The Runaway Papoose/Chapter 9

And up there on the high rock of the mesa was excitement—the very nicest kind of excitement! On the next day would begin the big time of the year for the pueblo—the time of dances and feasting and many other things—and Chi-weé was on tiptoe outside and inside with the joy of thinking of it. Already the old men were in the kivas, and the young men testing strength of mind and body in lonely places in the desert, where they ran long races and went without food, and everywhere could be heard the deep booming of the medicine drums. This time Chi-weé was to have a part in one of the dances, and she tried to shut-her mind to the thought of it—it was ​such an exciting thought that she felt she could not wait if she thought much about it; and she tried not to smell the good things that were cooking everywhere—always before a dance time there were such delicious odors in the air that any little girl could hardly stand it; and afterward—Chi-weé rubbed the front of her little dress thoughtfully and wondered how many of those good things she could tuck away under that dress that was not very loose even now. Maybe, if she would run for a long time out in the desert, it would grow looser—and that seemed a good plan, so she started down the trail.

Chi-weé was not a big girl, and on the outside she looked very much the same as Nah-tee, if one did not look close, but on the inside she was not at all like her. Nah-tee was quiet on the inside and Chi-weé was never quiet—she was like the sunshine on moving water and like the little whirls of sand in the desert, for there was something in her that danced, and when she went into the stone house on the mesa that was her home, always her mother began to sing over her grinding, and the little baby brother made gurgle sounds with his mouth and held out chubby arms to be taken, and even the growliest people always smiled when she came near. Chi-weé was ​Indian and lived in this pueblo on the high rock—always she had lived there, and the very air was home.

It was nice on the trail, and Chi-weé was glad she had come. Back in the little house on the mesa was a great basket of meal that she had ground, all soft and feathery, to be made into piki bread—and the water jar was filled to brimming with cool, sweet water from the spring, and she had brushed and shaken everything that could be brushed or shaken. And so she gave a little skip of joy as she thought how now she could go down to the desert and chase little hares, or maybe Loki would be there with some new plan for play—always Loki thought of some new thing to do, and she liked better to play with him than with anyone else she knew, even if he was a boy and Navajo.

But Loki was not there when she reached the foot of the trail, and there were no little hares anywhere, but the wind sang a dare song for her to come out into the desert, and a little pinyon tree rattled its cones with a sound like laughing, almost in her very face—and just as Chi-weé put up her hands to give the little pinyon tree a greater shaking, she saw Loki coming on his pony, and he was followed by a ​high cloud of dust which showed that he was coming fast.

“Hi!” he called when he came near enough. “I am glad that you are down the trail. I came to tell you—and maybe you would like to see us catch them.”

“What is it?” cried Chi-weé, and the excitement that was in Loki’s face was reflected right away in hers. She caught hold of the thong of his pony and stood on her tiptoes to hear what he would say—she thought she would hear quicker that way.

“It is burros,” he said, and not yet had he got his breath, so that he could say very few words at a time. “Old Mah-pee-ti saw them—wild burros. He knew that they were in the upper country where it is very dry, and the storm brought water down in a wash—over there”—he waved his arm—“and they could smell it and have come to get it. Quick, if you would see them. I have a rope and I can use it. I have used it many times with little cows. I will catch one of those burros—maybe one for you and one for me, too.”

“Wait!” cried Chi-weé, and already she was running to the corral where she kept Magic, her pony, and before you could think a thought as big as a squash seed she was on it and riding like the wind ​after Loki in the desert. She could ride like a very part of the pony itself now, and that was another way in which she was different from Nah-tee. This was the very thing she had wanted—this was the way to make the day go fast so that the time for the dance would come quickly—and wild burros! How she would love to have one for her very own. The little dare wind blew about her cheeks and sent the red into them and made the small knob of her black hair stand out like a little banner behind her. Magic liked to run, too, and every once in a while he would kick up his heels just with the joy of being alive, and Loki shouted back to Chi-weé things about those burros.

