Читать книгу Blue Feather and Other Stories - Zane Grey - Страница 5

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Taneen commanded the presence of Blue Feather.

“Nopah, whence this wager with Tith-lei?”

“Chief, your braves have driven the Nopah mad with their gibes. And Tith-lei is first among them. Can Blue Feather withstand their taunts forever? The Nopahs are proud. My father would disown me did he know of the taunts I must endure.”

The Sheboyah chieftain believed the young warrior’s accusations to be only too true, and he was a fair and just man. Generation after generation the Rock Clan had been addicted to the vice of gambling. In times of drought, when there was no hunting, no visiting other clans, the braves had nothing to do but play and gamble. Taneen had been accustomed to look upon this weakness with a tolerant eye. But his priests had been harping upon these present vices as indicative of the decline of their race. Some strange form of intoxication seemed to attend their gambling of recent weeks.

“Taneen’s wisdom judges Blue Feather as having been sent by the gods to test his people. If they have grown soft and weak then a time of trial should be welcome. What is this latest wager that has made Declis and Clodothie mouth like the brave with twisted mind—Dageel?”

“The Mole wants to drive the Nopah away. Ba-lee had looked upon the Nopah with favor. Tith-lei wagers that Blue Feather cannot descend from the walls unaided, kill an antelope and climb back with it before the sunset of the third day.”

The chieftain made a gesture of impatience. “Tith-lei is not cunning. He is a fool. He taunts, he dares only in his own interest. He is unworthy of Taneen’s clan!”

“Blue Feather accepted the Mole’s wager,” replied the Nopah loftily.

“It is death. No brave could scale these walls burdened with the carcass of an antelope.... Taneen will cancel the wager.”

“No, Chief. Blue Feather’s word is given.”

Taneen laid aside his long staff. He had never been blessed with a son. His only child was Nashta, Daughter of the Moon, precious as the ruddy drops of Taneen’s heart’s blood. But the sun was never to shine upon her beautiful face, and he could never stand before his clan proudly to acknowledge her. Now his sore and troubled breast received this Nopah, this alien, this blue-feathered young giant as he would receive a son. Taneen felt his love go out to him.

“What if the Nopah wins?” he asked.

“Tith-lei will meet him in mortal combat on the field.”

“What if the Nopah loses?”

“Blue Feather returns all he has won and looks no more upon any maiden of the clan.”

“Nopah, the antelope have gone from the valley,” rejoined Taneen sternly.

“Blue Feather did not know. But he will track them.”

Taneen took up his staff and motioned his attendants to leave the Nopah with him alone.

“Taneen’s sun is setting. There is a step on his trail. His clan is spent. His days are numbered. Blue Feather can make the outcome of this test a happy one. Let him win this unfair wager. Let him kill Tith-lei!”

The Nopah gazed long into the dark inscrutable face of the chief. He could see that the old chieftain’s simple words were sincere. They heaped more coals of fire upon Blue Feather’s head. Already his conscience had been flayed by gentler, sweeter words, from the lovely lips of this great chief’s hidden daughter.

Blue Feather had accepted Tith-lei’s wager because it offered an excuse for him to leave the citadel. He must flee—from himself, from the carrying out of this ruthless and terrible plot that had ripened under his craft, flee from the loveliest and most loving maiden in all this world and that beyond.

“Taneen honors the Nopah. Not yet has he deserved honor. But if Blue Feather returns....”

He bowed himself out of the chief’s presence. To utter still more falsehoods had become impossible. He had been stricken. He was no longer the infallible spy of the Nopahs.

Blue Feather took only time to fill his pouch with parched grain and dried meat, then snatching up his bow and quiver he ran out to leap down from the terraces, deaf to the plaudits of the braves, blind to the lament and the weeping of the maidens. Bounding along the ramparts like a mountain goat he chose a point on the south wall to descend. In that moment he could have bidden defiance to space itself. But his hands, his feet, clung like lichens to the rock, as down and down and down he went, swift and sure, to drop at last upon the slope at the base of the wall. Bobbing heads and flying hair and waving arms were silhouetted black against the sky line above. He waved in answer to the long shrill yells and bounded away over the rocks to the north, soon vanishing from sight.

That ragged slope was to Blue Feather as a multitude of enemies, every rock of which seemed a foe to spurn. He ran, he leaped. He set the avalanches rolling. He might have been pursued by the winged spirits of those who had died with twisted minds. That league-long slope of talus, ending in the red gorge, was as a short space of thin air to the Nopah. No feat of endurance in any game he had ever played, no race he had ever run to the plaudits of the clan, could compare to this descent alone, seen only by the spirits, driven as he was by his tortured conscience.

