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“Then the Padre began to exhort them to give up this evil man in their midst and rid themselves of the consequences of sin, which he assured them were most certain and as terrible as they were sure. Then the white heart of Ho-tai remembered his own anguish, and spoke thickly, as a man drunk with peyote speaks.

“‘He must be given up,’ he said. It seemed to them that his voice came from the under world.

“But there was a great difficulty. The half-breed who had done the scalping had, at the first rumor of the soldiers coming, taken himself away. If the Hawikuhkwe said this to the Spaniards, they knew very well they would not be believed. But the mind of Ho-tai had begun to come back to him, feebly as from a far journey.

“He remembered that he had done something displeasing to the Padre, though he did not remember what, and on account of it there was doom over the valley of the Shiwina. He rose staggering in his place.

“‘Evil has been done, and the evil man must be cast out,’ he said, and for the first time the Padres noticed that he was half white. Not one of them had ever seen the man who scalped Father Letrado, but it was known that his father had been a soldier. This man was altogether such a one as they expected. His cheeks were drawn, his hair hung matted over his reddened eyes, as a man’s might, tormented of the spirit. ‘I am that man,’ said Ho-tai of the Two Hearts, and the Caciques put their hands over their mouths with astonishment.”

“But they never,” cried Oliver,–“they never let him be taken?”

“A life for a life,” said the Condor, “that is the law. It was necessary that the Spaniards be pacified, and the slayer could not be found. Besides, the people of Hawikuh thought Ho-tai’s offer to go in his place was from the gods. It agrees with all religions that a man may lay down his life for his people.”

“Couldn’t his wife do anything?”

“What could she? He went of his own will and by consent of the Caciques. But she tried what she could. She could give him peyote enough so that he should remember nothing and feel nothing of what the Spaniards should do to him. But to do that she had to make friends with one of the soldiers. She chose one Lujan, who had written his name on the Rock on the way to K’iakime. By him she sent a cake to Ho-tai, and promised to meet Lujan when she could slip away from the village unnoticed.

“Between here and Acoma,” said the Condor, “is a short cut which may be traveled on foot, but not on horseback. Returning with Ho-tai, manacled and fast between two soldiers, the Spaniards meant to take that trail, and it was there the wife of Ho-tai promised to meet Lujan at the end of the second day’s travel.

“She came in the twilight, hurrying as a puma, for her woman’s heart was too sore to endure her woman’s body. Lujan had walked apart from the camp to wait for her; smiling, he waited. She was still very beautiful, and he thought she was in love with him. Therefore, when he saw the long, hurrying stride of a puma in the trail, he thought it a pity so beautiful a woman should be frightened. The arrow that he sped from his cross-bow struck in the yellow flanks. ‘Well shot,’ said Lujan cheerfully, but his voice was drowned by a scream that was strangely like a woman’s. He remembered it afterward in telling of the extraordinary thing that had happened to him, for when he went to look, where the great beast had leaped in air and fallen, there was nothing to be found there. Nothing.

“If she had been in her form as a woman when he shot her,” said the Condor, “that is what he would have found. But she was a Passing Being, not taking form from without as we do, of the outward touchings of things, and her shape of a puma was as mist which vanishes in death as mist does in the sun. Thus shortens my story.”

“Come,” said the Road-Runner, understanding that there would be no more to the Telling. “The Seven Persons are out, and the trail is darkling.”

The children looked up and saw the constellation which they knew as the Dipper, shining in a deep blue heaven. The glow was gone from the high cliffs of El Morro, and the junipers seemed to draw secretly together. Without a word they took hands and began to run along the trail after the Road-Runner.

[THE END]

NOTE:

THE CONDOR’S STORY

The Old Zuni Trail may still be followed from the Rio Grande to the Valley of Zuni. El Morro, or “Inscription Rock,” as it is called, is between Acoma and the city of Old Zuni which still goes by the name of “Middle Ant Hill of the World.”

In a book by Charles Lummis, entitled Strange Corners of Our Country, there is an excellent description of the Rock and copies of the most interesting inscriptions, with translations.

The Padres of Southwestern United States were Franciscan Friars who came as missionaries to the Indians. They were not all of them so unwise as Father Letrado.

Peyote, the dried fruit of a small cactus, the use of which was only known in the old days to a few of the Medicine Men. The effect was like that of opium, and gave the user visions.