Читать книгу Waterless Mountain - Laura Adams Armer - Страница 7
ОглавлениеYELLOW BEAK
HEN Younger Brother and Mother reached home again late in the evening, all the family awaited them. Baby Sister was creeping on the floor and playing with the gray tiger cat. She waved her hands and laughed when she saw Mother. Everyone wanted to see what Mother had brought from the store. Of course there would be sugar and flour and coffee and maybe there would be canned peaches.
Sure enough there were canned peaches and a can of strawberry jam. Mother was surprised to find the jam because she had not traded for it. The Big Man must have put it in for a present. Younger Brother was sure it was meant for him because the Big Man had called him Grandchild.
Every time Younger Brother became acquainted with people they gave him something to remember them by. The Star Children had shaken star-dust to him. The Cloud People had poured water for him. The Earth Mother had given him corn to eat and now the Big Man with the smile had given him strawberry jam. He would keep the colored picture that was on the can. He put it inside his shirt while no one was looking.
Mother saved the jam for breakfast and next morning, which was warm and sunny, everyone sat outside the hogan to eat. The coffee boiling on the campfire added new sweetness to the desert air.
The lambs skipped over the rocks and bees buzzed about the sagebrush. The lone cottonwood tree harbored a host of little birds and one mocking-bird sang as loud as he could, in imitation of all the other bird people. It was a morning when everything sang a song.
Younger Brother strolled toward the corral, still eating his strawberry jam. There was jam on his bread, on his little brown fingers and all around his lips. The bees were attracted to it. They thought it was some new kind of sweet red flower. They settled on the edge of the bread and began to eat their breakfast.
Younger Brother stood still to watch them. He did not brush them away and soon they were crawling on his hands and one even lit on his sweet red lips and ate to his heart’s content. When they were through he said to them:
“The Big Man sent it to us. He is our friend.”
So while the sweet cedar smoke rose to greet the morning sky and while the birds sang and the bees buzzed, Younger Brother let down the bars of the corral and all the sheep ran out, ready to start on the daily hunt for grass.
Mother was boiling water on the campfire for the red dye she had brought from the post. Already she had shrunk her white yarn in the hot water and had wound it round and round the outside of the hogan to dry. Because she shrunk the yarn she spun, the finished rug kept its shape when it was washed. Mother made the best rugs of all the women.
Father was melting Mexican silver dollars in a clay crucible and pouring the molten metal into a mold chiseled out of sandstone. He had greased the mold with mutton tallow before pouring in the molten silver. He was making a bracelet for Younger Brother. It was to have a very blue turquoise set in the middle with butterflies engraved on each side of the stone. Father was a very great silversmith.
Elder Brother had gone rabbit hunting and Younger Brother must be off with the sheep. Every day he had to travel further from home because, little by little, the grass was disappearing before the hungry sheep. The little shepherd went higher up the canyon than he had ever been before.
He reached the place of crooked rocks where the crooked stone people sat around in circles. They sat around a stone fire with stone flames and everything was quiet. Younger Brother knew that some of the huge crooked rocks had once been giants, who went about the country destroying people.
He had heard about the two splendid children of the Sun Bearer, who had come to earth to save the Navahos from the wicked giants. He knew how the Sun Bearer had given weapons of lightning to his sons and how they had hurled thunderbolts at the giants to slay them.
Younger Brother was most respectful to the crooked rocks. He let the sheep graze at their base but he wouldn’t think of climbing on a lone rock himself. He watched the birds fly about them and he wondered if there were any eagle nests resting in the arms of the quiet stone giants.
He knew that the Eagle People lived somewhere in the deep blue, high above the people of the earth. He was respectful to the eagles also because he knew they could look down on him and see everything he did. He was extremely respectful in his thought of the Eagle People, who seemed as mighty as the sun that was shining so ardently on the strange weird forms of the stone giants.
While the sheep lazily grazed in the noontime, Younger Brother rested in the shade of the rocks. He could hear the wind singing in the canyon. The Wind People were always kindly in the summer time. They played with tumbleweeds, rolling them over and over and making them hide in the little hollows at the base of the cliffs. They danced in spirals in the sunshine and sometimes they lifted the red band off of Younger Brother’s head and waved it to the tumbleweeds.
The little boy felt very lazy lying on the ground with his hands behind his head. He felt dreamy and drowsy while the wind murmured in the canyon. He listened to its song and soon he seemed to hear the words:
“Look up, Grandchild, look up, Grandchild.”
He looked up, way, way up to the crest of the strange rocks and there he saw Yellow Beak, the eagle. He had ridden the sun rays from out of the far blue and was resting on top of one of the rocks. He was as still as the rocks themselves. Everything was still. The wind stopped singing, the tumbleweeds lay quiet, and even the sheep were motionless before the majesty of Yellow Beak.
He did not move a feather. He just looked down at Younger Brother with his strong eagle eyes which could look straight at the sun without blinking.
Younger Brother was very still too, looking up, looking up. He felt small and earthbound and respectful, oh, so very respectful. He was not afraid of Yellow Beak, and he was not wishing for Mother as he did when the thunder spoke. He was just looking up and Yellow Beak was looking down, but both of them knew that something was happening.
Younger Brother remembered that his people set traps baited with rabbits, for the eagles. He knew that when a Navaho trapped an eagle, he never killed him, but took his tail feathers and soft downy feathers and let him fly away.
Medicine men needed the feathers to put around the pictures of the sun and on the mask of the dawn god. Younger Brother knew that the medicine men must have eagle feathers but he wished eagles did not have to be trapped.
He hoped no one would ever trap Yellow Beak who was looking down on him and making him understand things the way the stars did, the way the rainbow did and the way the Big Man did when he smiled.
Just as he was wishing and hoping for the freedom of the eagles, dazzling light and color streamed down from the sky. Yellow Beak slowly lifted his wings and mounted the sun rays. He gave a glad call from the deep blue, waved his wings to Younger Brother and was soon lost to sight.
Slowly in the warm light something fluttered from the heights. It came nearer and nearer and fell at Younger Brother’s feet. He picked it up and held it to his heart. It was a tail feather Yellow Beak had sent to him. He held it to his lips and breathed on it four times, then he hid it in his shirt. He would care for it some way. He would not let anyone know what happened; not even Mother nor Uncle—not yet.
The feather had come to him right out of the sky. Yellow Beak had sent it to him on a ray of light. More would come when he needed them. He knew they would always come when he needed them, for Yellow Beak was his friend.