But at the mouth of the gorge, where Blue Feather halted, spent and hot and wet with perspiration, with the dust caked on his lips, he found that the demons he had fled from were beside him still. His labored heartbeats sounded in his ears like a muffled drum. Vain had been his pride, his vaunted boast, his blind conceit. He was no god. He was only a mortal Nopah. And death shuddered in his soul.

Far back up the endless slope, far above, he saw the gold-banded walls, the black-fringed line of the citadel of the Rock Clan. He had torn himself away from what was more precious than honor or glory or life itself.

The gorge below him was the gateway to the land of chasms. Down in there, in a green, watered valley, waited the Nopahs. Blue Feather spurred himself erect and strode on. He reached the bottom, where the dry stream bed wound, where the huge red rocks blocked the way, where the lizards basked in the sun. Gold faded off the rims of the walls; purple shadows fell like curtains; and the winding ribbon of blue sky above yielded to the deep blue of the night.

Blue Feather’s violence had expended itself. He felt his way along in the pale gloom of the walls. His devils had lagged behind. He still heard them, threatening, whispering. But as he passed under the arch of stone there were silent voices that told him many things he had never dreamed before.

He had fled from Nashta and the love that had torn him asunder. All the hours of the many nights he had spent with her, under the dreaming walls, beside the shimmering pool, seemed to crowd upon him with their rapture. No maiden on earth or in heaven had ever been like Nashta. She was as lovely as the slender white blossom leaning to the wind from the side of the precipice. She was more innocent than any child. She was more loving than any woman. She knew but little. Fear did not abide in her, nor jealousy, nor temper, nor hate. The squaws who had taught her had left out knowledge of birth, death, battle, love, marriage—all the common things natural to a girl of the Rock Clan. The maidens who had attended her, after childhood, had only confused her with the legends, the games, the courtships of the tribe. Nashta had given to Blue Feather the wondrous worship of a strange and lovely creature born of the fatal and unquenchable love of a queen and chief whose clans were bitterly estranged. From the hour Blue Feather had clasped her to his breast she had begun to live; and afterward every one of her endless queries, the sweet proofs that she lived only for the time she could be with him, the kisses at which first she laughed and then yearned for insatiably, seemed mute and tragic evidences that if she lost him she would die. Blue Feather had known this, but it was better that she die than live to be carried a naked captive to a Nopah cave. And on his side Blue Feather, too had been transformed, riven as if by the lightning blast, so that his ruthless purpose, his callous degrading of the braves, his gay conquest of the maidens, burned a living hell of remorse in his soul, and a torture of love that ended for him all hope and joy and beauty and labor and life, unless he could share them with Nashta.

In the long night hours those voices of the walls attended Blue Feather, and forced upon him that which he had not dreamed of before his flight.

Day had broken gray when Blue Feather smelled smoke and heard the barking of half-wild dogs. The gorge opened into a green valley enclosed by rounded walls of red, billowing upward to craggy heights.

The lean-jawed scouts who sighted him first heralded his return by whoops, which were answered in kind by the waiting hosts, so that a veritable thunder assailed the walls, and re-echoed from side to side, at last to rumble away along the distant cliffs.

Blue Feather had not before seen the Nopah warriors through the vision now given him. A thousand strong were they, tall, gaunt, somber-eyed, hungry-jawed giants, eager to find, to slay, to take, to gorge. And his father, Nothis Toh, stern-visaged like a vulture, held war and blood in his commanding eye.

“Docleas,” he said, with a kingly paternal pride in this great son, “the days were long. Nothis Toh gives welcome and rejoices. The Nopahs are hungry for corn and meat and squaws. What of the Little People?”

Blue Feather leaned on his bow. “Father, and chief, Docleas brings ill tidings. The Nopahs must hunt far across the red river, two moons away to the cedar plains of Shibeta.... Docleas found at last the Rock Clan of the Sheboyahs. Many little people, poor and sick in the midst of a famine. They live on a high cliff that Docleas could not climb without help. They have no meat, and the antelope have left their pastures. They have corn and water enough to last a siege, but for the Nopahs that siege would be folly. They have no treasure of turquoise, no skins, no blankets. The squaws are old and lean and shiftless. Their maidens have been married to a distant clan.... Docleas will try again, far to the west. But he must have many moons. Go home with your braves to our corn and meat and women. If Blue Feather does not return to his father before the green buds burst again—then he will never come.”

“Docleas is a great son of a great chief,” cried Nothis Toh, and gave order for his warriors to march to the north.

