The Delight Makers. Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier
beside him.[6]
Without a word Tyope squatted down near the fire, facing the other Indian. It had turned cold, and both men held their hands up to the flame. The former glanced at the latter furtively from time to time, but neither uttered a word. The fire was beginning to decline; its light grew faint. At last the other Indian said—
"When will the Koshare go into the round house?"
"As soon as the moon gives light," Tyope carelessly replied.
"How many are there of you?"
"Why do you want to know this?" inquired the man from the Rito, in a husky voice.
His companion chuckled again and said nothing. He had put an imprudent question. He turned away carelessly, placed more wood on the fire, and poked the embers. Tyope looked up at the sky, and thus the vivid, scornful glance the other threw on his figure escaped him.
So far the conversation had been carried on in the Queres language; now the stranger suddenly spoke in another dialect and in a more imperious tone.
"Art thou afraid of the Dinne?"
"Why should I be afraid of them?" responded Tyope in his native tongue.
"Speak the tongue of the Dinne," the other sternly commanded, and a flash burst from beneath his eyebrows, almost as savage as that of a wolf. "Thou hast courted the people of my tribe. They have not sought after thee. Thou knowest their language. Speak it, therefore, and then we shall see." He straightened himself, displaying a youthful figure full of strength and elasticity.
Tyope took this change of manner very composedly. He answered quietly in the same dialect—
"If thou wilt, Nacaytzusle, I can speak like thy people also. It is true I came for them, but what I wanted"—he emphasized the word—"was as much for their benefit as my own. Thou, first of all, wast to gain by my scheme." His eyes closed, and the glance became as sharp as that of a rattlesnake.
Nacaytzusle poked the embers with a dry stick as if thinking over the speech of the other. Then he asked—
"Thou sayest thou hast wanted. Wantest thou no more?"
"Not so much as hitherto," Tyope stated positively.
"What shall it be now?" inquired the Dinne.
"I will speak to thee so as to be understood," explained the man from the Rito, "but thou shalt tell thy people only so much of it as I shall allow thee to say. Thou art Dinne, it is true, and their tongue is thy language, but many a time hast thou seen the sun set and rise while the houses wherein we dwell on the brook were thy home. When they brought thee to us after the day on which Topanashka slaughtered thy people beyond the mountains, thou didst not remain with us long. The moon has not been bright often since thou left us to join thy people. Is it not so, Nacaytzusle? Answer me."
The Navajo shrugged his shoulders.
"It is true," he said, "but I have nothing in common with the House people."
"It may be so now, but if thou dost not care for the men, the women are not without interest to thee. Is it not thus?"
"The tzane on the brook," replied the Navajo, disdainfully, "amount to nothing."
"In that case"—Tyope flared up and grasped his club, speaking in the Queres language and with a vibrating tone—"why don't you look for a companion in your own tribe? Mitsha Koitza does not care for a husband who sneaks around in the timber like a wolf, and whose only feat consists in frightening the old women of the Tyuonyi!"
The Navajo stared before him with apparent stolidity. Tyope continued—
"You pretend to despise us now, yet enough has remained within your heart, from the time when you lived at the Tyuonyi and slept in the estufa of Shyuamo hanutsh, to make my daughter appear in your eyes better, more handsome, and more useful, than the girls of the Dinne!"
The features of the Dinne did not move; he kept silent. But his right hand played with the string of the bow that lay on the wolf's skin.
"Nacaytzusle," the other began again, "I promised to assist you to obtain the girl against her will. Mind! Mitsha, my daughter, will never go to a home of the Dinne of her own accord, but I would have stolen her for your sake. Now I say to you that I have promised you this child of mine, and I have promised your people all the green stones of my tribe. The first promise I shall fulfil if you wish. The other, you may tell your tribe, I will not hold to longer."
The Navajo looked at him in a strange, doubtful way and replied—
"You have asked me to be around the Tyuonyi day after day, night after night, to watch every tree, every shrub, merely in order to find out what your former wife, Shotaye, was doing, and to kill her if I could. You have demanded," he continued, raising his voice, while he bent forward and darted at the Indian from the Rito a look of suppressed rage, "that the Dinne should come down upon the Tyuonyi at the time when the Koshare should fast and pray, and should kill Topanashka, the great warrior, so that you might become maseua in his place! Now I tell you that I shall not do either!"
The eyes of the young savage flamed like living coals.
"Then you shall not have my child!" exclaimed Tyope.
"I will get her. You may help me or not!"
"I dare you to do it," Tyope hissed.
Nacaytzusle looked straight at him.
"Do you believe," he hissed in turn, "that if I were to go down to the brook and tell the tapop what you have urged me and my people to do against your kin that he would not reward me?"
Tyope Tihua became very quiet; his features lost the threatening tension which they had displayed, his eyes opened, and he said in a softer tone—
"That is just what I want you to do. But I want this from you alone. Go and see the tapop. Tell him not the small talk about this and that, but what you have seen with your own eyes about Shotaye, that witch, that snake—of her dark ways, how she sneaked through the brush on the mesa, and how she found and gathered the plumage of the accursed owl. Tell him all, and I will carry Mitsha to your lodges, tied and gagged if needs be."
"Why don't you send the girl out alone? I will wait for her wherever you say."
"Do you think that I would be so silly?" the Pueblo retorted with a scornful laugh. "Do you really believe I would do such a thing? No, Dinne, you and your people may be much more cunning than mine in many ways, but we are not so stupid as that. If I were to do that, you would rob me of my handsome maiden and that would be the last of it. No, Dinne, I do not need you to such an extent, I am not obliged to have you. But if you go to the Tyuonyi and accuse the witch, then you shall go out free, and Mitsha must follow you to the hogans of your people, whether she will or not. Do what I tell you, and I will do as I promise. If you will not neither will I, for mind, I do not need you any longer."
Tyope glanced at the stars with an air of the utmost indifference. Nacaytzusle had listened quietly. Now he said without raising his eyes—
"Tyope, you ask me to do all this, and do not even give me a pledge. You are wise, Tyope, much wiser than we people of the hogans. Give me some token that you also will do what you have said when I have performed my part. Give me"—he pointed to the alabaster tablet hanging on Tyope's necklace—"that okpanyi on your neck."
It was so dark that Nacaytzusle in extending his arm involuntarily touched the other's chest. Tyope drew back at the touch and replied, rather excitedly—
"No, I will not give you any pledge!"
"Nothing at all?" asked the Navajo. A slight rustling noise was heard at the same time.
"Nothing!" Tyope exclaimed hoarsely.
The savage thrust his arm out at the Pueblo with the rapidity of lightning. A dull thud followed, his arm dropped, and something fell to the ground. It was an arrow,