thing to eat—and the sunshine!—I think it is like—like———”

“I think,” said Moyo suddenly, “the sunshine is

​like the yellow prayer meal that they have in shrine places to send to the four ways—it looks to me like that.”

“Yes, like that,” nodded Nah-tee, “and like a smile feeling in the heart. I think the sunshine is the smile feeling of all the outdoors. I wish always the sun would shine.” And when the sun was straight overhead in the sky and the pony stepped on his own shadow, they stopped under a pinyon tree and ate some of the food the old man had given them, and Nah-tee jumped up and down to get the queer, dizzy feeling out of her legs, and then they climbed up on the pony again and rode always in the way the old man had told them to go, to the mesa. And when they had been riding for a little while, all at once they heard a sound that they both had heard before, and Nah-tee opened her eyes very wide and looked at Moyo.

“It is the fat one,” she said in a queer voice that had surprise and almost a laugh in it. “Listen, how it is the voice of the fat one. Maybe he will have mad thoughts for you, Moyo, that you made his little burro to run.”

“Oi-ee,” the voice was saying, “ai-ee—what now—what now—can I do? What can an old man do now?” ​And then they came upon him sitting on a rock in a sandy wash, and not anywhere could they see the little burro—he was gone.

“Why do you speak in a sad voice?” asked Moyo a little timidly. He was not just sure what the fat one would say when he saw who it was that spoke, but he did not seem to remember that he had ever seen either one of them before, and he looked up without surprise in his eyes at Moyo’s words.

“Ai-ee,” he said again, “it is thieves who have been here. Have a care or they will take all that you, too, have. Look how they have taken the burro of an old man—and all that was on it—a burro that was good and faithful. Always he carried me faster than any horse, and I loved him more dearly than a brother. Ai-ee, is it any wonder that my voice is sad? And now I must walk—always I must walk. Evil ones—that they were!” and he shook his fist out toward the place in the desert where those robber ones had gone.

“When did they take the burro—and who was it that took him?” asked Moyo, and a little worry look came into his face. It was not often that thieves came into the desert, and he did not like the thought.

“At this very hour of the day yesterday, it was.” ​said the fat one. “And since that time I have had no food. Two evil ones, they were—very dark men and not like our men of the desert. The Great Spirit will punish them for what they have done.”

Moyo quickly gave to him food and water from his little store, but more than that he could not do, as it was very plain that the fat one could not ride on his pony.

“There is one thing that you can do,” said the man, with his mouth full of food. “It is good that you came, for you can do this—look!” and he pointed to the far horizon in the way that they were going. “There is a red rock over there—red like the sky when the sun goes down—and it is shaped like an oven of the Hopi people—round with one little tree on the very top. It is a thing you will see and cannot mistake. Right by the side of that rock is the hogan of my brother. Tell him that I am here, and he will come and bring a horse, and then I will not have to walk.”

“We will tell him,” cried Moyo, and he shook the bridle thong for the pony to go. “We will tell him, and we will be there very soon,” and he was glad there was a way he could help the fat one, for he felt very sorry for him that he had lost his burro. And, ​as they went flying over the desert again, Nah-tee was very thoughtful and her fingers held tight, through her dress, to the little buckskin bag the old man had given her.

“I hope those thief men have gone very far away,” she said. “I would not want to see them.”

“If we see them,” said Moyo, “I will make the pony to go very fast—no thief pony could go as fast as this pony. I am not afraid.” And Nah-tee liked the look in his eyes when he said that, and she forgot about the thieves after a little while. And as they rode all that afternoon until the sun began to make long shadows over the desert and they saw nothing but little hares in the sage and once a gray hawk in the sky, she remembered only that every clickety-clack of the pony’s little feet brought them nearer and nearer to that big stone mesa. And of every little hill and butte that they saw in the distance outlined against the sky she would ask Moyo:

“Is that the mesa, Moyo? Do you think that is the mesa where we go!?” But Moyo would shake his head.

“It is big,” he said. “You will know when we see it.” And when he had said that as many times as there are fingers on one hand—a thing happened! ​They were coming near to the little red hill with the one tree on the top—from a great distance they had seen it—but even nearer than the little hill was a big rock that stood beside the trail; and just as they came to this rock, without any sound or call of warning two men stepped out from behind it, right in front of the pony, and one of them caught the bridle thong and held it tight while they looked with fierce eyes at the children.

“Let me go!” cried Moyo. “I know who you are—let me go. You are very evil men.” The man who held the bridle opened his eyes very wide at that.

“Maybe you know who we are,” he said then, “but we do not know who you are. There is a thing that I would ask you.”

“Let me go!” cried Moyo again, and he pulled the head of the pony back with a jerk, and the thong came out of the hand of the man.

“Stop!” cried the man, and the tone of his voice almost made the heart of Nah-tee stand still. “You have come from out there in the desert—maybe you have seen what has happened. It is of my brother that I would ask—his burro has come back and my brother has not come.”

Moyo pulled in the pony quickly, for he was about ​to spring away, and he looked at the man with his eyes open very wide.

“He is a big man and fat—my brother,” said the man. “Have you seen a man like that?”

“Why did you not say at the first that you were his brother?” asked Moyo, and it was the men who looked surprised now, and the look in their eyes made Moyo laugh. “Yes, we have seen him,” he said, “and I thought at the very first that you were the ones who had robbed him.”

“Ai-ee,” said one of the men, “then robbers have taken him?”

“Not him,” said Moyo, and then he laughed again suddenly, “and not anything at all if that burro has come back—it was the burro that the men took.” Nah-tee clapped her hands quickly then.

“That burro knew how to run—it was Moyo that taught him how—and this time it has saved him from the thief men.”

The two men looked very much confused at these things, but when Moyo had explained to them and had told them how he had left the fat one, they laughed, too, a little, and did not worry any more, and then they led the way to the hogan by the little red hill.

​“This night you will stay here,” said the brother of the fat one, ‘‘and I will ride and bring back my brother from that wash—and you can see how to-morrow you will not have a great way to go,” and Nah-tee looked eagerly to the place where he pointed. They had come around a corner of that red hill, and there, across the desert, rising high and blue and sharp against the horizon, was the most beautiful thing that she had ever seen—that is what Nah-tee thought as she looked at it—the mesa—like a dream thing with the stone pueblo on its top; and Nah-tee danced on her toes and cried aloud to the sky:

“To-morrow—oh, how I shall be glad when it is to-morrow!” And Moyo and the two men smiled—they could not help it—to see the happiness shine in her eyes.