Before the sun descended that day Blue Feather stood upon a windy height, and with wet and gleaming eyes saw the Nopahs, like a slender column of marching ants, winding their way down a gorge toward the sullen river.

Both agony and joy stirred in his heart. He had failed his father, disowned his people, cast off forever the Nopah maiden who waited for him. He was lost to glory and wealth. He was a traitor to blood and creed.

With passion-shaken breath Blue Feather turned to the heights and swept a long arm upward.

“Docleas, the Nopah, is dead,” he cried to the listening ears of the rocks. “Blue Feather will rise! He will have Nashta! He will save her people! He will bring the rains!”

His piercing cry pealed out over that lonely land. From the cedared ridge beyond, a band of graceful animals trooped out in alarm or curiosity. They had gray bodies and white rumps. They were antelope! Blue Feather started at memory of his wager with Tith-lei. Fixing an arrow to his bow, he let fly. The distance was too far and he missed. The antelope ran off and then stopped to gaze. Blue Feather sped another dart. Where was his vaunted skill, his uncanny power? The animals scampered off. The hunter trailed them over the gray ridges until at length he came upon one standing alone on a little rise of ground. At this distance there was little hope of killing the antelope, but Blue Feather thought of Nashta lying in the hollow of his arm, and he bent the bow prodigiously and held the notched arrow as steadily as if he had been turned to stone. Blue Feather did not see the flight of that arrow, but the antelope fell. He ran to find it pierced through the middle.

He rested that night on the far slope of the valley. Well Blue Feather knew the demand to be made upon his strength on the morrow. He ate and drank his fill. The darkness descended cool and restful to wrap him in slumber.

The wild dogs awakened him in the gray dawn with their sharp and wailing barks that cut the frosty air. They smelled the fresh meat of the antelope Blue Feather had hung in a cedar.

This was the third day, and destined to be the most momentous Blue Feather had ever lived. He arose to meet it, calm in the realization that it would bring death or glory. When the wolves had fled, absolute silence pervaded the valley, gray with shadows lifting, tingeing to rose where the east brightened. There were no voices on the dead air, no steps on his trail. He was a man alone in the desert, dependent upon his own strength, his own wit. The gods of his people now would have abandoned him to his fate. He must win the allegiance of other gods. But that valley was not tenantless. For Blue Feather the rocks had a soul, the cedars were ripening their purple seeds to green the slope after they were old and gnarled hulks, the bleached grass had a spark in its roots, the solemn waiting air, with its sting and tang, was peopled with the invisible life of all that had gone before.

Blue Feather lifted his burden and strode down the slope, out of the cedars upon the frosted sage. Sharp and black against the reddening sky towered the rock of Taneen, the uneven turreted line of its citadel rising above the ragged ramparts.

The sage slope ended in the sandy waste and the dry meandering stream bed, upon the far bank of which spread the field of withered melon vines and seared corn. Beyond these began the rock slope that led up to the base of the wall. Blue Feather had been seen from afar. From rock to rock he stepped, zig-zagging his way up slowly, conserving his strength. That the antelope seemed a light burden troubled Blue Feather. He did not trust this surging thing in his breast. Unless attended by superhuman power no man could hope to surmount this wall.

Sweat poured off Blue Feather’s naked shoulders and breast, and like a bellows his broad chest heaved. The long jagged slope of weathered rocks at last lay beneath him, and the steep gray wall sheered upward. He laid down the antelope, and stripped bow and quiver from his back. Shrill cries reached him from above. Blue Feather craned his neck. Dark faces appeared along the rim. A maiden screamed his name. Blue Feather swept his gaze along the row of faces. Ba-lee! She alone was pale, with dark and staring eyes.

“Tith-lei relents,” she called, wildly. “Go round to the ladders!”

“No!” he shouted upward. “Ba-lee, if Blue Feather falls....”

Other faces crowded into that line, to peer over the rim—the eagle face of Taneen, the distorted face of Clodothie, the weazened face of Declis, the pink face of the albino, Dageel. A ball of thong came unrolling down. Blue Feather tied the flapping end to his bow and quiver, and bade those above to haul them up. They complied. Again the buckskin thong came whipping down. A stentorian voice stilled the shrill babble. Blue Feather gazed upward in silence.

“Tie on the antelope,” commanded the voice. It was that of the chief.

“No!”

“Taneen has no son!”