“There is a big one leading them, and Mah-pee-ti says he is very fine and would be worth many dollars. Mah-pee-ti is waiting near the wash where the water is. I think with three of us we can very easily catch them.”

But when they came up to Mah-pee-ti he did not think it would be such an easy thing.

“But maybe we can do it,” he said. “For one reason maybe we can do it. They have come for water, and it will be an easy thing to drive them down into this wash. They have not got down to the ​water yet because the side of the wash where they are now is too steep to climb down—or to climb up again either, and that is the reason why we may catch them. We will drive them to a place I know where the bank is not so steep, and then, when they are down, I will make them to go back to the place where it is steep—only they will be down in the wash—and on the other side, the low side, Chi-weé will wave her hands and make much noise, so they will not go up that way, and below in the wash, in the only way that they can go, Loki will be waiting with his rope. It is the big one that we will try to catch—he is very fine—and if Loki can catch him I will come to help. Me, I do not know how to use that rope. Now, I wish that I had learned.”

And Chi-weé, too, wished that she could use the rope, though she thought maybe she was too little to hold a big burro even if she did catch him. Mah-pee-ti pointed out the burros in a very little while, and it took sharp eyes to see them moving in the sage, where almost they were the same color as it was, and if they had not been moving Chi-weé thought that she could not have seen them at all.

It was easy to drive the burros down into the wash, but very exciting, for when they saw the horses ​they ran very fast and almost fell down the steep bank; and Chi-weé cried out when it looked as if the bank would cave in with them, but they were not hurt at all, and several of them ran right up the other bank, where it was low, and got away, and then Chi-weé drove her pony across to the low side and waved her arms like a little scarecrow in a cornfield and called out as loud as she could, and Mah-pee-ti came slowly after the burros, driving them down the middle of the wash where there was a narrow stream of water. Loki had made his pony go very fast and was far down the wash where the burros would have to come, and Chi-weé stretched her neck as far as she could to try and see him throw the rope at the big burro, but there was a turn in the wash, and she could not see him. She heard him shout once and then again, so she made her pony go fast around the turn place to see what happened.

Already the burros were gone—not anywhere could she see them—and old Mah-pee-ti was sitting on his little horse and laughing until the tears dropped from his eyes, and Loki had climbed down from his pony and was pulling his rope away from a little pinyon tree in the side of the wash, and he did not look at Mah-pee-ti and he did not laugh, but his ​face was redder than Chi-weé had ever seen it before. She opened her eyes very wide. What could have happened, and where were the burros?

“How could I know that he would run straight at my pony?” said Loki, and he spoke as if he was angry. “If he had not come straight at me the rope would have gone over his head.”

“And it did!” cried Mah-pee-ti in a voice made high with laughing. “Very straight over his head went that rope—with my own eyes I saw it—straight over his head and onto the very nice little pinyon tree. But it is not a pinyon tree that we want.” He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his jacket. “Ai-ee, but the funny thing was the look in your face when you saw the burro run away and the rope stay still.” And Chi-weé did not have to ask any more questions to know what had happened. She had a sorry place in her heart for Loki, for she knew that the anger in his voice was just to hide the hurt that was there.

“Tt was not a thing that anyone could do—or you would have done it, Loki,” she said, and old Mah-pee-ti looked at her with eyes that still twinkled merrily. Loki did not answer, but the red in his face went away a little, and he climbed up again to the back of his pony. And all at once Chi-weé lifted her head with a ​startled look and listened. She had heard a little sound in the sage on the high bank of the wash, and without speaking to the other two, she looked for a place where her pony could climb up, and he scrambled up to the place where they had first seen the burros, and Chi-weé looked eagerly around. Almost immediately she saw what had made that sound, and she jumped down eagerly from her pony with a little pity sound in her throat. It was a small, fuzzy gray ball that lay on the ground, with stiff, awkward little legs sprawled about it, and one leg seemed to be doubled up in some way. The soft brown eyes that were turned up to Chi-weé’s face made an ache place in her heart, and she took that little head in her arms and put her cheek down to the soft gray fur. Loki and Mah-pee-ti came scrambling up the bank close behind her to see what it was that had brought her here, and they both got quickly down from their ponies and came close to the little gray creature.