“The Sheboyah may have Blue Feather, when he is worthy,” called the hunter, through his hands. Then he passed along the base of the wall to find the best place to attempt the ascent. All along the west side he hunted, and far around to the south. The place where he had descended sheered up at an unscalable slant. Therefore he passed back along the west side toward the north, only to be confronted by the perpendicular buttress above which towered the arched wall and the crags. In all that half circle of the butte there was only one place that Blue Feather gave more than a single glance. It was a succession of bulging knobs, on a slight incline, one above the other, that led to a section where two walls met in a ragged right-angle corner. And at that instant a vision illumined Blue Feather’s troubled mind. He saw himself carrying Nashta, and swift as a flash he ran back along the base of the wall. That which he prayed for swept over him, strong as the fire of the sun, unquenchable as life, as great as his love.

Blue Feather jerked the dangling thong from the wall, and bound the forefeet of the antelope, and then the hind feet. Next he drew the two pairs of feet toward each other, until they almost met, and made them fast. He carried the antelope to the point which he had chosen, and lowering it to the ground he filled his lungs to their uttermost depths, again and yet again. The clamor above fell upon his deaf ears. For a long moment he studied the steep ascent, marking his course to the rim. Then in his mind he was lifting Nashta instead of the antelope and slipping her bound arms over his head, and he was holding her with her body resting upon his breast. He made no more prayer to the unknown gods. Nashta was his goddess now. Then he began to ascend the wall.

His clawlike fingers clutched the rock; his moccasined toes clung to the all-too-scarce footholds. Up and up he climbed. He gazed only at the slanted wall before him. He held tenaciously with one hand and one foot while he reached out for some crevice or niche in the face of the rock. Up and up! It was nothing for Blue Feather, this climb, with the Daughter of the Moon on his breast.

The knobs on the cliff ended and so did the steep slant. He clung precariously at the base of the right-angled corner of two walls. They were farther apart than they had looked from below. He stretched a long leg across the void, and he was off balance when his toe touched the wall and froze there. Then, holding tight, he edged his body along inch by inch until he could brace his head and neck against the nearer wall. Quickly he shot his other foot across. Thus he formed a bridge with his body, his head higher than his feet, elbows and hands braced underneath, with the antelope (or was it Nashta?) upon his breast. He slid one foot upward and then the other. Then with tremendous muscular effort he shoved his back up a like distance.

Up! Up! The walls converged until he could brace himself with his knees, and the narrowing space permitted his broad back to fit tight against the stone. Up! The gray walls shortened and blurred against the bright blue of the sky where dark heads bobbed. Upward, faster now, he fought his painful way. Suddenly the deadening strain ceased. A multitude of hands dragged Blue Feather over the parapet where he fell with a swelling din in his ears.

When the darkness passed and he could see once more, Blue Feather was lying with his head upon Ba-lee’s lap. Her warm tears were falling upon his face. A ring of maidens knelt around them. A ring of warriors whose dark visages registered eagerness and relief stood beyond the maidens. A babel rose about him. Blue Feather drew Ba-lee’s head down to whisper in her ear. The maiden whispered back that Nashta had fallen like a stricken deer when she had learned of the wager—that she lay waiting for him or death—that if he came he must be generous enough to spare the jealous Tith-lei.

Blue Feather rose like a bent sapling that springs erect when the weight that holds it is removed. The faces of the braves were now the faces of brothers. But the hideous Dageel was foaming at the mouth; Benei, the star-gazer, seemed to be seeing something inimical in the sky; Declis swung his bags of sand and looked upon the stones; Clodothie wore a scowl like a black and forbidding storm. They had heard the poignant words of their chieftain. And he, Taneen, stood hard by, too proud to reveal his deep emotion, his stern accusing gaze upon Tith-lei. That brave knew full well that the reckoning was upon him. Sullen, yet awed by what he could not comprehend, he met no eye, nor looked up when Blue Feather confronted him to point at the dead antelope.

“Blue Feather is here and the sunset of the third day has not yet come.”

“The Nopah is more than mortal man,” returned Tith-lei, respect for his hated rival wrenched from his very soul.

Taneen came between them.

“Stand one hundred steps apart,” he thundered. “Faces away. When Taneen calls, turn and fight!”

It was Ba-lee who fetched Blue Feather’s bow and quiver.

“Nashta says spare the Mole. But Ba-lee says kill him,” she whispered, her dusky, eloquent eyes bespeaking unselfish concern for this stranger who had won her love and her fear.

Silence enfolded the field. All of Taneen’s Rock Clan, to the naked and wondering children, lined up on the walls and ledges. Blue Feather took his stand. Tith-lei stood far out, facing the multitude, desperate and shaken, sure now of his fate. The two rivals turned their backs upon one another. A brooding mantle of stillness fell upon the watchers. Then Dageel broke the spell with a series of low mournful sounds. The medicine men stood with uplifted arms as if to direct attention to the curse that had fallen upon them. The maidens wept under covered eyes. Then Taneen uttered a cry that held no note of sorrow.

Tith-lei turned quickly to dispatch an arrow that flashed into the sunlight. As Blue Feather turned, strangely cool and deliberate, Tith-lei’s arrow struck him high in his shoulder and quivered in the flesh, while a red stream poured down his bare breast. Tith-lei let out a savage and triumphant yell, and swiftly strode toward his wounded rival, shooting as he approached an arrow that whizzed over Blue Feather’s head.

A murmur went through the tense crowd of watchers. Blue Feather astounded them with his deliberate action, as he fitted a long arrow to his great bow. Tith-lei came on, shooting again, a missile that grazed his foe’s extended arm. But suddenly he halted, as if an invisible wall barred his progress. Blue Feather was bending his bow. It needed only one look to recognize in him the master archer. But the long arrow, slowly moving its bright flint head back toward the arching bow, was pointed far to one side. Blue Feather was not aiming at the Mole. To one side of Tith-lei and far beyond him, a sapling stood alone on the field. Blue Feather bent that prodigious bow until the tips almost met. He stood motionless as a stone image. Twang! That arrow might have been a winged spirit. No spectator saw it. But all saw the sapling shake and then bend its graceful green top. Suddenly drooping, it fell to the ground. Blue Feathers shaft gleamed halfway through the broken trunk.

Shrill and high rose the yells of the Rock Clan. They were acclaiming the marvelous skill of the bowman, but even more so the magnanimity of Tith-lei’s rival.

“Begone!” thundered Taneen to the stunned and cowering Mole.

Then the chief approached the bleeding Blue Feather, who stood quietly in the place where he had shot the arrow.

“May the enemies of Taneen find the Nopah upon his walls!”

Blue Feather waited in the shadows of the arch for Ba-lee. He feared the jealous maiden, knowing that both her dread and her love were beginning to wane. Would she betray to the chief his secret visits to the daughter of Taneen?

A half-moon shone past a gleaming silvered crag. The hour was late. Taneen’s clan slept. A boding silence hovered over their dwellings. Blue Feather felt it, even though his rapt mind could think only of Nashta. What now menaced the Rock Clan? It was there in the cool gloom of the gorge.

Ba-lee came, slim in the moonlight, and stood before Blue Feather, with dusky unfathomable eyes. He importuned her about Nashta.

“She waits with La-clos. She bids you come. But Ba-lee tells you it is death to descend into the sacred kiva.”

Ba-lee detained him with hand no longer timid. “Blue Feather spares Tith-lei, but kills the maiden.” And she laid her hand over her heart. Dark doubt and yearning passion burned in her upturned gaze.

“You are Blue Feather’s sister now,” he whispered, taking her hands. “The Nopah is sorrowful that it cannot be more. He is changed. Nashta has visited upon him the sum of all that Blue Feather has made others suffer. He has spared the Mole.... Ba-lee, he has saved you, and Nashta, and La-clos and Taneen—all who are here on the great rock tonight.”

The maiden turned her dark profile away. She did not want remorse in Blue Feather, or change, or generosity, or his strange new power to save. He felt a sinking of his heart.

Ba-lee gave a slight gesture for him to follow her. Keeping to the shadow of the arch, she stole silently far to the other side, beyond the corded stacks of wood and the domed granaries and cisterns, to the dark fissured wall. Here were the ceremonial houses, and farther on the place of the sacred kivas. Blue Feather trembled. No brave’s foot had ever desecrated that spot. Ba-lee felt her way. A faint round patch of light shone on the black floor. It came from the open hole in the roof of a kiva. Ba-lee stepped down, whispering for him to follow. Blue Feather saw a ladder descending into this cavern in the rocks. Stepping carefully, he went down.

A little fire, blue-flamed and red-embered, dimly lighted a chamber so large that Blue Feather could not see the walls. He suspected that it was a subterranean cave utilized by Taneen for a sacred kiva. And herein must lie the secret of the underground passage which led down from the citadel to the open.

But Blue Feather had little interest in that or in the character of this kiva. Breathless and with bursting heart he strove to pierce the gloom. La-clos, beside the ladder, murmured a few words to him. She, as well as Ba-lee, was breaking the law of the tribe for Blue Feather, but she would be faithful.

“Nashta is there,” said Ba-lee.

Blue Feather saw his goddess then, kneeling on pale robes of fur, with outstretched white arms like the opal marble in the chasms.

“Nashta lives again,” she whispered, as swiftly he knelt to clasp her in his arms.

“Oh, Daughter of the Moon, my Nashta! Oh, joy and spirit—all that pierced the Nopah’s blindness—he is here!” Blue Feather bent over the lovely face and felt that he held to his breast the link between his future and the voices down in the valley.