“It is a baby,” cried Chi-Weé. “See how it is a little baby burro, and the others have gone and left it here.”

“I think it is hurt,” said Mah-pee-ti, “or it would have gone with them. Let us see.” And Chi-weé moved away that Mah-pee-ti might lift the little ​creature very tenderly and see what was the matter. “It is the hole of a prairie dog,” said the old man. “See, his foot has gone down into the hole and he could not get up—but it is not broken,” he added in a voice that quickly showed relief. “See how it is not broken.” The little burro was standing uncertainly now on all four legs and looked from one to the other in a very funny way. “I think, maybe, he was stunned a very little bit,” said old Mah-pee-ti, “and that is why he did not run with the others.”

“I would like very much to keep him, but I think he must go with his mother,” said Chi-weé wistfully, and she gave the tiny creature a little push in the direction in which the others had gone, but he did not move, he only looked up into her face and pressed his little body close against her skirts.

“Oh,” cried Chi-weé, “he does not want to go—he wants to stay with me.” And then she wanted to carry him away on the back of her pony, but Mah-pee-ti laughed at that.

“Get up on your horse and see what he will do,” he said, and when she did that the baby burro stood uncertainly for a moment on those shaky little legs that did not seem somehow to be a part of him, and then, when Chi-weé rode slowly away, he followed ​after her in a funny, stiff-legged little gallop that made them all laugh. It made Chi-weé happy to see that he did want to be with her and would follow her back to the mesa, where she could give him a home in the corral with her pony and her goat. She went very slowly so that he would not tire too easily, and never did she take her eyes from him as she rode.

But Loki had eyes for other things. He was watching the many trails of dust hanging in the air, which meant Indians riding in from every direction to the high mesa for the big ceremonies and dances which were to begin the very next day. Lampayo, the chief man in the pueblo, had said that never before had there been such dances as they were to have this time, and one big ceremony, he said, would make the people very happy, and would be a surprise. Loki was curious about that, and very much excited. He felt that all the things that happened on the mesa were his things, as he lived so near by in the hogan of his mother, and his friends were mostly the people of the mesa; but some friends he had who lived out in the desert, as he did, and he watched now to see if any came. And old Mah-pee-ti rode behind them all, singing a low, queer song to himself.

​“Look how he runs,” cried Chi-weé to Loki. “Look how that baby burro runs—I think he will be very fine and strong when he is grown, and he will help my father to bring wood to the mesa.” Loki looked at her and laughed.

“It has just come into my head,” he said, “how it will look when that burro is grown and you go into the desert with him. First will come Magic—he is big—and after that the burro, and then will come Ba-ba,” he grinned. “It will be like a show thing, and maybe people will come to see how you look. I think now you should get a rabbit who is tame and will follow after Ba-ba, and then, after the rabbit, maybe a little horned toad.” Chi-weé laughed back at him.

“That would be a fine thing,” she said. “And after the horned toad could come Loki with a little stick in his hand to make them mind and walk in the right trail.” Mah-pee-ti chuckled as they talked, but the little burro walked slower and slower and finally stopped with a queer little look at Chi-weé.

“He is tired,” she cried quickly, and scrambled down from her pony and put her arm about the little gray neck of the burro. Loki looked at her and grinned sheepishly at a sudden thought.

​“It is a queer thing,” he said, “how I throw a rope and get only a pinyon tree, and you do not throw a rope, and see how you get a burro.”

Mah-pee-ti grinned when Loki said that, but there was something more than a joke sound in his voice when he spoke.

“There are ropes that are not made of see things,” he said. “They go more surely than the other kind—and maybe that is the kind of a rope that Chi-weé has thrown.” And Chi-weé smiled into the brown eyes of the little burro and did not answer.

And now the day of the big dances was almost here—and nearer and nearer across the desert rode Nah-tee and Moyo—and closer and closer came other things—that they did not know anything about—ANY OF THEM!