“Ba-lee, go above, and you, La-clos. Watch and listen. Blue Feather will be long here.”

“Tith-lei hunts abroad at night like a bat,” replied Ba-lee significantly, as she mounted the ladder.

Blue Feather placed Nashta’s soft hand high up on his shoulder where a plaster of gum covered his wound. Nashta caressed the angry hot skin and placed her cool cheek upon it, and then her soft thrilling lips.

“Nashta was wrong. Never again will she beg Blue Feather to spare the Mole,” she said, and it seemed that anger for the first time stirred within her.

“Ba-lee will tell Tith-lei and he will betray us.”

“Taneen is my father. He would forgive.”

“Yes, my princess. But Clodothie and Declis rule your tribe. They will throw me out to the wild dogs. Blue Feather must win your people to his side. He will bring the rains.”

“Oh, my Nopah, Nashta believes that that of all things would overthrow Clodothie and his powers! You are a god to her, and her very breath, and beating blood.”

“Nashta, it is little for the Nopahs to bring the rains. Blue Feather has learned. He has danced the rain dance many times. He knows the songs, and the drink of herbs that deadens the poison of the snakes.”

“Snakes! The crawling things that rattle beside the pool? Ugh! The Daughter of the Moon has been taught to love everything. But her Nopah’s kisses have made that teaching as if it were not. Nashta loves only Blue Feather. His smile, his voice, his touch are all of her world that matters now. She loves as her mother, the queen of the outcast Antelope Clan.”

“Lonely maiden, do you know that sad history?”

“From Taneen himself. He, too, has broken the law of his tribe. He told me of my mother. Her love was great and true as the sun that has never shone upon Nashta.... Oh, my Nopah, consider. Nashta’s fate will be like her mother’s unless Blue Feather takes her away to his wigwam, to make her his bride, his people to be her people, his god her god.”

“Nashta, never call him your Nopah again,” replied Blue Feather. “He is no longer a Nopah. He has betrayed and disowned his people. He is an outcast. He has no name, no home, no treasure, nothing but his love for Nashta, for which he has lost all.”

“Ah! What story is this? Let not Blue Feather bow his head! Nashta’s love will recompense for loss of all.”

“Listen. Blue Feather came first as a spy for the warrior tribe of Nothis Toh, his father. His work was to ply his cunning with the little people of the cliffs. He came, and the gods favored his work. The braves went crazy over the gambling games. They chewed the blue gum and found it sweet. The maidens fell into Blue Feather’s power. Soon he would have gone forth in the night to lead the waiting warriors here to kill and destroy and capture and rape. But Blue Feather met Nashta, and his black soul went out into the darkness. He made excuse of Tith-lei’s jealous wager, and accepting it he journeyed down into the chasm to find his father. Blue Feather lied. He told the greatest of all falsehoods. And he sent the Nopah warriors back across the red river to their far caves, and he returned to Nashta and her people forever.”

Nashta’s arms clung about his neck and she uttered a wail of the fear that had birth in her then. She besought Blue Feather to use all his mastery to take her far away from the Sheboyahs, to be his slave, to live as other maidens, to see the marvelous sun, to feel the wind upon her face, to have them change her white blue-veined skin to the natural hue of her people.

Blue Feather held her to his throbbing heart and found no answer. He had asked only to see her, to hold her as now, to serve her and her people. But Nashta was not a goddess, nor a spirit, nor a speaking moonbeam. She was flesh and blood; she was life and love. All her years she had been cheated of the things she longed for.

“Ba-lee has told Nashta what the squaws forbade her to know. Nashta laughed. She did not believe until Blue Feather’s kisses were hard on her mouth. Nashta is a woman. She would be the outcast Nopah’s bride, the proud mother of his children.”

“Beloved,” cried Blue Feather hoarsely. “Nashta breaks the outcast’s heart. He is strong, he is swift, he is cunning. But he cannot change the law of your people.”

“Blue Feather can carry the maiden down over the rocks. It is enough.”

“Yes, in the dead of night he could lower Nashta, and follow. Will she have it so?” he whispered, weak in all his being.

“Nashta rejoices. The Nopah outcast and the Sheboyah princess will go. Blue Feather is a warrior. He knows what to do. Nashta has only beauty. She is not strong. The sun must shine on her only little by little.”

“Blue Feather will plan,” he replied ponderingly, the greatness of this plot weighing upon him. “Ba-lee ... Tith-lei ... Corn and meat and drink ... A long rope....”

“Nashta is not entirely helpless. She knows the hidden passage out under the walls. It has many arms. Taneen comes through it when he visits Nashta here.”

“Here!” cried Blue Feather, leaping erect with the maiden in his arms.

“Yes, Blue Feather. The hole is there in the darkness of the kiva. It is covered. Only Nashta knows.”

Blue Feather tossed Nashta lightly up and lightly caught her as she fell into his arms with a little cry. He was the giant that he had dreamed of. The valley voices filled his ears like distant music. He called Nashta every beautiful and loving and tender name that he had learned in the language of the Rock Clan.

“More! More! All the Nopah words!” she breathed ecstatically. “Talk to Nashta always in Nopah. She learns. There are not enough Sheboyah words to tell of her love, her happiness.”

“Nashta must forget the Nopah language Blue Feather taught her.”

“Taneen’s daughter forgets nothing. Ah! She remembers all Ba-lee’s gossip about Blue Feather. How he made Ba-lee’s heart a fluttering captive bird. His laugh, his kiss! And her woe when he played with La-clos, and all the maidens....”

“Enough. Nashta may be the Daughter of the Moon, but she is as other maidens. Forgive Blue Feather.... Tomorrow night we flee!”

Blue Feather mounted the ladder, gazing through the round door in the roof of the kiva, beyond which he saw the half-moon riding in a strange sky. A corner of the black arch projected out into the pale light. He paused silently at the opening, his sense of peril returning to cloud the joy that had been his. He whispered for Ba-lee and La-clos. There was no answer except for the sound of a cold wind that wailed over the kiva! The maidens should have been there. Blue Feather put his head out to peer around him. The cavern under the arch was dark in the gloom; outside a pale moonlight brooded over the domed granaries. He called out, his voice low. Only the wind answered. The Nopah sensed then that the very air was oppressive with catastrophe. He stole away from the kiva, his eyes those of a fox at night, his ears attuned to the menace on the wind.

The tall granaries clustered thickly in the foreground, one casting a round shadow against the pale gleam of another. Blue Feather distrusted them, but he had to pass. Suddenly, out of their dark shadows, came a swift rush of padded feet. A swarm of braves seized Blue Feather from all sides. Blue Feather heaved them off and, whirling about, he flung them back, only to be seized from behind. He had not time to draw his weapon. With silent fury, like giants they surged over him and bore him to the ground. They bound him and dragged him forth into the moonlight.

Tith-lei, malevolent of face and swelling with triumphant hate, confronted the captive.

“Nopah dog! Now his blue crest droops! Where now is his boasted strength, his power to win, his gum that stole the wits of the Sheboyahs? Blue Feather gambled on Ba-lee and lost. He has betrayed Taneen’s secret to the clan. He has bared the great Chief’s dishonor to his people. The accursed Nopah will be split in the middle, torn apart and cast to the wild dogs!”

They dragged him by his bound feet and tumbled him into a dungeon, where he rolled and bumped down a flight of stone steps to lie bruised and bleeding on the dank floor. A network of black bars crossed the door of his prison. A dim beam of moonlight shone in on the wall, brooding there with the silver sheen that had been the ruin of the Nopah. At last the prophetic dream of his mother had come true. A cold and bitter breath of resignation flooded over Blue Feather’s soul. He deserved his fate. He had held the Daughter of the Moon to his breast. Yet to have been beloved by Nashta made him a king on earth and would be enough recompense for the beyond. She would wilt like a flower in her kiva and surely her spirit would meet his far down under the rocks where the voices came from.

All night Blue Feather lay there upon his back, with the pain of his racked body slowly numbing his agony of mind. His grief was only for the loss of other hours with the lovely Nashta. In the cold gloom of dawn he fell into a sleep of exhaustion.

Rude and violent hands awakened Blue Feather. He was being dragged up the stone steps, out into the sunlight, upon the terraces of the citadel. All of the Rock Clan were abroad, joining in the procession. Blue Feather was looked upon as no more than one of the poison-fanged wild dogs of the desert. While his captors dragged him along, the lines of braves struck at him, the squaws spat upon him, the maidens cast looks of hatred upon his face, and the naked children struck him with sticks and stones. The citadel was in an uproar.

At last Blue Feather’s captors halted with him in the great court before Taneen’s dwelling. The thongs around his ankles were cut and he was jerked erect by brutal hands to be thrust forward through the crowd.

The booming of a drum and a sudden shrill cry silenced the multitude. Blue Feather faced his judges, standing free now, his head high, his falcon eyes blazing.

La-clos lay groveling on the stone floor of the court. A brave with a long leather lash stood over her. Ba-lee stood back to one side with Tith-lei. She seemed stunned by the enormity of what she had brought about. The Mole appeared to be treading on air, to expand beyond the bulk of his fellows. This was his hour. Clodothie, Declis and Benei, with the other medicine men of the tribe, formed a line against the wall of Taneen’s dwelling. All about, the roofs, the walls, the terraces were black with gleaming-eyed spectators. And at Blue Feather’s back stood the dark-faced braves who had dragged him hither.

Taneen came forth from his dwelling, a stricken man, yet still with the bearing of a chief.

“Nopah,” began Taneen, in stern and rolling voice, “Tith-lei bears testimony that you dared to enter the sacred kiva of the Daughter of the Moon.”

“Blue Feather is loved by Nashta. For her he would dare wind and fire and death.”

“The Nopah does not deny?”

“No!”

“He made Ba-lee and La-clos traitors to their sacred trust?”

“Taneen, the maidens are innocent. They feared the Nopah.”

“Blue Feather speaks bold words of his entrance to the secret kiva of Taneen—of his violation of the law of the Sheboyahs—of an alien’s passion for an outcast and sacred princess upon whom the sun never shone and eye of brave should never have rested!”

Blue Feather replied proudly to the chieftain. “The Nopah was dishonest till he saw Nashta. He was a Nopah spy, the son of Nothis Toh. And while the Nopah warriors with their great bows and long arrows waited down in the chasms Blue Feather worked his wiles upon the Rock Clan. Always he played, always he gambled, always he gave the sweet blue gum to the braves, always he won the love of the maidens. Always he waited for the time to go down and lead the Nopahs up to destroy Taneen’s people. But one night by the moonlit pool he met Nashta. And the evil in him fled. Blue Feather went below, back to his father and the tall hungry-eyed warriors. And he lied to the great chief his father. The Sheboyahs, he told them, were poor. They lived amidst famine. They had no store of corn and meat. They had no treasure of turquoise and jet. Their squaws were old and lean and shiftless, their maidens given in marriage to another clan. And the Nopahs must return far across the red river to wait until Blue Feather found a richer clan! So he told them.”

The listening priests smote the stones with their staffs and shouted: “Liar! Spy! Dog of a Nopah! The tall people with their great bows will come!”

Taneen stilled the tumult. “Does the Nopah speak truth?”

“Blue Feather ended with falsehood when he looked into the eyes of Nashta. He gave up his people. Now he is an outcast.”

Taneen lifted his lean arms in tragic acceptance of a fate that he could not avert.

“Too late, Nopah!” he thundered, in a terrible denunciation of Blue Feather, of Nashta, of himself and the people who were abandoning him to the rule of the priests. “Taneen believes. He sees himself in the Nopah. He burns again in the love for which Blue Feather must die. But his power ends this day.”

Taneen passed within his dwelling and suddenly the doorway darkened with moving figures.

“Death to the Nopah!” they cried.

Clodothie pounded a drum, and in the ensuing silence he harangued his fellows. At length the high priest turned to the Mole.

“Tith-lei, speak the death sentence of the Nopah spy.”

The brave leaped up transfigured, knowing that in due time he would be made chief of the clan.

“Tie ropes to the Nopah’s feet,” he shrilled. “Spread them wide and split him asunder and throw the halves to the wild dogs.”

“It is spoken. So the Nopah dies,” solemnly stated Clodothie.

Then burst the pent-up fury of the populace, and around Blue Feather wheeled and screamed a mad circle of braves.

Tith-lei danced in a transport of joy before the proud rival whom he had doomed to a hideous death. Braves and maidens spread out before him in frantic evolutions. The Mole was as one possessed by devils of bliss. Wildly he ran across the court to leap upon the rampart of the outer wall. And there magnificently he spread his arms to the desert below, as if to acclaim his rise to rule nature and clan and god.

Suddenly the plumed spear in his right hand fell, to vanish into the depths below. An awful frenzied yell suddenly smote the ears of that watching, singing, dancing throng. Tith-lei’s form drew back with terror. Then came a rustle as of a swift swallow’s wings in flight—a slender gleam of light from below the wall—then a strange and solid thud.

From the center of Tith-lei’s naked back protruded a dripping arrowhead. He screamed in mortal agony, and swung as if on a pivot to face the tribe he had been given to rule. A long feathered shaft of blue quivered in his breast. A dark crimson tide flowed down his convulsed body. His hands, like claws, clutched at the air. His distorted face told that in the instant of glory it had been transfixed with horror. His utterance strangled in a blood-choked throat.

Blue Feather pierced the air with a resounding cry.

“Behold! The long arrow of the Nopahs! Tith-lei dies!”